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The New Personal Influence: How Our Facebook Friends Influence the News We Read
Abstract
Has the introduction of social media into the information landscape changed the heuristics individuals use when selecting news? Social media allow users to easily share and endorse political content. These features facilitate personal influence, possibly increasing the salience of partisan information, making users more likely to read endorsed content. To test this possibility, I utilize snowball sampling to conduct a survey experiment featuring mock Facebook News Feeds. These feeds contain different levels of social media activity attributed to different sources, varying from fictional individuals to subjects’ own friends and family members. I find that online endorsements and discussions serve as heuristics when deciding which content to consume, outweighing partisan selectivity. This effect is only significant when the activity comes from friends or family members, as social influence attributed to fictional individuals has no effect on information selectivity.
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“online and social media users consume a particularly diverse news diet (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2018;Anspach, 2017)”
From Filter bubble (2019) · cites this paper as Anspach, 2017
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Metadata
- Authors
- Anspach, N. M.
- Affiliations
- York College of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Anspach, Nicolas M.
- ORCID
- Anspach, Nicolas M.
- Venue
- Political Communication
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-05-23
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 590-606
- ISSN
- 1058-4609 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-7675
- OpenAlex
- W2618838623
- Cited by
- 289
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 49 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 30 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 62.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Political Communication (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Keywords
- personal influence, social media, news selection, Facebook, political information, social influence, news consumption, snowball sampling
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