how does facebook trends affect news...

How does Facebook Trends Affect

News Exposure?

Shin Lee

Advised by Professor Nicholas Diakopoulos

Northwestern University

Mathematical Methods and Social Sciences Thesis

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Acknowledgement

I would like to greatly thank my advisor, Professor Nicholas Diakopoulos for providing

helpful feedback and guidance during my journey producing and writing this thesis. This thesis

would not be where it is today without his wisdom and weekly guidance. I would also like to

thank Professor Joseph Ferrie and Nicole Schneider for being great resources whenever I had

questions or concerns. Lastly, I would like to thank Professor Jeffry Ely for his leadership

overseeing the MMSS program and its students.

Abstract

Facebook has recently been a topic of hot discussion regarding fake news and algorithms

that present bias posts. I wanted to discover whether Facebook is truly posting bias new trends

and whether this may heavily influence the new sources exposure. Using programming and

analytical methods, I investigated personalization by geographic location and demographics in

Facebook’s Trending Topics. I further analyzed the degree of which Facebook personalizes the

news trends per person. I also discover whether Facebook gives priority to certain new sources or

if it gives equal opportunity for all news sources. Lastly, I investigated how often Facebook’s

algorithm updates its news trends and if there were any differences in behavior at different days

of the week. The data collection and analysis were conducted with Python scripts I wrote. My

results show Facebook does not personalize by geo-location and personalizes very slightly by

demographics. Furthermore, my analysis showed Facebook gives more news exposure to liberal

than conservative news sources. Lastly, Facebook’s Trending Topics does not have a consistent

behavior and tends to have a higher number of new cumulative news trends when there is a lot of

news at the time in the world.

I would like to note that this paper goes into detail of basic programming concepts as my

primary audience’s expertise are not in computer science and programming. Another note is that

my advisor plans on furthering my research in the future. Thus, I include some tips for future

development of my thesis throughout this paper.

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I. Introduction

Facebook has received high levels of attention after the Facebook founder and CEO sat in

front of Congress to answer questions about Facebook and the safety of its user following the

Cambridge Analytica scandal1. The Cambridge Analytica scandal began when Facebook allowed

a professor from University of Cambridge to collect information about its users for research

purposes. However, the data which consisted of over 50 million profiles including answers to a

personality test, location, friends list, and “liked” content, was handed over to Cambridge

Analytica, a UK-based political data company that was working on Donald Trump’s campaign2.

It’s clear Facebook has its individual users personalized data, but do they use these data to

present certain types of new trends to its users? Cass Sunstein believes Facebook feeds are “echo

chambers” that only show posts by people who are and think like us3. He claims this hurts our

democracy because Facebook users only read articles that align with their beliefs. As a result,

people become more extreme and when they see people who do not share the same beliefs, they

become enemies who are “crazy”4. Sunstein predicted that Facebook will begin to experiment

with the algorithm that determines which news and posts are presented to its users; and he was

correct. In 2018, Facebook announced they will present “less public content, including videos

and other posts from publishers or businesses” and increase the visibility of local news. Mark

Zuckerberg states local news help us understand issues that affect our lives.5 Thus, it’s apparent

that Facebook algorithms have a significant role on what its users see, and Facebook is currently

making effort to increase news that are relevant to its users. However, when Zuckerberg said he

wanted to increase news that are relevant to its users, will that also increase bias news sources as

Sunstein warned us about?

Algorithm auditing in theory is relatively simple: It is to examine the inputs, outputs, and

outcomes of some problem6. However, in practice, it is a much harder to achieve. The algorithm

is replacing the human involvement of data collection, data analysis, and human input, which

may be faster and more efficient since the human brain has limited computational abilities.

However, it comes with its own struggles such as consistencies, intention behind the algorithm,

unintentional or intentional biases, making sure the algorithm is behaving the way the

programmer expected, and many more. In this thesis, we dive deep into programming and take a

closer look at how Facebook interacts with automatic scraping of its data, the struggles

computationally behind Facebook data collection and analysis, and the process of creating

Python and Selenium scripts to automatically gather large amounts of data.

Up to this point, relevant research has investigated algorithms and the role they play on

reporting and analyzing information and whether an algorithm is accountable and to what

1 Tuesday, For five hours on. “Your Facebook Data Scandal Questions Answered.” CNNMoney, Cable News

Network, 11 Apr. 2018, money.cnn.com/2018/04/11/technology/facebook-questions-data-privacy/index.html. 2 Riley, Charles. “Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and Your Data: Here's What to Know.” CNNMoney, Cable News

Network, 20 Mar. 2018, money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-data-scandal-explainer/index.html?

iid=EL 3 “'#Republic' Author Describes How Social Media Hurts Democracy.” NPR, NPR, 20 Feb. 2017,

www.npr.org/2017/02/20/516292286/-republic-author-describes-how-social-media-hurts-democracy. 4 “'#Republic' Author Describes How Social Media Hurts Democracy.” NPR, NPR, 20 Feb. 2017, 5 Brown, Pete. “Facebook Struggles to Promote 'Meaningful Interactions' for Local Publishers, Data Shows.”

