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What Twitter Wants You to See



The takeover of social media has provided people with more ways to view news than ever before. Social media apps are often the preferred source of news for many people because of their simplicity and convenience. When opening Twitter, all I have to do is click the 'news' tab at the top of my screen and am instantly taken to a page with countless stories on the latest scoops from around the world. Knowing that Twitter has the say in what news they show to their audience, what exactly is the 'latest' according to them? The first story I saw when looking at the 'news' tab on Twitter was relating to a testimony that Donald Trump and his family were soon to give after an investigation. This story takes up more space than any other on the screen and lies at the very top. Looking further, most of the stories I came across had negative headlines such as "Super-mosquito could drive malaria surge across Africa's megacities." Seeing the majority of headlines being negative, I began to question how Twitter determines what they should show their audience and what they should not. Could they be making these headlines frightening or negative in order to get quick clicks? After all, as the old saying goes: "If it bleeds, it leads."


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