The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook

Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Burger, Peter, Kanhai, Soeradj, Pleijter, Alexander, Verberne, Suzan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Research Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6675076/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31369596
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446
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author Burger, Peter
Kanhai, Soeradj
Pleijter, Alexander
Verberne, Suzan
author_facet Burger, Peter
Kanhai, Soeradj
Pleijter, Alexander
Verberne, Suzan
author_sort Burger, Peter
collection PubMed
description Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013–2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post.
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spelling pubmed-66750762019-08-06 The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook Burger, Peter Kanhai, Soeradj Pleijter, Alexander Verberne, Suzan PLoS One Research Article Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013–2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post. Public Library of Science 2019-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6675076/ /pubmed/31369596 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446 Text en © 2019 Burger et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Burger, Peter
Kanhai, Soeradj
Pleijter, Alexander
Verberne, Suzan
The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title_full The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title_fullStr The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title_full_unstemmed The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title_short The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook
title_sort reach of commercially motivated junk news on facebook
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6675076/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31369596
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446
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