Columbia Journalism Review, 18 Apr. 2018, www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-local-news.php. 6 Rosén, Josefin. “What Every Business Manager Should Know about Algorithm Audits.”SAS Learning Post, 16

Oct. 2017, blogs.sas.com/content/hiddeninsights/2017/10/16/algorithm-audits/.

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degree.7 Other studies have investigated how algorithms on social media are becoming echo

chambers because the algorithms decide what to present to its users8. However, because

Facebook and online personalization is still an innovative concept, there lacks research exploring

if Facebook News Trends are personalized by demographic and geo-location, how often trends

update, and whether Facebook gives favoritism to certain news sources. This paper studies

personalization of Facebook news trends by geolocation and demographic as well as if there is

any favoritism of specific news sources by Facebook. Additionally, it analyzes how often

Facebook updates its news trends. I hypothesize that Facebook News Trends are personalized by

different demographics and geo-location. Furthermore, I hypothesize that Facebook may give

some favoritism to certain news sources that are more liberal than conservative because

Facebook is known be more liberal as a company, but only slight favoritism. Lastly, I

hypothesize that Facebook News Trends will not have a consistent update schedule as news

change depending on what happens around the world.

The data used for my thesis was collected by Python and Selenium scripts that I

developed for this project. There are four categories: Trends, Trends and Tabs, Geo-location, and

Personal vs Puppet. Each category has its set of datasets that were collected in real-time from

Facebook. The data is stored into a database and further processed by algorithms to answer the

following questions:

• How often are trends updating?

• Is there different news trend behavior on the weekend verse the weekday? What

about different days on the weekdays?

• Which news sources does Facebook give more exposure to?

• How many news articles from external news sources does Facebook publish?

• Which news sources does Facebook include in the “Trending” section?

• Do news trends differ depending on geographic location? If so, how?

• Does Facebook personalize news trends by user? More specifically, do news

trends differ depending on the Facebook account?

To my best understanding and knowledge, there are no research that answered the

questions listed above. This paper investigates and answers the questions listed and provides

insight on how the end users experience Facebook’s Trending Topic news.

This paper and is structured as follows: Section II consists of a summary of relevant

research on social media, traditional news, and news sources, Facebook news trends, and recent

Facebook events. Section III presents the methodology on how data was collected, the

technology used, details of the raw datasets, and descriptions of the methods used to analyze the

data. Section IV presents the results; Section V offers the discussion which includes the

limitations and implications of my thesis as well as future research areas. Lastly, Section VI

presents the conclusion.

7 Diakopoulos, Nicholas. “Algorithmic Accountability.” Digital Journalism, vol. 3, no. 3, 2014, pp. 398–415.,

doi:10.1080/21670811.2014.976411. 8 Alvarado, Oscar, and Annika Waern. “Towards Algorithmic Experience.” Proceedings of the 2018 CHI

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '18, 2018, doi:10.1145/3173574.3173860.

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II. Literature Review

The objective of this literature review is to present recent events with Facebook, past

research on Facebook and Twitter news trends, social media and traditional news, and algorithm

auditing.

In May 2016, Gizmodo.com, a design, technology, science, and science fiction website

published an article where several former Facebook employees who worked as “news curators”

claimed that they suppressed conservative news from the Trending news page9. They claimed

they were instructed to “artificially inject” specific stories into the Trending news page.

Sometimes, these artificially injected stories that were not naturally trending, however, were

used in the Trending section anyways.10 This raised concerns because a process that was

assumed to be purely determined by algorithms had bias human involvement. A former

Facebook employee also claimed that news covered by conservative news sources that

Facebook’s algorithm selected would not be included in Trending unless there were more

unbiased news sources that also covered the same story.11 After Gizmodo’s news coverage

gained popularity, on May 9, 2016, the Vice President of Search at Facebook responded on

Facebook stating the following12:

There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and

neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor

do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over

another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending

Topics. Trending Topics is designed to showcase the current conversation happening on

Facebook. Popular topics are first surfaced by an algorithm, then audited by review team

members to confirm that the topics are in fact trending news in the real world and not, for

example, similar-sounding topics or misnomers.

