麻豆淫院

Consuming news on social media is often associated with "doom scrolling," where people spend excessive time online consuming negative news. However, researchers have found that this same behavior, when leveraged effectively, can help foster a well-informed society.

A Nature Human Behaviour study the effects of following news organizations on social media platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp by preregistering 3,395 participants from France and Germany for online field experiments.

During the experiment, participants were randomly assigned to either follow a news or a non-news account. The results revealed that just two weeks of following two or more news channels led to noticeable gains in the participants' current affairs knowledge, trust in news, and ability to spot fake news from real stories.

A typical social media user spends an average of browsing different social media websites or apps, which is approximately 14% of their waking hours.

With social media now an integral part of people's internet diet, many are turning to it for news rather than tuning into traditional news channels or newspapers.

This trend comes with its share of issues, as social media algorithms often prioritize entertainment over news, thus sensationalist and misleading content containing false information receives disproportionately high viewership. The criticism social media receives for undermining the quality of public discourse by amplifying low-quality content isn't uncalled for.

To push back against these patterns, scientists have developed a range of intervention techniques鈥攆rom limiting exposure to clickbait and misinformation to training users to recognize manipulation tactics to encouraging fact-checking.

While most research in the field has focused on minimizing exposure to harmful content, the effect of increasing exposure to reliable news on social media has barely been explored.

The researchers of this study argue that since social media are here to stay, it's crucial to remain vigilant about the risks, but it is equally important to understand the potential benefits.

They designed an experiment involving 1,700 German participants (mean age: 40.5 years) and 1,695 French participants (mean age: 44.1 years), who were randomly assigned to one of two groups.

In the treatment group, participants were asked to follow two news organization accounts on Instagram or WhatsApp, while those in the control group were instructed to follow two non-news accounts.

All participants were asked to maintain this routine for two weeks, during which they were also asked to activate notifications for those accounts and upload screenshots as proof of compliance. The experiment was conducted in two waves, separated by a 14-day interval.

After each wave, participants were quizzed to gauge their knowledge of current affairs, belief in true or fake news, trust in news, and their political inclinations.

The results indicated that following news channels led to several positive outcomes. Participants became more attuned to current events and better at telling true news from false. They also reported greater trust in news and journalists. However, the intervention did not affect how informed they felt or their level of interest in news or politics.

Digital media literacy is crucial in combating threats to information and democracy on social media platforms. The team believes that future research should explore effective ways to incentivize engagement with credible news content on social media.

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