[Infowarrior] - BuzzFeed Tries to Break Readers Out of Their Social-Media Bubbles

[Richard Forno]

BuzzFeed Tries to Break Readers Out of Their Social-Media Bubbles

BuzzFeed News, attempting to address a problem media companies have grappled with since the presidential election, introduced a feature to help readers see what people outside their social-media networks are saying about the news.

The idea is an attempt to get readers to understand -- or even acknowledge the existence of -- the viewpoints of people who don’t think like them. BuzzFeed’s “Outside Your Bubble” feature will appear at the bottom of its widely-shared articles. A BuzzFeed staffer will curate different opinions from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs and elsewhere with help from data tools, Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith said in an interview.

“We’re all living in filter bubbles, on social media in particular,” Smith said. “Anybody who works in news has spent the last year watching how social media affects people’s views of the world and can close you off to dissenting views.”

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-17/buzzfeed-tries-way-to-break-readers-out-of-social-media-bubbles