Does Social Media Want You to be Scared?

Oxford Languages defines news as "newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events." Since I see most of my news through social media, I wanted to take a look at specific platforms' news with that definition in mind. What information do these social media platforms consider as "noteworthy" and "important"? Clicking the 'news' tab on Reddit presented me with a wide variety of stories. While scrolling, I found a story about a man who died from a punch to the head, one about the renewal of a television show, and one about a joke celebrity Jonah Hill made regarding his engagement. The 'news' tab on Reddit is quite varied and seems to be arranged by how many upvotes it has.

Twitter presented me with quite a different collection of stories. The first and largest story under Twitter's 'news' tab was about Donald Trump and an upcoming testimony from him and his family. Two stories below that talked about the Russia and Ukraine conflict. A headline about bomber jets being spotted in the UK was only a couple of headlines below that. I wondered why, compared to Reddit, Twitter had many more headlines that contained fear and/or negativity. Why are the stories that Reddit considers relevant so different from Twitter's latest news?

Unlike Reddit, there is no way to determine how news stories find their way to the top of the 'news' tab on Twitter. You can't see how many likes or retweets a top news story on Twitter has because each story contains additional articles and tweets within it. So, if it's not popularity that gets a Twitter story trending, what is it? I think the answer is fear. A front page story with a title that says "Russia's plans to invade the US" will draw in many more people than a title that says "Local Mayor Gives Clothes to Children in Need." Fear is a tool that people can use to manipulate others for their own benefit. Is it out of the realm of possibility to say that popular news and social media platforms do the same thing?

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