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Did Facebook manipulate Occupy Central’s participation?

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If you have scrolled through your Facebook news feed in the past month, it has probably been dominated by content relating to Occupy Central.Is it possible Facebook tweaked its news feed algorithms such that more Occupy Central posts showed up in the news feeds of Hongkongers?In the past, Facebook has manipulated its algorithm to see how users would respond.In June, scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), published the paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks”.It showcased the results of a 2012 emotional manipulation study conducted by the paper’s authors – Facebook’s data scientist Adam Kramer and Cornell University researchers Jamie Guillory and Jeffrey Hancock – on 689,003 Facebook users.In the study, Facebook reduced the amount of positive or negative posts in the users’ news feeds.“When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred,” the authors of the paper wrote.“These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”On 2 October, Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer wrote in a blog post that Facebook was unprepared for the reaction to the publication of the paper.“It is clear now that there are things we should have done differently. For example, we should have considered other non-experimental ways to do this research,” he wrote.“Over the past three months, we’ve taken a close look at the way we do research. We are introducing a new framework that covers both internal work and research that might be published.”A digital consultant in Hong Kong believes there are reasons to be suspicious.“Facebook has a history of controlling what you can and cannot see. It said it would show more news in your news feed and Occupy Central counts as news,” he says.In response to a query about whether Facebook manipulated its algorithm to show more Occupy Central posts in Hong Kong users’ news feeds than usual, a Facebook spokesperson said: “This claim is absurd and completely unfounded.“News feed shows stories based on the people and things you’re connected to and it would be inaccurate and misleading to suggest we had updated news feed to prioritise the content you mentioned.”Tweaking the algorithm may not be necessary after allDigital marketers and social media experts who spoke to Marketing on the topic believe Facebook does not need to tweak its algorithm – Occupy Central would still take up the top spots in our news feeds anyway.“I think it’s insane to think that somebody in a foreign country could create radical change in another with Facebook posts,” says Jay Oatway, an independent digital marketing consultant.He points out Facebook’s algorithm is already designed to try and show individual users what is most relevant and interesting to them.“If you are using Facebook a lot, clicking, liking or commenting on Occupy Central posts and they are coming from someone located geographically near you or your friends, they become signals processed by Facebook’s algorithm. Facebook doesn’t need to flip any switches – the algorithm already does what it is designed to do.”Also pointing to the fact that Facebook’s algorithm is centred around relevance to the user, Henry Wood, the Greater China digital lead at Waggener Edstrom Communications, believes manipulation of the algorithm is unnecessary.“Facebook certainly could have manipulated the algorithm either to share a love of democracy or to boost its popularity as a platform, but I don’t think it was necessary.“Occupy Central was and still is a highly relevant, personal and engaging subject in Hong Kong.Another possible cause of Occupy Central posts dominating Hongkongers’ news feeds were the sheer number of videos of the protests uploaded onto Facebook since the government fired tear gas at protesters on 28 September, according to Lleyton Li, manager of intelligence and analytics at CMRS Digital Solutions.“Facebook has been saying that it would like to show more video content to users. The more videos you watch, the more videos will show up in your news feed,” said Li, who oversees a team of analysts monitoring social media platforms, including Facebook.The fact that many brands have stopped most of their Facebook activity, including advertising and marketing campaigns, in light of the Occupy Central protests is another contributing factor to the vast amount of Occupy Central posts in news feeds.“Most brands have stopped their ads and campaigns. Occupy Central is the hottest topic that the whole of Hong Kong cares about right now and there are no other topics competing with it,” Li said.“Combined with this, the lack of activity on the part of brands have helped increase the likelihood of Occupy Central content showing up in Hongkongers’ news feeds.”Could seeing more Occupy Central posts get more people onto the streets?According to the “Occupy Online: Facebook and the Spread of Occupy Wall Street” paper written by University of North Carolina researchers Neal Caren and Sarah Gaby, since the Occupy Wall Street movement began in the US on 17 September, 2011, it has recruited more than 170,000 active Facebook users and accumulated more than 1.4 million likes.By 22 October, more than 1.1 million posts or comments were associated with US-based Occupation pages.