Study Facebook News Today

Were in the final years of a presidency. even some of obama supporters are frustrated, the economy is weak. its not surprising. people who supported romney would still want romney in office. others might wonder would things have been better in but its not a shocking piece of information to hearing that. >> julian, thank you for joining me. >> thank you. my advice to reporters in 2022, dont fall for the poll that says president clinton, bush or paul is the worst. im reading your comments righ...

And the experiment worked. the people who saw more positive news seemed happier in their own facebook posts. facebook sort of apologized this week, but not totally. but the story is so much bigger than that one experiment. im intrigued by the loarger, long-term, can they influence who you vote for or what kind of news you see during a big political decision? joining me to discussing that in austin texas a researcher and associate at the university of texas. and zanev as unc chapel hills. welcome...

This than, for example, how advertisers manipulate emotions? >> i dont think so. there are certainly legitimate concerns. i agree with zeynep, that you hear people talking about manipulating emotions, and it seems like a potential dangerous thing, but you have to remember that advertisers have been doing this kind of thing more or less for decades. when you go to the supermarket, theres a reason why the chocolates are by the checkout and flowers are not. >> but thats not as effective. the advert...

Theres stealth, when you dont know to have your defenses up, thats when youre so vulnerable. this isnt just facebook, this isnt just this study. thats why sort of the internet platforms power to change how we feel is very important. that voting study that brian talked about, thats very important. it was actually a very interesting study. >> for viewers at home, tell me what it found. so the study found that facebook can make people vote. it had different voting message. one was a social message....

Tension that facebook has to come to terms with. theyre in the business of getting money from the advertisers and not from us >> before we do, since weve had a week of public debate, whats the worst possible outcome? whats the best possible outcome? imts i think the worst is people come away thinking this is a problem specifically about facebook and now facebook will address this by tweaking some of the terms and dassa use policy and well forget in a week, and six months later something will hap...

Platforms could throw an election by nudging the right kind of people to go vote in those few swing states. >> is she overstating the situation? >> no, i more or less agree to that. one, there wasnt anything unusual about the study. so in some sense its relieving to see that people werent aware and they do care, but i hope the takeaway message is not, look, facebook is one bad actor, theyll change their terms of use, problem solved. the broader issue is do we need new legislation to protect cons...