Overview: Content Strategy

When changing their Newsfeed algorithm, Facebook's tests found "a dramatic impact on the reach of right-wing “junk sites,”... [by] January 2018 a second iteration dialed up the harm to progressive-leaning news organizations instead... Mother Jones was singled out as one that would suffer... Daily Wire was identified as one that would be…

"Falun Gong-backed newspaper used aggressive Facebook tactics and misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire" - from a "low-budget newspaper ... handed out free on New York street corners" to "one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers... a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation"…

This edition’s 9 articles span the real meaning of “foreign meddling” and domestic flashpoints, social media platform preparations for Election Night and beyond, and how media has to go beyond factchecking as it tackles “pink slime” (yes, it’s a thing).

for manipulating public opinion... automation and artificial intelligence “can quickly generate traffic and publicity much faster than people.”...If disinformation in 2016 was characterized by Macedonian spammers... Russian trolls... 2020 is shaping up to be the year communications pros for hire provide sophisticated online propaganda operations .…

a major new Yale University study finds that fact-checking and then tagging inaccurate news stories on social media doesn’t work... “disputed” tags made participants just 3.7 percentage points more likely to correctly judge headlines as false... Trump supporters and adults under 26... could actually end up increasing the likelihood that users wil…

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

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-…

“So far, the growth around online video news seems to be largely driven by technology, platforms, and publishers rather than by strong consumer demand,”

One small tag for Facebook, one giant disaster for your favorite publishers... For publishers sharing native ads ... have to tag the brand in the post... that brand’s marketing team gets access to the post’s insights... allow savvy marketers to calculate just how big a margin publishers are taking on these campaigns — and potentially walk away fe…

Since Facebook made its livestreaming feature widely available earlier this year, publishers have been experimenting with on-the-spot video in a variety of ways... we are starting a series of in-depth articles chronicling their experiments IBTimes UK has been working on three different live video formats: Q&As; with columnists and reporters, panel…

“I am actively searching through Facebook for people celebrating the Brexit leave victory,” ... to no avail. He called on his friends in the technology industry to act on this ‘echo-chamber problem’.... Why are they making the demand of social media companies — and not news organisations?...how we see technology now: both as something separate fro…

The Atlantic expects native campaigns to drive 70 percent of its ad revenue this year, up from 60 percent in 2015... the NYTimes’ branded content division, T Brand Studio, now includes 70 staffers and will “deliver more than $50 million in revenue this year,” up from an estimated $35 million in 2014

This isn’t the first time I’ve covered the impact of social media on news; technologies like augmented reality; and the impact of both on society. It is the first time these Top3ics have meshed so perfectly in one month.

Facebook is not a friend of journalism.. Yes, Instant Articles are sexy and monetisable... a hugely important route to readers, but the more dependent we get on them, the more they’ll be able to charge us to access that audience... Facebook is seeing an alarming (to them) drop in sharing of personal information...we’ll see Facebook start to turn d…

Media companies are ‘broadcasting’ pre-recorded clips use the social network’s new feature... does not recommend streaming pre-recorded content... a strength of the feature is the ability for on-camera hosts to interact with viewers in real time... After they are streamed, Facebook Live videos function as normal Facebook videos.

Axel Springer, wary of being overly dependent on third-party platforms for traffic... fighting back by launching its own news aggregator platform... now has around 1,200 publishers on board ... Digiday spoke with Würtenberger, CEO of Upday, about using humans and algorithms for news sourcing, creating a platform for publishers and banning ad block…

Facebook’s Notes feature is giving The Boston Globe another way to post directly to the Facebook platform... Notes, an early Facebook staple, stagnated for years until last September, when Facebook updated the feature with a cleaner, more customizable design and editing tool reminiscent of Medium. Unlike video posted directly to Facebook, there’s…

For journalists, Facebook Live “is a really new way for them to connect,” says Facebook product manager Vadim Lavrusik. “The magic of Live is it's interactive. The people who are viewing the broadcast are just as much a part of it.”

One of the best longreads re: the future of news media I've read in a while: "Websites... have been able to accumulate enormous audiences with incredible speed by harvesting referrals from social networks... Websites plausibly marketed these people as members of their audiences, rather than temporarily diverted members of a platform’s audience.…

"Now we in journalism get to stand back and see technology titans jump over each other to bring benefits to news. But we’d best not stand back too far. We journalists and publishers must collaborate with the platforms as we demand that they collaborate with us. And as they teach us about technology, we must teach them about journalism." - Playi…

"Facebook is ... aiming to be the Internet equivalent of a broadband provider — providing the means by which all media is published and accessed. Here’s what brands and publishers need to know ... - Facebook urging publishers to post their articles and videos directly to Facebook... - For publishers that use Facebook for their comments sections,…

"Facebook say that the more time users spend at its site, the more likely there will be a robust exchange of diverse viewpoints and ideas shared online. Others fear that users will create their own echo chambers, and filter out coverage they do not agree with. ... [that] “is when you get conspiracy theories.” - How Facebook Is Changing the Way It…

As I mentioned in my previous post, the past couple of years have seen a lot of innovation in online content strategy, coupled with growing disenchantment with "Big Internet".