Getting Diversity in Your Facebook Feed

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By: Jessica Cherok

Turns out, your Facebook News Feed is more diverse than you may realize. At least, according to Facebook it is.

Last week, Facebook released a study that “quantifies for the first time exactly how much ideologically diverse news and information individuals are exposed to on social media.” The study found that whole most people’s News Feeds were fairly aligned with their personal views, most people have Facebook friends that have different or opposing views which also populate the feed.

According to the study:

On average 23% of people’s friends claim an opposing political ideology
Of the hard news content that people’s friends share, 29.5% of it cuts across ideological lines
When it comes to what people see in the News Feed, 28.9% of the hard news encountered cuts across ideological lines, on average
24.9% of the hard news content that people actually clicked on cuts across ideological lines

“The diversity of content people encounter depends not only on who their friends are, but also what information those friends share, and the interaction between people and Facebook's News Feed. News Feed shows you all of the content shared by your friends, but the most relevant content is shown first. Exactly what stories people click on depends on how often they use Facebook, how far down they scroll in the News Feed, and the choices they make about what to read.”

Similarly, when you filter out posts you don’t want to see, Facebook tailors your News Feed to weed out other posts that you probably wouldn’t like.