The New Personal Influence: How Our Facebook Friends Influence the News We Read

2017/05/23 by Nicolas M. Anspach, Nicolas Anspach · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Media Influence and Politics #Media Studies and Communication #Social Media and Politics

paper · doi:10.1080/10584609.2017.1316329

openalex publication_date 2017/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

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.

Citations

• The Dynamics of Public Attention: Agenda-Setting Theory Meets Big Data
• A New Era of Minimal Effects? The Changing Foundations of Political Communication
• Encountering “Difference” in the Contemporary Public Sphere: The Contribution of the Internet to the Heterogeneity of Political Discussion Networks
• The Strength of Weak Ties
• Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs
• When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions
• Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age

Cited by

• Keep Them Engaged! Investigating the Effects of Self-centered Social Media Communication Style on User Engagement in 12 European Countries
• Media Use, Feelings of Being Devalued, and Democratically Corrosive Sentiment in the US
• Agenda Setting through Social Media: The Importance of Incidental News Exposure and Social Filtering in the Digital Era

Related

• Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media
• Partisan Sharing: Facebook Evidence and Societal Consequences
• Agenda Setting through Social Media: The Importance of Incidental News Exposure and Social Filtering in the Digital Era
• Recommendation Algorithms on Social Media: Unseen Drivers of Political Opinion
• Understanding Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles: The Impact of Social Media on Diversification and Partisan Shifts in News Consumption