Let’s state two things first: More and more people are relying on headlines to get all the information. According to this Forbes Article “A recent study confirmed this phenomenon isn’t in our heads; in fact, 59 percent of all links shared on social networks aren’t actually clicked on at all, implying the majority of article shares aren’t based on actual reading”
This DataIsBeautiful post shows over 98% of reddit users do not post or comment, which means a lot of people will not click on the article or even look at comments that converse what the article is about. More and more users on the internet rely on headlines, and that’s a problem.
Time to get to the juicy shit. I proceeded to sort by top articles the past month on the largest political forum on reddit, r/politics . I proceeded to see just how diverse this month’s source material has been.
NOTE: I only counted posts that made it to the double digits with upvotes, mostly because I would be here all f*cking year and it backs up evidence of botting for upvotes. As well, errors are highly likely as looking through a list uncoordinated makes it hard to count.
The Hill: 26
NewsWeek: 18
The Independent: 16
The Daily Beast: 15
Common Dreams: 13
Washington Post: 12
Esquire: 10
Outlets with 8: Business Insider, NYT, Huffington Post, MSNBC
Outlets with 7: CNN. Slate, Salon
Mother Jones: 6
Outlets with 5: ABC, Think Progress, NY Magazine
Outlets with 4: Rolling Stone, NY Daily News, Axios, Talking Points Memo
Outlets with 3: Law and Crime, Vox, Vice, LA Times, Politico, USA Today, NY Post, Washington Monthly
Outlets with 2: GQ, Washington Examiner, Washington Monthly, Vanity Fair, Yahoo, The Guardian, CBS, Associated Press, Buzzfeed News
Outlets with 1: Truthout, Time, Fox News, NBC, Dallas News, Oregon Live, Above the Law, Mic, Hollywood Reporter, AZ Central, Salt Lake Tribune, NPR, The Atlantic, Market Watch, KNOE 8 News, Houston Chronicle, YouGov, Bloomberg, LGBTQ Nation, Mercury News, Teen Vogue, PEW Research, Five Thirty Eight, The Nation, Boston Globe, The Globe
Looking at evidence. It’s clear certain sources are favored upon or upvotded more compared to other ones. As well, companies struggling financially like CNN, Vox, and Vice lack the ability to probably use resources to help get on top of reddit.
If you do not think botting is possible, leas look no further than this video done by Point where they got to front pages of places like videos for less than $200. Prepare for extreme astro-turfing by politicians for the next year as political discourse gets even worse in America. Headline readers will continue to get worse as the media continues to try and fight for the front page of the number 6 website on the planet.