On fully eight of the nine measures, “polarization increases more for the old than the young.” If Facebook is the problem, then how come the problem is worst among those who don’t use Facebook? ... polarization is accelerating fastest among those using the internet the least... social media is important. It’s just not the whole picture... two mai…

The websites Liberal Society and Conservative 101 appear to be total opposites... published stories that were almost exactly the same, save for a few notable word changes... These for-the-cause sites that appeal to hardcore partisans are in fact owned by the same Florida company... all it takes to turn a liberal partisan story into a conservative…

author of The Content Trap and professor at Harvard Business School, talks about the strategic challenges facing digital businesses, and explains how he and his colleagues wrestled with them when designing HBX, the school’s online learning platform... success for the best companies does not come from making the best content, it comes from recogniz…

we lost what was Good about the early web, and ceded it all to the platforms.

20.1 million Facebook engagements on the 10,818 articles... a huge 68% jump in engagements from November 2015... the Post produced more articles... what’s really changed is the average Facebook engagement rate ... from 1,092 Facebook engagements per post in 2015 to 1,293 ... Fostering organic engagement on Facebook. Writing descriptive headlines …

... fears about how changing technology is affecting the quality of information and the state of our democracy. ... heated debate about the role and size of tech platforms and the extent to which their activities should be regulated. Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over from mobile as the hottest topic in technology...Expect widespread innovati…

An average post in the private subscribers group ... attracts about twice the number of comments ...

what more than 12,000 people[i] told us about comment sections on 20 different news sites.... 81% ... would like it if journalists clarified factual questions in the comment section... 73% ... would like it if experts on the topic of the article responded... 58%, would like it if journalists actively contributed to comment sections...

the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet... doesn’t serve people... it’s not designed to... “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result…

The privations of the past decade and a half have unleashed nothing if not a stream of flimsy would-be innovations... as a public service, we offer this starter list of Media-Innovation-Don’ts.

Americans almost always think that the year coming to a close is the worst... Many misunderstand how the world is changing or ignore positive change... Surveys from long before 2016 — the era before the world turned “post-factual” — show the same levels of ignorance. .. There are several reasons for this...structure of the media means negative sub…

THE WASHINGTON POST on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system...media reactions... were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations ... It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” ... The level of groupthink, fearmongering, coercive p…

many consumers perceive them as scams because they don’t understand that the message/post is actually paid for by the brand... the buyer feels betrayed. This reflects poorly not only on the brand but the publisher as well... The only technique ... is marking native ads. However, due to the very nature of these units, the ‘markings’ are very subtl…

... no one has direct access to reality. The real world is nearly impossible to see in this maelstrom ... because human minds need to “construct” their own version of reality — and each of us does this within a community of shared experiences and beliefs... there are many social worlds and each is built on its own version of what is real and true.…

the idea that fake news was central to the outcome of the campaign has little basis in fact... it’s mostly likely to be shared by people who have already bought into a partisan or ideological worldview... Clinton’s campaign ... problem was ... coverage that dwelled overwhelmingly on a bullshit email server scandal, devoted far fewer resources to…

Broadsides against fake news amount to a rearguard action from an industry fending off competitors who don’t play by the same rules... an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is an historical anomaly... Fake news is but one symptom of that shift back to historical norms... Just as Watergate gave the media a bright stor…

fake news wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t fall for it and share it. Unless we understand the psychology of online news consumption, we won’t be able to find a cure... online news readers don’t ... care about the importance of journalistic sourcing ... “professional gatekeeping.”... I mocked up a news site and showed four groups of partici…

Most people in the news industry hate comments.... yet audience engagement ... is so worth the investment ... trust in media and journalists has sunk to a new low. Talking to each other can help build relationships and therefore trust. What business leader out there doesn’t want to earn more per user? And what journalist doesn’t want to have the b…

For a term that is suddenly everywhere, “fake news” is fairly slippery... government propaganda designed to look like independent journalism... any old made-up bullshit ... a hoax meant to make a larger point... only ... when it shows up on a platform like Facebook as legitimate news? What about conspiracy theorists ... satire intended to entertai…

We have ideas for sponsored Codas, that are of interest to specific groups.

Do we really want to set up Facebook or Google as censors ... to decide what is real and fake, true and false?

Seven years ago I started working full time at the Guardian in the glamorous role of SEO editorial executive. ... very like being in the Matrix but with less kung fu and more Polly Toynbee and Nigel Farage... here are a few of the things I’ve learned…

Today, the newsletter is a petri dish, where audience-development teams tinker .... Publishers that treated email as its own animal saw benefits including massive boosts in traffic and upticks in digital subscribers... subscribers are disproportionately loyal ... an ideal group to test ideas on

If you’re shocked, as I am, by the Presidential election result, you live in a bubble...Your job now is to step outside of whatever bubble you live in and educate yourself... Paying for news — investing in quality journalism and a free and open press — is what allows us to maintain our democracy. It’s not a coincidence that despots like censorship…

I’ve read dozens of journalism postmortems and tweets lamenting how and why journalists got it wrong last week. Here’s a short, probably-not-comprehensive summary:... Among the 30 survey questions sent to journalists: What's your biggest blind spot? The first answer was: “Groupthink. We draw from a limited pool of people who generally have a simi…

information bubbles didn’t burst on 8 November, but ... mainstream media and polling systems underestimated the power of alt-right news sources and smaller conservative sites that largely rely on Facebook to reach an audience... fake news is not a uniquely Republican problem... What is ... is the validation given to fake news by the now president-…

Breitbart News Network is expanding its U.S. operations and launching sites in Germany and France... as it seeks to monetize the anger and anti-immigrant sentiment unleashed by Donald Trump’... Milo Yiannopoulos is ... explore launching a new television show... an opening to tap ... a wave of American populism similar to forces driving Britain …

many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 81 percent of respondents said that partisans not only differed about policies, but also about “basic facts.”... if you study the dynamics of how information moves online today, pretty much everything conspires against truth... when confron…

Two convergent trends are making populism a potent negative force. First, democracies have morphed into unrepresentative plutocracies that lead growing numbers of people to feel shut out and voiceless... Media ... business model is now based on social media and clicks, not facts. Clicks depend on theatrical performance, stunts, celebrity, ent…

Segregated social universes, an industry moving from red states to the coasts, and mass media’s revenue decline: The disconnect between two realities shows no sign of abating... American political discourse in 2016 seemed to be running on two self-contained, never-overlapping sets of information... today’s media ecosystem encourage that separatio…