Social media’s breaking news: the logic of automation in Facebook Trending Topics and Twitter Moments

Abstract

This article draws on van Dijck and Poell’s framework of social media logic to examine two platform news functionalities: Facebook Trending Topics and Twitter Moments. It uses the walkthrough method to investigate their technical features while also examining how they fit into platforms’ economic interests and regulatory processes. While the framework of social media logic enables the identification of platforms’ influential elements – programmability, popularity, connectivity and datafication – embedded in news functionalities, a fifth element becomes apparent. The logic of automation naturalises these elements into processes of news distribution through claims that platform news functionalities are free from human intervention. By perpetuating the logic of automation, platforms position themselves as neutral conduits of news information. Expanding the framework of social media logic to include automation enables future analysis of platform developers’ evasion of accountability for shaping social and institutional processes, supported through their claims to produce unbiased automated technologies.

Keywords

algorithms automation Facebook news platform social media Twitter walkthrough

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