Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The purpose of our study was to research people’s media habits when it comes to news consumption\nthrough social media, Facebook in particular, and to try to ascertain if our theory that people today are\nlacking in source criticism skills has any basis in reality.\nOur theory is that social media users who rely solely or primarily on Facebook for news consumption are less likely to compare media coverage between outlets and channels, and validate sources, than consumers of traditional media.\nBroken down into component parts, the main questions we were looking to answer were:\n• To what extent does our population rely on Facebook as a primary or sole source for news and media\ncoverage?\n• In what manner does relying primarily or solely on Facebook for news content influence criticism of\nsources and user acceptance of news content posted directly to their curated feeds?\nThe method we chose was a quantitative study, as we believed that it was more important to begin with\nfinding the frequency of these phenomena before studying the subject on a deeper level. This was done\nthrough an online survey that we had intended to send to certain groups of Swedes within the age range of\n18-36, but due to being unable to find a way to reach this population we were forced to lessen our scope,\nand ended up with a highly limited group of respondents that led to a total of only 122 replies. As a result,\nour conclusions are only relevant for Swedish students of media, journalism and communication sciences.\nBut within that subset, we did not find any conclusive evidence that the theories that we based our study\non are grounded in reality. Also, due to the training and expertise of our population, it is not unlikely that\nthey have a more critical approach to news, especially unsourced reports on social media sites. It also\nseems prudent to assume that they spend more time consuming news than the average person. In\nconclusion, it would seem that students of these sciences have a very balanced and self-aware approach to\nsource control and criticism in social media environments, applying the same or even stricter guidelines.\nWe also believe that our theoretical framework is sound and that the groundwork that we have done is\nsolid, and as such present this thesis in part as a proof of concept with components that would be suited to\nbe used for larger studies within the field in the future.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2273500465