The things that Facebook doesn't tell you
Facebook has been becoming a pronoun for university student's life from June 2008. They use Facebook for making a date, chatting, sharing pictures or articles, publicizing activities or watching news. Facebook becomes the first platform for obtaining information and social interaction because of the penetration rate. In the period of the event last year*, people thought that Internet is more objective than traditional media. It isn't affected by particular party and commercial group. And the resource they used is probably Facebook.
*Taiwanese organized a demonstration in 2012, because we noticed that our media are almost held by some particular commercial groups, and we thought that media shouldn't be monopolized by minority.
Facebook stands out in the crowd from many social media, Not only it's easy to use and it integrates many platforms, but also Facebook can filter the news feed for user by the record from users, therefore, Facebook can offer the news feed which is the preference for user. As a social media, it's an advantage because it conforms the required from users. However, it also can be a disadvantage if we use it as a only resource for obtaining information. Because we always browse the news feed from our closed friends or family, the opinion and speech are normally similar with us. It just like that you observe the world by prejudice, and you can only know the incomplete information. Now, let's see how Facebook filter the information for users.
How Facebook decides what we saw?
Facebook is so popular nowadays, we have hundreds of friends in our account and also groups, pages and the update of apps, there's thousands of news feed which relates the users. Apparently, the users don't have time and interest to browse all these things, therefore, Facebook has to decide the order of news feed by some methods. And the method is EdgeRank.
The "Edge" in EdgeRank means every news feed from friends, groups and pages. Facebook estimates every single feed and makes a rank for it, and there's three factors which affects the rank. First, the affinity, it represents the relationship between users and the person who posts feeds. In general, families or lover are closer than friends, friends are closer then acquaintances. The affinity is also affected by the interaction between each other. It means if you and one of your friend often click "Like", leave a comment or share with each other, the feeds from him have the priority in your news feed page.
Second, the weight of the feeds, the order from different kind of posts is videos, photos, recent activity and the last one—links. And the different responses from the news feed also have order. Sharing is the most important one, and the following are comment, like and click. For example, a feed who has 10 comments and a feed who has 10 likes, the 10 comments one has priority on your Facebook page, and compare with the 5 comments one, the 10 comments one has the priority. The final one is time decay, it takes how much time from "just post" to "have been read" , the fresh one has the priority.
They estimate it with the three factors and the highest one has the priority. It means the users always see the fresh feed, the feed from the friends who we usually pay attention to, or the feed which has many comments. On the contrary, the feed from the nodding acquaintance or the feed doesn't have too many comments, it's harder for users to see them.
But what does it means? Obviously, we always see the feed that we prefer. Everytime we comment, push "like" or share the links, we are telling Facebook that the feed from this user has to increased in your page. On the other hand, Facebook will decrease the feed that we don't like, it means that we don't have many chances to see them and comment them. After a long time, base on the data from Facebook and our reaction of the feeds, the feeds what we see getting similar and the same thing happened on your friend.
Finally, we create a close circle with our familiar friends which has the similar opinion and also we exchange the information here. It seems that we have the same opinion with the users on Facebook, but it actually just a surface situation.
What's the matter if I only browse what I want to see?
Maybe you're wondering what's the negative effect with that? Here's a psychological conception might give it an explanation. "Mere-exposure effect" means the more you contact with something the more easier to make you like it. The conception is useful in the field of advertisement marketing for a long time. On Facebook, because of the preference of ourselves or the position of our close friend, some information with particular position will shows up again and again. For example, if most of the article that your friends share supported the nuclear power, you would support the nuclear power more easier. And you have the positive impression because of these supported information.*
*The use of nuclear power is a controversy in Taiwan nowadays, it relates environment protection, the electricity distribution of different industries and the security of our nuclear power technology, etc. It’s really hard to figure it out.
The title decides everything.
In addition to unequal information, there's many if you get the information by Facebook. For instance, sometimes we see a sharing article from our friend with their own opinion or comment. This kind of article makes framing effect easily which is a conception from psychology. The reader see the title and description at first, it might be an explanation but actually a prejudice. Our understanding of the event is always from this kind of explanation, it means that we receive information by a optional filter (The conception is from Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). The typical example for framing effect is exaggerating news title, it affects the way that how reader understand the content.
On Facebook, we browse every kind of article through our friend's comment or sharing, we might be affected by our friend easily, and we also accept their opinion and logic naturally.
A reasonable reader?
On the other hand, there's some research from social psychology which relates convincing skill and the change of attitude. Psychologist classify the convincing skill as central and surrounding way(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), it's the difference between convincing by content or the clue of surface.
Readers might be affected by the clue of surface when they don't have the motive to understand (because they're not interest with the subject or the subject is not related to them), or they didn't pay attention with it (they might do the other thing in the same time). In the meantime, the surface clues might affect the credibility of article. The clues include the length of article, the amount of comment, the poster or the appearance of article. Obviously, it happens on Facebook frequently because most of user do many things in the same time. Therefore, it's a good timing to test yourself if you have the confident with your information receiving skill.
How to get the objective information?
Until now, maybe you're disappointed about Internet as a method for obtaining an objective information. But don't be discouraged, actually, any kind of media can't be totally objective such as Internet, television, newspaper or radio. Even if Internet is not so easy to be controlled by government or businessman, it's still affected by many issues. For example, embedded marketing, buying the comments from blogger, violent speech from anonymous Internet users or the spiral of silence (a theory from mass communication). Not to mention that there's always error from any method for information.
So what can we do? The best solution is to find many different resources for information. Forming the habit of reading foreign news, editorial, independent blog and some non-mainstream media. We can avoid to be affected by the mainstream media or our friend circle.
=========================================================
The original website
留言列表