“Studies of the role of Facebook in the Occupy Wall Street movement has shown that apart from broadcasting information, Facebook helped the movement recruit new supporters and event organisers,” Li said.“In the short run, it is a recruiting tool and a way of motivating people to pay attention to the movement in the mobilisation process, even if it means that people will not immediately go out onto the streets.”But a few months after Occupy Wall Street ended, even Facebook users usually interested in politics started to pay less attention to the movement. Their Facebook activity in relation to the movement fell back to pre-Occupy Wall Street levels.“This shows that in the long run, this kind of social media attention to the movement is not sustainable,” Li said.According to Li, from 26 September to the time of publication, 100,000 of the more than 123,000 fans of Occupy Central organiser Hong Kong Federation of Students’ Facebook page were new.In the same period, 25,000 of the more than 90,000 fans of the official Facebook page of the movement, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, began following the page.Oatway says influencing people to take action is no easy feat.“Any marketer who has done social media marketing will know it is really hard to use Facebook to influence people to purchase a product,” he says.In contrast, Manfred Wong, who works as a digital marketing manager, believes more Occupy Central posts in people’s news feeds can motivate more people to physically join the protests on the street.“Information shared on Facebook has a definite impact on whether someone reaches the tipping point of deciding to go to the protests or to stay home,” Wong says.He attributes this to the transparency and authenticity of user-generated content on Facebook, unlike traditional media which can be selective and, in some cases, even biased in their reporting.“For example, moments where the police arrested students, or pepper sprayed and unleashed tear gas on unarmed protesters – if you didn’t have a credible source showing you that these things actually happened, you would feel less determined to go to the protests,” Wong says.But for Wong, getting people to hit the streets simply using Facebook is as hard as getting someone to buy your product.“People think independently and, as marketers, we can only approach consumers with information and hope they will buy something based on that extra bit of information,” he says.“It’s the same with socially relevant topics like Occupy Central. People already have their own stance on the movement and the information they take in from Facebook simply helps them develop a more complete understanding of the movement and decide if they want to join in.”Jonathan Nguyen, regional strategy director at Social@Ogilvy in Hong Kong, thinks the impact of Occupy Central’s content on users can go both ways.“If Facebook displayed more posts and imagery that show the government as an oppressive force, through their own research, people would certainly be more upset and presumably more people would be out protesting,” Nguyen said.“On the other hand, if they showed stories about the inconvenience of Occupy Central, then there would be less people protesting.”Is there any objective way to tell whether Facebook has tweaked its algorithm based on what we can see on the front end?“There is no way to see the secret formula of Facebook. If there was a way, it would be bad for us as consumers because then every company with money would try and game the system,” Oatway says.He adds if someone is genuinely disinterested in Occupy Central and has been hiding or not interacting with Occupy Central content in their news feed, the algorithm would read these signals and display less Occupy Central content in that particular user’s news feed.Wood disagrees.“There are certainly benchmark tests one could perform in terms of looking at engagement, quantity and other related metrics to ascertain whether there was a change in the algorithm or whether the results are in line with expectations,” he says.Wong also thinks there are ways of analysing news feeds to uncover clues.For example, you and a friend could take a sample of mutual friends. For each friend, analyse the extent to which his or her posts showed up in your news feed two months ago. Then, review how often you see his or her posts in your news feed during Occupy Central.The more engagements a post receives, such as likes, comments and shares, the more likely it will show up in you and your friend’s news feeds.If it is the case that two months ago, neither of you could see what your mutual friend posted, but during Occupy Central, you can see many posts from him or her about the movement, you can check the posts for levels of engagement.The theory is that if the mutual friend’s posts receive a low level of engagement, such as zero shares and comments or very few likes, then this could suggest that Facebook’s algorithm of relevance has been tweaked.[Image]: Shutterstock

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