Wall Street Journal demonstrates propaganda usage on Facebook
The WSJ takes a look at how Facebook classifies users as either liberal or conservative, and then, how this yields either liberal or conservative perspectives (social media propaganda posters) within one’s news feed.
This demonstrates the thesis of this blog – that social media has become the world’s most effective propaganda operation:
See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side
Source: Blue Feed, Red Feed
Update: I noticed that I mostly see left-wing propaganda posters in my news feed timeline. I assumed this was because the left-wing has better propagandists. However, an alternate explanation is that Facebook believes me to be left-wing and therefore drives more left-wing propaganda posters to my news feed. For the record, I do not belong to any political party (see the about page for more info) and do not support either major political party.
3 thoughts on “Wall Street Journal demonstrates propaganda usage on Facebook”
Dale Walker liked this on Facebook.
Wow, time to find other ways to get the info I do need. The link was incredible showing conservative and liberal feeds.
I suspect FB has some “issues” to work out on this topic, although some of what the WSJ shows may be inherent to how social media itself works, self selection, and FB’s attempt to “optimize your news feed” to present what FB thinks you want to see.
About 10 days ago I chose to significantly cut back my use of FB. I will primarily access 2 groups I support (one on software). I may from time to time check into specific groups (photography, hovercraft, aviation) but I am no longer following the daily newsfeed of posts that is the primary landing spot for FB users. Partly I decided it is not a good use of my time, and partly, based on my research vis a vis my Occupy Propaganda web site, I find FB is effectively turning many people into dummies due to the power of propaganda persuasion!
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