As leaks of internal reports from Facebook and Instagram in recent months have made even more obvious, the processes whereby social media sites algorithmically determine the content in users’ feeds can have a tremendous impact on both the nature of content consumed and users’ experience with the site. In the same way that editorial decisions about what stories to publish and how to promote them allow traditional media outlets to influence the creation of narratives, newsfeed algorithms also play a powerful role in shaping the framing of major topics in the news. Newsfeed algorithms, or at the very least the humans who develop them, absolutely have the potential to influence what everybody knows everybody knows about our world.
Usually this influence is hidden, even if its effects are plain. In some cases, however, the desire to frame a topic in a certain way (and to drive engagement, of course) is too important to leave to the computers. For this…
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