Your Friend as Editor: The Shift to the Personalized Social News Stream

This study examines the impact of social media spaces on news consumption, based on an online survey of 1,600 Canadians. News organizations are rushing into social media, viewing services like Facebook and Twitter as opportunities to market and distribute content. But there has been little research outside of the US into the effect of social media on news consumption. Our study found that social networks are becoming a significant source of news for Canadians. Two-fifths of social networking users said they get news from people they follow on services like Facebook, while a fifth get news from news organizations and individual journalists they follow. Users said they valued social media because it helped them keep up with events and exposed them to a wider range news and information. While the dissemination of news through social interaction has always played a role in the diffusion of media, our study contributes to a growing body of work that suggests social media is becoming central to the way people experience the news. Networked digital media technologies are extending the ability of news consumers to both create and receive personalized social news streams. Investigating how networked publics are reframing the news and shaping news flows would contribute to our understanding of the evolving relationship between the journalist and the audience.