On August 26, 2016, Facebook announced they will be removing human involvement in

writing the Trending topic list’s descriptions13. This meant Facebook’s algorithm will have full

control and whatever it writes will be published before a human looks at it. However, only a few

days after the change, Facebook’s algorithm posted an article about Megyn Kelly on Trending

with a description calling her a “traitor” and that she was kicked out by Fox News for “backing

Hillary”, which she was not14. This fueled Facebook’s controversy of displaying fake news on its

platform. However, there seems to be a conflict regardless of who is behind the decision making

of Trending Topics. When Facebook was using human editors for their Trending, it was accused

of inputting human biases in their decisions. When it removed the human involvement, they were

accused of fake news.

9 Nunez, Michael. “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News.” Gizmodo,

Gizmodo.com, 10 May 2016, gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006. 10 Nunez, Michael. “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News.” 11 Nunez, Michael. “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News.” Gizmodo.com, 12 https://www.facebook.com/tstocky/posts/10100853082337958 13 Ohlheiser, Abby. “Three Days after Removing Human Editors, Facebook Is Already Trending Fake News.” The

Washington Post, WP Company, 29 Aug. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/29/a-

fake-headline-about-megyn-kelly-was-trending-on-facebook/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2d050b7762f3. 14 Ohlheiser, Abby. “Three Days after Removing Human Editors, Facebook Is Already Trending Fake News.

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In January 2018, Facebook announced they will change their algorithm to favor

“authentic” connections between people.15 Furthermore, the new algorithm will devalue posts by

publishers and paid brands. For the users, the quality of user experience is expected to increase.

Advertisement on the News Feed will be more relevant to the user and the quantity of ads will be

fewer. Contents from the user’s social connection will get a boost in exposure and are expected

to be higher on the News Feed list16. However, this change will make advertising on Facebook

more competitive and expensive. Additionally, more advertisements are likely to appear in other

Facebook platforms such as Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

A study by Chakraborty, Messias, and Benevenuto investigated the demographic biases

in crowdsourced recommendations on Twitter’s Trending Topics. News content are selected for

recommendations by how much popularity and activity it gets on the social media’s platform.

Thus, it indirectly gives users the power to promote specific news. This paper studied which

demographics of people influenced which contents were worthy of recommendation and whether

that demographic was a good representative of the platform’s overall population17. The results

showed that a significant percentage of the trends were promoted by demographics that were

drastically different from the overall population18. Further concerns were raised when they

discovered that there were some demographic groups that were under-represented among the

promoters of the trends. Specifically, Black female were the most under-represented

demographic followed by Black male, Asian female, and Asian male; white male was the least

under-represented demographic19. Furthermore, middle-aged demographics were more under-

represented than the younger population. I wanted to further this research and investigate

whether the Trending Topics are different for different demographics. In other words, this study

discovered which demographics influenced certain news to rank in Trending Topics. I would like

to study how the Trending Topics are presented to different demographics. The results from this

study added good insights to my research, as I will be using two different Facebook accounts

when scraping data: an impersonalized sock puppet account and an established account with a

particular demographic.

A 2011 study by Cvijikj and Michahelles investigated trend detection over Facebook

public posts20. They monitored trends by data collection and trend detection. The data collection

process was continuous and in real-time, like the algorithm implemented for my paper. This

study also had many difficulties collecting data from Facebook. I explain in detail about the

difficulty scraping data from Facebook in the Discussion section. This study’s results suggested

that Facebook trending topics should be divided into three categories: disruptive events, popular

topics, and daily routines. However, this study lacked results on how Facebook trends are

personalized by location or account. It also did not present results on how often trends changed

on Facebook’s Trending. Additionally, the study only collected data for 4 consecutive days and

did not consider how Facebook Trends may change on different weeks and on weekends.

15 Göös, Christine. “Blog.” Facebook Advertising Trends 2018, 15 Feb. 2018, www.smartly.io/blog/facebook-

advertising-trends-2018. 16 Göös, Christine. “Blog.” Facebook Advertising Trends 2018 17 Chakraborty, et al. Who Makes Trends? Understanding Demographic Biases in Crowdsourced Recommendations.

1 Apr. 2017, arxiv.org/abs/1704.00139. 18 Chakraborty, et al. Who Makes Trends? Understanding Demographic Biases in Crowdsourced Recommendations. 19 Chakraborty, et al. Who Makes Trends? Understanding Demographic Biases in Crowdsourced Recommendations. 20 Cvijikj, Irena Pletikosa, and Florian Michahelles. “Monitoring Trends on Facebook.” 2011 IEEE Ninth

International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 2011, doi:10.1109/dasc.2011.150.

