This morning I ran a quick experiment. I searched through News.com.au’s site for stories that mention Facebook in the title to see what percentage of those stories had a negative slant. My theory is that large media companies such as News are scared about the amount of traffic Facebook is getting, as it’s decreasing their own readership thereby affecting the revenue they can generate from advertising. So they are running Facebook scare campaigns.
News Corp, of course, has even more reason that other media companies to be hatin’ on the Facebook, because they own MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor.
So – on with the results.
NEGATIVE STORIES
Facebook pedophiles stalk TV star, 11
Police probe students’ Facebook hate group
Spook’s wife in strife over Facebook post
Pupil’s Facebook slur against teacher
Facebook affair behind murder, suicide
Teacher dies after nude Facebook photos
Facebook used to organise Auburn racial riot – police
Nicole Kidman bullied on Facebook
Teenager fired from job via Facebook
Fake police Facebook page fools users
Premier Bligh writes to Facebook boss
Facebook removes kill-a-prostitute page
Teen’s death posted on Facebook first
Parents use Facebook to trap paedophile
Facebook deal forces computer clean-up
Rail bash teen’s mates turn to Facebook
Smiling in a bikini on Facebook costs Canadian woman her insurance
POSITIVE STORIES
Facebook extended to iPhone, iPod Touch
Pure Digital Sensia radio goes on Facebook, Twitter
Orangutan photographer a Facebook hit
Thief nabbed by Facebook detectives
So… out of twenty-one stories, there are FOUR positive stories (19%) and SEVENTEEN negative stories (81%).
The question is – does this show a bias in coverage?
Discuss.
Cameron I’d be interested in the ratio of negative to positive stories regardless of Facebook as a headline. And if you search beyond the headline, it seems to be a popular source for images and commentary in many other stories as well. The death knock has been replaced by the Facebook stalk, voxpops on the street are replaced by tweets and I’m sure the “shared most on Facebook/Twitter” lists on various sites is regularly trawled for an idea of what will become the top news stories. No doubt that News launch not so thinly veiled attacks on anything they see as a threat, but I don’t think Facebook will become their public enemy number one anytime soon
Well you need to know what the ratio is on other similar sites and/or on the net in general to know whether theirs is slanted or not?
It certainly does, so what’s changed, they’ve always shown bias, and so does every other large conglomerate media organization… I guess the main thing here is that we have Cameron Reilly… making sure this information is not overlooked! Cheers CR… keep up the great work!
Mandi, good point about the general negative/positive ratio. I do think, though, that Facebook is attracting a certain amount of attacks, now that it is the #1 internet destination in the USA and soon to be #1 around the world.
Perhaps a comparative search of positive/negative articles on MySpace would also help aid the bias investigation. Does MySpace receive a positive slant or not Cameron? Otherwise keep up the good work!