1. Updating the discourse: practices of political
news production and consumption on the
Facebook news feed
Linda Huber
Sarah Lawrence College
@_puellaludens

2. • A Lessig-inspired
analysis of the
Facebook newsfeed
during the 2012
presidential elections
• Caveat: most analysis
is of my own Facebook
newsfeed, and brief
access I was granted to
3 other accounts. Make
no claims to complete
representation; would
be interested to hear
about different
experiences.

3. Main Questions:
• Challenging tropes about social media as a
literally revolutionary political tool
• What is the revolutionary potential of this
tool in the context of highly controlled
mainstream/traditional media? IE-
Presidential Elections.
• How does the FB newsfeed contrast with the
traditional news media as a tool to influence
civic awareness/engagement/participation?

4. Site of Study:
• In particular, focused on the Newsfeed;
complex community on Facebook, wide array
of practices, but how does the central hub of
Facebook function as a general political
apparatus?
• Most direct parallel to traditional media? A
“stream” of news, largely passively read and
occasionally contributed to. Different from
Groups, personal profiles, etc.

5. Norms:
• Unlike Twitter, FB is largely a network of
personal relations. Content posted here is
highly personal, and most intimately
connected with everyday lives.
• A recent study explored the patterns of
content posted on Facebook, and found that
sports, art, and entertainment were the
dominating topic, making up 40% of all
posts. Current events made of 15%, and
politics just 9% (Baresch, 2011).
• Expectation that Facebook provides a kind
of “asylum” from the stresses of the “real
world” (Relate to water-cooler metaphor).

6. Norms:
• Social taboo against posting about politics; a
continuation of the age-old rule to avoid
speaking about sex, religion, or politics in
“public” settings.
• In particular, taboo against posting about the
elections.
• Likely attributable to A) Inundation in the
traditional media B) Horse-race framing of the
elections emphasizes conflict, rather than
issues-based dialogue.
• Two acceptable forms of political post:
cynicism and humor/ meta-commentary.

8. Cynicism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Vh8ntzGBQio
“How to block Annoying political
posts on Facebook”
http://lifehacker.com/5940319/how-to-b

9. Architecture:
• Architecture is a modality that directly
controls behavior through the “Code” or site
architecture.
• Facebook’s architecture disrupts the
structure of the water-cooler conversation,
allowing for a kind of bypassing of social
norms.

10. Posting on Facebook Similarly, the audience of
newsfeed largely blind; the Facebook newsfeed
awareness of audience is are voyeurs, and do not
not immediate in the way need to respond, or reveal
that it is in a direct that they may even be
message or smaller group, listening. This helps to de-
or in face-to-face contact. politicize the act of
Much less confrontational listening.
setting for political
speech.

11. Architecture:
• Also allows for a
hyper-linking of
authority;
individual political
statements are
supported by the
authority of a
direct link to
trusted media
•Double effect of mutually reinforcing the personal
sources.
relevance of news media by putting news stories in a
social context, potentially making readers more
interested in content thus endorsed by “Friends”
•Hyperlinked authority offers the potential of more
grounded political discourse by linking the authority
of news media with the deeper engagement of social

12. Norms/Architecture:
• In a massive study, we see clearly the influence
architecture of FB exerts over social norms and
even political mobilization
Bond, Robert M., et al. "A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political
mobilization." (2012).
LINK: http://www.uvm.edu/~cmplxsys/newsevents/pdfs/2012/bond-nature-voting-2012.pdf

14. ArchitecturE:
• YET- Hyperlinked authority still relies on the
authority of mainstream media, thus
undermining the potential of “alternative”
discourses, perhaps even contributes to
media control of the political discourse.
• The structure of FB may mimic the current
political landscape in that agreement is
largely silent, and disagreement is what
becomes hyper-visible. (Feeding back into
taboo of political posting).

15. Conclusion:
• Despite some potential of Facebook’s architecture to
A) disrupt social taboos and B) reinforce political
content by combining authoritative media sources with
the authority of strong social ties, evidence seemed to
suggest that in the case of the 2012 elections,
practices of political new production and consumption
were still largely exemplified by cynicism and
disengagement.
• The revolutionary potential of any technology requires
a certain culture of practice, and a certain kind of
political and media environment. The technology itself
is not deterministic!
• Looking forward: How can social media help to
cultivate a culture of political engagement and
alternative dialogue in the highly conservative system
of the U.S. political landscape?