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A study by Groshek in 2013 compared accomplished traditional news sources’ agendas

(New York Times and CNN) with the most frequency shared news and topics on popular social

media sites (Facebook and Twitter)21. The study showed that the news agendas were similar

between the two traditional news sources and Facebook, but there were variations in terms of

ranking of the news items. The study also showed that social media influenced traditional

media’s agenda for the cultural topic. However, there was no relationship between political and

cultural coverage within the social media platforms. This literature provided valuable

information on the relationship, or the lack there of, between traditional news outlets and social

media trending news. However, it did not answer how different location and/or Facebook

accounts affect the type of news trends a user sees. In fact, it only investigated the news agendas

in terms of categories and lacked the deep analysis of what types of news sources were

presented.

A 2016 study by Kazai, Yusok, and Clarke developed a prototype mobile application that

gave content recommendation by utilizing the user’s location, Facebook and/or Twitter feed, and

her in-app activities22. Their model constructed the user’s personalized feed by mixing different

sources from multiple sources, some directly from their Facebook/Twitter feeds and some

propagated content through her in-app social network. This study was the first to provide

personalized feeds by pulling different sources and recommendations over a crowd curated

content pool. Their algorithm was different from Facebook’s Trending algorithm, but it had a

similar idea because it learned from the user’s activity and what was popular within the user’s

and platform’s network. By utilizing the data collected, they made content recommendations to

their users which they believed would interest the users.

Overall, Facebook research is a recent topic and has recently gained popularity. As a

result, there lacks a plentiful amount of Facebook research and there are only a few past

researches on Facebook Trending Topics and Facebook data scraping. To the best of my

knowledge, there is no existing research that investigate how Facebook Trends different by geo-

location and by personalization. There is also no research that investigate how often Facebook

Trending topics change and whether there is any difference in behavior depending on the day of

the week or the time of the day.

In this paper, I describe the algorithm auditing process to scrape the data from Facebook

and analyze the results of the collected data in terms of personalization by demographic, geo-

location. I also investigate how often Facebook Trending topics change and if there are different

Trending behaviors depending on the different days of the week and different times of the day.

Lastly, I investigate which new sources are receiving higher news exposure by Facebook. Based

on the evaluation of the collected results, I discovered that Facebook Trending Topics are not as

personalized as I hypothesized. However, Facebook gives clear preference to certain news

sources than others.

21 Groshek, Jacob, and Megan Clough Groshek. “Agenda Trending: Reciprocity and the Predictive Capacity of

Social Networking Sites in Intermedia Agenda Setting across Topics over Time.” 2013,

doi:10.12924/mac2013.01010015. 22 Kazai, Gabriella, et al. “Personalised News and Blog Recommendations Based on User Location, Facebook and

Twitter User Profiling.” Proceedings of the 39th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and

Development in Information Retrieval - SIGIR '16, 2016, doi:10.1145/2911451.2911464.

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III. Methodology

My thesis looks at how Facebook news trends behave and how that influenced the users’

news sources. Unlike most MMSS theses, I collected my data by creating my own programming

scripts that scrape data from Facebook. This method was chosen because there are no data

publicly available for Facebook news trends. Additionally, Facebook news trends change often

because news in the media are always changing depending on what is happening the world. To

account for the randomness of what happens in the world, it is important to have the latest data

for my analysis. Furthermore, Facebook has proclaimed it will make significant changes to its

algorithm after it was criticized for fake news and bias news23. To account for the latest

Facebook algorithm, it was important to collect recent data to account for the most up to date

algorithm changes.

Scripting Technology

The scraping scripts were written in Python 3.6.4 and Selenium, a user interface (UI)

automation tool that automates UI testing. Selenium was selected because it can simulate a real

human user and trick the web browsers. It can distribute and scale scripts over many different

environments and can create robust, regression automation tests. Regression automation test’s

purpose is to catch bugs that were accidently introduced and make sure previous bugs stay dead.

Selenium physically clicked on buttons and scrolled through the webpage like a real human user

would. This is important as Facebook tried to prevent scraping of its data and raised security

checks when it felt an account had security threats, which I will talk about further later in this

paper. Additionally, Selenium can visually show the user what is happening on the webpage.

Even though the user did not physically make any actions on the page, actions such as click,

scroll, etc. were conducted on the webpage. This helped with debugging the code and confirming

the algorithm was working properly. The user could compare how Facebook reacted when an

algorithm was navigating through its pages verses when a real human being clicked through the

pages. Selenium also has the option to run the scripts in headless mode, where the browser is

scraped without the web page visually showing. This is an important feature as when the browser

is visually present, it is more prone to human errors because the user could accidently click on

the webpage and cause an interference with the script. Headless mode was a feature that was

added further into the data collection since it is most useful for long intervals of data collection

and for scripts that have been fully debugged. Since Selenium is a user interface testing platform,

it works great with HTML and has beneficial options to grab the html elements by class, id, CSS,

XPath, and practically any html element that is available on Facebook.

