Credit: https://www.pingdom.com/blog/traffic-trends-for-digg-vs-nine-other-social-news-sites/
Social news sites are increasingly becoming a strong news source and designed to cater to those who want a personalized news experience. Reddit and Digg, the top two most popular social news sites (Weinberg, 2009), have a smart, community of users covering a wide, variety of news. Generally, they offer a platform for online communities to share links, texts, videos and images, and have discussions about news posts, to learn about what’s going in the world. Site content is “mediated not by propriety algorithm, but by user upvotes and downvotes” (Gibeault, 2016, p.206).
Engaging and empowering individuals to become “efficient content distributors” (Weeks & Holbert, 2013, p. 213) online and engage in discourse epitomise van Dijck et. al.’s (2018) notion of a ‘platform society’ where social networking platforms have penetrated the hearts of societies”(p.2). Thus, social news sites are quickly emerging as prominent outlets for news engagement, with the output of content and its dissemination in the hands of its consumers, related to their unique interests.
Prioritising on a building a ‘community’ and valuing its content, users are to ensure quality in their contributions or face downvotes. The ease with social media consumers can share information with others sets it apart from the one-way, top-down, sender-driven, time-specific activity of traditional mass communication experience. With social news sites, users “maintain more control over their information environment” (Weeks & Holbert, 2013, p.214). Consumers can now effectively participate by selecting the content they wish to consume at a time that is convenient to them, and also quickly disseminate news to numerous others.
With the rapid expansion of user traffic in social news sites, it has also become a popular and reliable platform for newsmakers to use it as an effective branding tool. Kümpel (2015) acquiesces that online news sites increasingly rely on referrals to improve their website traffic, article news and ultimately, economic success (p.1).
Viewed from the platform of library pedagogy, the popularity of social news sites provide huge potential for information literacy instruction. Students can explore how online communities work, explore the nature of popular resources and style of discourse. Teacher librarians are able to foster students’ self-reflection about critically analysing information and develop class discussions on resource selection (Gibeault, 2016, p.2015). A great avenue for exploration and experimentation for learning and corporate organisations.
Nevertheless, an inclination towards developing or propagating partisanship, especially in the field of politics appears inevitable. The increased participants of journalists and news organisations on these sites (Weeks & Holbert, 2013, p. 226) corelates to higher chances of reception and dissemination of political beliefs or propagandist theories. An acute sense of responsibility and netiquette are required of its consumers.
If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade in digital innovation, sharing news may be among the most important of the next (Weeks & Holbert, 2013, p.213). The fundamental need for developing young learners to become critical thinkers and disseminators of information has become more urgent and relevant through the growing presence of these social news sites.
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References:
Gibeault, M. J. (2016). Embracing Geek Culture in Undergraduate Library Instruction: The TIL Subreddit for Resource Evaluation and Qualitative Assessment. Reference Librarian, 57(3), 205–212.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/02763877.2015.1132182
Kümpel, A. S., Karnowski, V., & Keyling, T. (2015). News Sharing in Social Media: A Review of Current Research on News Sharing Users, Content, and Networks. Social Media + Society, 1 (2), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115610141
van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & de Waal, M. (2018). The Platform Society. Oxford University Press.
Weeks, B. E., & Holbert, R. L. (2013). Predicting dissemination of news content in social media: A focus on reception, friending, and partisanship. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(2), 212-232.
Weinberg, T. (2009). The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Incorporated.