Is Facebook Eroding the Public Agenda? Evidence From Survey and Web-Tracking Data

Abstract

Preserving a common public agenda positively affects social integration, minimizing social cleavages and polarization. While social media are known for fragmenting the media environment, research has not devoted much attention to their effect on the public agenda. This paper addresses whether consuming news through Facebook shapes individual agendas that diverge from the set of most important problems (MIPs) as perceived by the general public. Our research design combines survey and web-tracking data to analyse how Facebook-referred news consumption influences individual consumers' agendas. We find that when Facebook is a relevant news referral, people are less likely to mention the top MIPs for a representative sample of the Spanish population. We discuss the implications of our findings for the public agenda.

CSR Communication, Corporate Reputation, and the Role of the News Media as an Agenda-Setter in the Digital Age

“…Research has shown that the topic of news is of relevance in reaching an audience through Facebook, for instance, soft news was preferred over hard news in one examination (Bakshy et al, 2015). Second, not all individuals that use a social media channel will be presented with the same agenda in their news feed on Facebook (Cardenal et al, 2018). This might lead to more fragmented audiences, especially when compared with legacy media (Feezell, 2018).…”

Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda

“…Reliance on specific sources may affect issue horizon wideness and compatibility by itself. However, theoretical arguments and empirical findings suggest that individuals with extreme political attitudes will be much more vulnerable to such effects (Bruns 2019).…”

“…An extreme version of this scenario-highly individualized, isolated information environments, disconnected from the outside world-has been described with the popular filter bubble metaphor (Pariser 2011). Research has debunked this extreme scenario (Bruns 2019;Haim et al 2018;Hindman 2012;Mahrt 2020;Möller et al 2018;Zuiderveen Borgesius et al 2016); if any, filter bubbles must be regarded a "fringe" phenomenon that is likely to occur only under specific conditions. Thus, algorithmic content curation will usually not lead to completely different, individualized issue sets.…”

“…Conditional Narrowing Effect on People with Extreme Attitudes? Research suggests that reliance on social media for political information will particularly narrow the information input of individuals with extreme political views (Bruns 2019). These are viewed as particularly vulnerable because they tend to have an ideologically more homogeneous social network (online and offline), a greater motivation to avoid ideologically inconsistent viewpoints and seek out consistent viewpoints, and more often experience cognitive dissonance when confronted with mainstream news (Abelson 2014;Rodriguez et al 2017).…”

News Organizations in Colombia Building Consensus through Social Media: A Case of Digital-Native La Silla Vacía

“…That study, however, did not focus on the access of news through social media, which is an increasingly common way of accessing news, and the main way of accessing digital news in Colombia. A study analyzing how agenda setting occurs within a networked, social media environment in Spain found that consuming news through Facebook influence individual in how they prioritize issues, but that those individual's perception of important issues was different than what the general public deemed important (Cardenal et al 2019). Similarly, Tremayne (2017) tested for the competing theories of agendas in a networked environment, that of fragmentation versus homogeneity and found support for homogeneity between traditional news media agenda and news media agenda shared on Facebook.…”