Python 3 was used over Python 2 because Python 3 is a newer version of Python 2 and

offers more features. Furthermore, there is a shift from Python 2 to Python 3 and to account for

future research on my thesis topic, I used the newest version of Python, so the version difference

is as minimal as possible for future researchers. Additionally, there are many benefits of Python

as a programming language. There are six main reasons why I chose to use Python over other

programming languages such as Java or C. First, Python Package Index (PyPI) makes Python

capable of interacting with many different languages and platforms because it includes various

third-party modules. These modules made it easier to work with Python when I wanted to install

software, for example open source, that are developed and shared in the public Python

23 Brown, Pete. “Facebook Struggles to Promote 'Meaningful Interactions' for Local Publishers, Data Shows.”

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community24. It was also beneficial because it made it easier for me to distribute my software via

PyPI. Additionally, PyPI made it easier for Python to interact with different languages and

platform. In this data collection, I used two different platforms, Google Chrome and Mozilla

Firefox. Second, Python has an extensive amount of support libraries. Support libraries are

standard libraries that have predefined functions that can be used throughout the code once the

library has been imported into the script. This reduces the length of the code significantly as well

as reducing the time to write tedious repetitive code. This is extremely important because

Facebook UI has hundreds and hundreds of lines of code. It would be impossible to write code

for every single task my code needed to accomplish for this thesis in the given amount of time.

Third, Python programming language is an open source and community development25. Thus, it

is free to use by the public, even for commercial purposes. It is also an on-going development as

developers are contributing to new versions of Python regularly. This is important because even

minor updates for the Python language can address and fix bugs that were present in previous

versions. Fourth, Python has numerous documentation and community Q&A, which is where

other programmers who ran into similar problems post their errors and the Python community

gathers to solve the problem together if there is no answer already. This is tremendously helpful

when running into bugs and I have used this hundred, of times when I was writing and

debugging my scripts. Though the command prompt throws errors and gives brief description of

what caused the error when a script failed, it is usually not enough to figure out how the solve the

bug. The support available online had encouraged me to pursue my thesis in the Python language

and continuously encouraged me to keep it Python. Fifth, Python has great data structures such

as built in lists, sets, and dictionaries that make it not only easy to develop but also time optimal.

This is critical because large amounts of data were collected and stored into multiple leveled data

structures. Additionally, Python offers dynamic high-level data typing which is useful because it

decreases the amount of support code required and ultimately the amount of code written. Lastly,

Python is an object-oriented programming language. It consists of strong text processing

capabilities and has its own unit testing framework which is very important since a significant

portion of the data collected are either text or/and have gone through text processing.26

Virtual Environment Set Up

To set up the environment and get the correct dependencies and packages in one location

safely, I created a virtual environment. This step is important and recommended for developers

who wish to use my code in the future because how I manage my dependencies may be different

from how another developer manages her dependencies. I focused on development and testing

for majority of my programming for this thesis, but I did change my focus to deployment further

on as I was completing my scripts and publishing my code into GitHub.

After I downloaded Python 3.6.2, I downloaded pip separately. I developed on a Window

platform. In MacOS, Python is pre-downloaded on every device and pip comes with Python,

however, for my operating system (Windows 10), I had to manually download pip. Afterwards, I

24 “PyPI – the Python Package Index.” PyPI, pypi.org/. 25 “Welcome to Python.org.” Python.org, www.python.org/about/. 26 Rongala, Arvind. “Benefits of Python over Other Programming Languages.” Invensis Blog, 6 Apr. 2018,

www.invensis.net/blog/it/benefits-of-python-over-other-programming-languages/.

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used pip to download Pipenv, a dependency manager for Python projects27. Virtualenv is the

virtual environment tool I used to develop in separate and different Python environments on the

same local computer. Virtualenv created a folder which isolated my thesis development

environment with other environments I was developing on for a different project. This is

important because I needed different dependencies for my thesis than, for example, my machine

learning project. After creating a new virtual environment, I downloaded the needed libraries and

dependencies for the data collection script. There are three main dependencies I downloaded into

my virtual environment: Selenium Webdriver 3.9.0, APScheduler 3.5.0, and Pyvirtualdisplay

(PyPl). Selenium was a dependency I downloaded to integrate with my Python code. By

combining Selenium and Python, I could control the user interface activity with Python code.

APScheduler was used to schedule when and how my scripts would run. I will further discuss the

APScheduler intervals in the data collection section. PyPl was used to run my script on the

Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. I will further discuss cloud computing in the data

collection and challenges section.

Web Browser

Initially, I collected data using Mozilla Firefox because Selenium IDE, a Firefox add-on,

was only available on Firefox and I had experience with Selenium IDE. Since I did not use

Selenium IDE for this experiment but instead I used Selenium WebDriver which is available on

multiple browsers, I was not restricted to one browser. After running into issues with Firefox

when running the scripts on the AWS cloud server, I changed from Firefox to Google Chrome.

