Thank you to everyone who made it this far.
You may be thinking, “Why is this so sudden?”, but new research suggests that people who click on a link and read the content of an article are very valuable.
A research team from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) recently looked at more than 35 million news articles shared on Facebook and found that a whopping 75% of them were shared without users actually clicking on the link.
In other words, most people just looked at the title of the article and shared it without reading the content.
Nearly 80% of articles only have their titles read?
This survey primarily focuses on political news articles shared on Facebook .
Access to Facebook’s statistical data was granted by Social Science One, an academic organization based at Harvard University.
The data is collected in collaboration with Meta, the US company that runs social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and includes user demographics and usage.
Also, one of the main pieces of data collected here is something called the “political page affinity score.”
This is an indicator that quantifies the level of interest and affinity Facebook users have with political news articles.
Specifically, it assesses the political beliefs and political parties that individual users support based on the media and political accounts they follow , the content of political news they like and share, etc.
The team then used this score to categorize users’ political stance into five groups: far left, left wing, neutral, right wing, and far right .
Separately, the team uses AI machine learning capabilities to analyze claims and terms contained in political news content shared by users, and similarly classifies them as matching one of five groups (far left, left wing, moderate, right wing, far right).
Finally, the team looked at more than 35 million political news articles shared on Facebook between 2017 and 2020 to see what kind of articles users shared, and whether they clicked on the article link to read the content or shared it without clicking the link.
To the researchers’ surprise, they found that of the more than 35 million news articles shared on Facebook, 75% were shared without users ever clicking on them .
This means that many users only read the headline of a news article and don’t read the actual content before deciding whether or not to share it .
The team also discovered some interesting patterns that correlate with users’ political attitudes.
The more a title aligns with my political beliefs, the less I read the content.
When the team looked at the relationship between each user’s political stance and the political news they shared, they found some interesting trends.
The more a piece of political news was aligned with a user’s political stance, the more likely it was to be shared without a click .
This tendency was especially strong in the case of extreme ideologies such as the far-right and the far-left, compared to neutral ideologies.
In short, people with extreme and staunch beliefs, such as those on the far right or far left, were more likely to share an article immediately, without reading the content, if they saw the title of the article and determined that it (superficially) aligned with their own views .
“The results support the theory that many users only superficially read news articles based on the headline and blurb,” said Shyam Sundar, one of the study’s lead researchers.
“They don’t realize that sometimes they might be sharing false information,” he continues.
When the team examined the content of political news actually shared by users, they found that 2,969 news articles contained false information.
This means that users may unknowingly be spreading false news on social media by sharing it .
So why would people share an article without looking at the content in the first place?
The reason is quite simple: social media is overflowing with new information, so users don’t have the time to read and scrutinize each piece of information.
“This kind of thing (sharing links without clicking) happens because people are overwhelmed with information and they don’t have the time to stop and think,” Sundar said.
While the study focused on Facebook and political news, the researchers believe similar behavior may be occurring on other social media platforms, including X, and in areas outside of politics.
The team said the findings were of great concern as they could lead to the spread of false information .
The spread of false information can pose a risk to people’s lives and lifestyles, especially in news during elections that have a bearing on the governance of the country, during pandemics such as COVID-19, and during evacuations during disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons.
As social media users, we are bombarded with news from a variety of fields every day, but when we want to share a piece of news, we should make sure to open the link and check the content before sharing it.