Start Date

16-8-2018 12:00 AM

Description

This paper provides empirical evidence for demand-driven media bias. Social media allows mass media professionals to first discover what readers want to read and then please these readers with news articles tailored to reader’s desires. To study this phenomenon, a large Chinese dataset involving 4.27 million pieces of stock news and with 43.17 million stock-related microblogs that span two years was examined. Specifically, social media facilitates the generation of homogenous reader beliefs. It also provides a tool to monitor reader beliefs and to help publishers to slant the news items to cater to the readers’ aggregate beliefs. \

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Aug 16th, 12:00 AM

Be Careful What You Read – Evidence of Demand-driven Media Bias

This paper provides empirical evidence for demand-driven media bias. Social media allows mass media professionals to first discover what readers want to read and then please these readers with news articles tailored to reader’s desires. To study this phenomenon, a large Chinese dataset involving 4.27 million pieces of stock news and with 43.17 million stock-related microblogs that span two years was examined. Specifically, social media facilitates the generation of homogenous reader beliefs. It also provides a tool to monitor reader beliefs and to help publishers to slant the news items to cater to the readers’ aggregate beliefs. \