Another reason I changed from Firefox to Chrome was because Chrome is the most popular web

browser with roughly 78% of browser usage verses 11% for Firefox28. It was important to collect

data from the most commonly used browser since there was a greater chance most Facebook

users use Chrome to access their Facebook accounts. If developers are interested in running my

scripts on Firefox, I have left the code commented out for future use. But for this study, all data

analyzed and presented in this paper are collected from Chrome.

To use Chrome as the preferred browser, you must download chromedriver to properly

run the script on the cloud. Without the chromedriver, the script will automatically fail, and you

cannot collect data on an AWS server. Examples of common errors are shown in Figure 1.

However, the script will run and collect data correctly when it is running locally on a Windows

10 operating system.

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver.exe' executable may have wrong

permissions. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary

Figure 1: Common Chromedriver Error

CSV and mySQL Database

27 “Pipenv & Virtual Environments.” Freezing Your Code - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python, docs.python-

guide.org/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/. 28 “Browser Statistics.” W3Schools Online Web Tutorials, www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp.

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home

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In the initial stages of data collection, the data was stored in CSV files because Python

has a csv support library with useful functions that made it simple to transport data into a csv

file. Figure 2 shows the csv support library functions in use where I create a new CSV file and

fill in the column names. Figure 3 shows a list of lists that contains data that was scraped from

Facebook being written into a csv file. Codes in figure 2 and 3 are from fb_trends.py.

Additionally, in the earlier stages of data collection, I only collected data in short intervals such

as one to two hours and only collected one subset of data called trends_only, which I will discuss

in detail later in the paper. As a result, the CSV was never unbearably large and importing the

data into a CSV was feasible.

Figure 2: Create a New CSV File using CSV Support Library

Figure 3: Insert List of List into CSV File using CSV Support Library

As I began to collect more data, in terms of higher frequency, longer time range, and

different types of data, CSV began to have issues in performance. As a result, I moved my data

storage from CSV to MySQL Database. MySQL Database has many perks that CSV does not

have. First, MySQL is developed to store extremely large amounts of data. Thus, even if I collect

data for 24 hours every one minute, there is no issue with performance in retrieving the data.

With MySQL, I can conduct SQL queries that lets me filter certain types of data depending on

specific criteria. For example, Figure 4 shows an SQL query that selects all columns of the data

in fb_scrape_db database PROXYIL table. Figure 4 is an example of one of the basic select SQL

queries, but there are also action queries where I can insert, update, or delete data inside the

database. Furthermore, queries can calculate or summarize data in addition to automate data

management tasks29. To help understand the concept of SQL queries, you can think of it as a

search on Google. You ask Google search engine a question and it returns an answer, which is

the same as you give Google a query, and it returns what it finds in its database.

Figure 4: Basic Select SQL Query

Another benefit of MySQL database is that the database is stored in the cloud. This

means that I or anyone I want to share my data with can access my data from any device as long

she has the login credentials. This is extremely valuable since I was running my scripts on three

different devices during this experiment: my laptop, a desktop, and an AWS cloud server. Thus,

there is complete mobility and flexibility on where and how I can access my data. For example, a

desktop has a more powerful central processing unit (CPU) than a laptop so majority of the more

29 Rouse, Margaret. “What Is Query? - Definition from WhatIs.com.” SearchSQLServer,

searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/definition/query.

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complicated scripts were ran on a desktop30. However, I can only access the desktop when I am

home. With MySQL database, I have the option to access the data being collected on my desktop

directly from my laptop. Furthermore, the data is immediately inserted into the database once its

collected, and more importantly, the data is immediately accessible anywhere that has access to

the cloud. This meant I could check how my script was running on my desktop from my laptop.

This dynamic concept was critical in collecting the data on time and accurately. Lastly, storing

data into the MySQL database makes it easier for future developers to work on this project since

the data is stored on a cloud which can be accessed from anywhere.

AWS Cloud

During the early stages of data collection, the scripts were locally running on my

Window 10 laptop. However, as the time range and amount of data collected increased, it was no

longer feasible to run the scripts locally. When a script is locally running, the laptop must be on

the whole time or else the script will stop. Additionally, the laptop must be connected to the

internet always or else the connect to Facebook will fail and the script will fail. Because of these

two constraints, it was impossible to run the data for a whole 24 hours without any interruptions

because I needed my laptop for my classes. I would like to note that even though there is internet

on campus in Northwestern University, the connection to the internet is not stable outdoors.

