ASTRONOMERS HAVE DISCOVERED ANOTHER EARTH

 

It’s big news, set to shock, amaze, and entertain the world.

But unfortunately, it has nothing to do with a second Earth or better with that planet

Earth.

However, since you are now reading, you will almost certainly be interested in this 

research which examined the click and share behavior of social media users who read 

(or not) the content and then share it on social media. We are here on Sci-Tech 

Universe has long noticed that many of our followers will appreciate, share and 

offer a happy opinion on an article, all without ever reading it. We are not alone 

in noticing this. Last April, NPR shared an article on their Facebook page asking 

"Why does America no longer read?". The joke, of course, is that there were no 

articles. They waited to see if their followers would have pondered an opinion 

without clicking on the link and were not disappointed.

We hoped for an opportunity to try it ourselves and this seemed the perfect 

opportunity.

A team of computer scientists from Columbia University and the French National 

Institute examined a dataset of over 2.8 million online news articles shared via 

Twitter. The study found that up to 59 percent of the links shared on Twitter were 

never actually clicked on by that person's followers, suggesting that social media 

users prefer to share content rather than clicking on it and reading it.

"People are more willing to share an article than to read it," said study co-author 

Arnaud Legout in a statement, the Washington Post reports. “This is typical of modern

information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary or summary of 

summaries, without making the effort to investigate. "

This study examines the psychology behind what makes people want to share content. 

Research conducted by the New York Times Customer Insight Group investigated what 

motivates people to share information. Just under half of the people surveyed said 

they shared information on social media to inform people and "enrich" those around 

them. Instead, they found 68 percent of the odds to reinforce and project their image

- in a way, to "define" them

In the words of a participant in the study: "I try to share only information that will
strengthen the image I would like to present: thoughtful, reasoned, kind, interested 
and passionate about certain things".
This also raises the question of whether online media is just a massive "echo chamber"
where we all like only pages and views that reinforce our beliefs and are not 
interested in information for information purposes. Social media site algorithms 
also mean that the individuals or pages you tend to click, like or share - which 
are often the articles or views you agree with - will appear more frequently in your 
feed than news.

As an online media user, you are probably quite aware of this.

So if you are one of the lucky few who managed to click and read this article, we 
congratulate you! Although sorry for the misleading title. In the meantime, have fun 
sharing the article and see who can chair a discussion on Earth 2.0 without ever 
reading it.