20/11/2020
Here at 8A media, we believe in learner-centric education. That means, for us to study, incubate and accelerate trends, everyone here (we'll call ourselves--affectionately, of course--"Lab rats" from now on) has to participate in the learning process.
We will post studies and trend reports regularly with the hope that you Lab Rats read them, understand them and formulate an opinion on them. Or, we could also participate in experiments to promote healthy discussions.
This read (rather long, sorry--you can click on this at the end of the day) tries to peel away superficial layers and look deeper at popular assertions that link misinformation (disinformation?) and Facebook. It's a geek read, really, for those interested in journalism and a valuable resource for journalism students planning on their theses. But it reveals numbers that are worth poring over.
An excerpt:
"Facebook claims its internal data paints a different picture. The company says that the posts with the highest engagement aren’t actually the ones that reach the most people, and that the average Facebook user sees little political content."
We can participate in an experiment of our own, the same one run in this article. Perhaps we could take a screenshot of the first 10 items in our Facebook feeds to and share it here? To be safe, though, it would be best to redact account names and profile photos for privacy purposes. This way, we can test the hypothesis in a Philippine setting: Are we really getting flooded with political and misinformation posts?
And then we can discuss our findings in the comments section.
What do you think, Lab Rats?
October 2020 was one of the craziest news months in recent history, but you wouldn't know it by looking in people's Facebook feeds.