Thus, when I tried to walk from class to class with my laptop on, the script still failed because

the internet connection was too poor to stay connected to Facebook. As a result, I decided to

move the scripts that were running locally to run on the cloud.

I used AWS for cloud computing because originally, I was also going to utilize

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to crowdsource Facebook data. However, due to the recent events

with Facebook’s data scandal, I decided to not pursue that method. AWS is a cloud platform that

offers both cloud computing and database storage31. Since my database was in AWS, I decided

to utilize its cloud computing platform as well. Additionally, AWS is a very popular cloud

services platform that is used by many large companies such as Spotify, Intuit, Yelp, and more. It

is trustworthy and provides applications with flexibility, reliability, and scalability.

To access the cloud server, I used PuTTY to connect from my local to the cloud. Please

note that this cloud server has a private key that needs to be present when you try to connect. To

transfer files from my local to the cloud server and vice versa, I used WinSCP. Both applications

are highly recommended for Window users and they available online for free.

When a script is running on a cloud, it is running on a virtual server. It is the same idea as

running on a different computer, but the only difference is this one is in the cloud. So, you can

think of it like it is another computer that is not physically next to you. Thus, I can connect to the

cloud and run my scripts as I would on my local. However, there are some key differences. The

AWS cloud server I used was in Ohio at eastern time zone and the operating system is Red Hat

Linux. Because the difference in operating system, command prompt commands are completely

different from each other. For example, in Linux, you must start your script with python3 while

30 “What Is a Central Processing Unit (CPU)? - Definition from Techopedia.” Techopedia.com,

www.techopedia.com/definition/2851/central-processing-unit-cpu 31 “What Is AWS? - Amazon Web Services.” Amazon, Amazon, aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/.

12

in Windows you start with py. Additionally, AWS cloud servers do not come with Chrome pre-

downloaded and since I do not have an interface to look at on the cloud, I had to download

chrome via the command prompt. There are many other key differences between Window and

Linux users should be aware of for future additions to this study, but I will not include in this

paper since it is too technically complex for the average MMSS audience. Once again, I had to

set up a virtual environment and download the three dependencies on the Linux cloud server.

The purpose of the cloud server was to run my script without any interruptions for 24

hours. However, I had to make the UI be present but not visible because there is no screen on a

cloud computer. Thus, I used xvfb from pyvirtualdisplay (PyPl) which is a library that was

imported into the script. This feature allowed an invisible UI to appear without it being shown to

the cloud’s screen. To understand this concept, you must understand how a computer display

works. A computer screen queues up the next visual images one after the other and shows it on

the screen to the user. This is how we can browser from page to page or watch a video. What

happens in the cloud server is there is no computer screen to be shown because the server is in

the cloud and there is no physical screen. Thus, when I try to launch a chrome browser, the

browser cannot open, and error occurs. However, by using xvfb, we can queue the images up on

the server but not visually present it on a screen. In doing so, the cloud server loads the UI

behind the screen without erroring. This allows us to run UI scripts on the screenless cloud.

It is important to note that the cloud server is like a separate invisible computer. This

means when I disconnect from the cloud platform, my cloud server shuts down just like how a

computer shuts down when you turn it off. When the cloud server shuts down, everything on the

server closes, including the scripts. To run the server continuously even when I exit the cloud

server, I used nohup. Nohup is a command which prevents the command that follows from

getting aborted automatically when you log out or exit the server32. Thus, when a nohup

command is ran on a command prompt, the command prompt returns to its normal state after the

command is admitted. Figure 5 shows an example of a nohup example. Nohup is followed by the

command to run the script python3 -u which is followed by the script name

fb_trends_cloud_tab.py. The commands after > is to keep track of the command prompt outputs

in a text file. This is used for debugging purposes. Lastly the & is telling the server do not

terminate this command even if I close the cloud server. In Figure 6, the text results from

running the nohup command is written in a text file instead of a command prompt when the

command in Figure 5 is executed. By running the script on the cloud, using xvfb, and using

nohup, I could collect data without any interruptions for 24 hours.

Nohup python3 -u fb_trends_cloud_tab.py > trends_only5.txt &

Figure 5: Nohup Example

32 “Linux Nohup Command Help and Examples.” Computer Hope, 1 Apr. 2018,

www.computerhope.com/unix/unohup.htm.

13

Figure 6: Nohup Command Prompt Results Sent to Text File

Another benefit to switch from local to cloud is that anyone can access the cloud server if

they have the criteria. This means I can access the cloud anywhere in the world at any time from

any device. I can also share the account with another person, in the case we need to debug a

script together. This allows easier collaboration and communication because everyone who is

working on the project has the latest code. For my thesis, I wrote all the code myself. However,

this is important to note for developers who wish to use my code in the future or to further this

research.

Config File

A config file was utilized in the script to keep track of different features of Facebook

login criteria, data collection intervals, csv file and MySQL database names. This file contains

the different login information for different accounts. Config file was used because it creates a

single location where all feature names are in. This makes it easier to change minor but critical

variables to collect different types of data. Otherwise, one would need to go into every single

Python script and change the variables in every location it occurs. A config file makes this

process dynamic and local. This is a file that will not be uploaded on the GitHub as it contains

private login information. For future development on my thesis, I highly suggest you create your

own config.ini file and include your criteria for Facebook login. You can also include other

criteria such as interval length and filenames.

Data

There are four main dataset categories that were collected: (1) trends, (2) trends and tabs,

(3) different geographic location, and (4) personalized vs puppet Facebook accounts. In this

paper, I will refer to the four data sets by the names mentioned above.

(1) Trends

The trends category’s data was collected from the “Trending” section on right side of

Facebook’s home page as shown in Figure 7. There are five topics in the trending page: Top

Trends, Politics, Science and Technology, Sports, and Entertainment. Each topic had a maximum

of 10 trending news. It was usually the case that each topic had 10 trends on average but there

14

were instances where there was less than 10. Notice in Figure 7 there were only three trends.

Once the “See More” as clicked, the rest of the trends appeared.

Figure 7: Facebook Trending Page

For this category, I used a puppet Facebook account that had a bare profile. The only

information that was provided on the puppet account was a fake first and last name, phone

number, fake birthday, and a profile picture. It had no friends and no activity. The data was

collected by first signing into the puppet Facebook account and loading all the HTML elements

on the home page. It is important to note that Facebook does not load all five topics when you

log into your account. It only loaded the current topic the user was on, which by default is Top

Trends. To load the other four topics, I wrote a function that clicked through every topic before

scraping the data. Once the topics were clicked, the HTML elements were loaded and available

to get collected. My script searched for specific HTML elements I defined and collected the data

respectively. For this category, I collected the following:

● Type: The topic (top trends, politics, science and technology, sports, or entertainment)

● Title: Title of news trend

● Description: The short description located under the title (Figure 7)

● Trend Link: The link that redirects the user when the trend is clicked. The link redirects

the user to a compilation of news on a Facebook page.

● Rank: Where the trend is ranked in the trending list

● Scrape ID: An integer to keep track of which round of scraping the data is collected from

● Timestamp: The exact time and day the data was collected (YY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS)

Type was used to distinguish the different topics during the analysis. The analysis

investigated the top trends for all five topics in addition to the top trends for each of the topics.

Title and description were collected for detail for each news trend. The trend link was used to

uniquely identify each trend. Rank was collected to discover where in the list certain new trends

were placed and whether they moved up or down the list. Scrape ID was used with trend link to

uniquely identify trends for the whole 24-hour dataset. Timestamp was used to keep track of the

time and date the data was collected, which was critical when analyzing the trend behavior at

different days of the week.

I collected five rounds of 24-hour data on separate days locally. The data collected are

listed in Figure 8. Trends 2 is collected at a high interval to analyze when trends are changing

and how often. It investigated if new trends are changing as often as one minute or if 5, 10-

15

minute or a higher interval was sufficient enough to catch most of the new trend updates. Trend 1

and 2 results were compared to investigate whether there is consistency in news trends behavior

between the same weekdays but different weeks. Trends 1 was compared to Trend 3 to

investigate whether there is consistency in news trends behavior on the weekday and the

weekend. Trends 4 and 5 are compared to investigate if different weekdays have different news

trends behavior. For datasets that have different intervals, I only include data in the higher

interval value, so the interval variable is consistent between the two datasets. In conclusion, for

the Trends category I conducted analysis to answer the following questions:

1. How often are trends updating?

2. Is there different news trend behavior on the weekend verse the weekday? What

about different days on the weekdays?

Start Date/Time End Date/Time Interval per Round (min)

Trends 1 Wednesday 3/7/18

4:30PM

Thursday 3/8/18

4:30PM

5

Trends 2 Wednesday 3/14/18

10:30PM

Thursday 3/15/18

10:30PM

1

Trends 3 Saturday 4/21/18

6:00PM

Sunday 4/22/18

6:00PM

5

Trends 4 Thursday 4/26/18

1:00PM

Friday 4/27/18

1:00PM

5

Trends 5 Tuesday 5/15/18

10:00AM

Wednesday 5/16/18

10:00AM

10

Figure 8: Trends Data Information

To answer the questions, I calculated the Jaccard similarity. Jaccard similarity compared

two datasets and analyzed the similarities and differences33. The result was a number between 0

and 1 where the higher the number, the more similarities the two sets had. Jaccard similarity is

the intersection divided by the union of the two sets. The computation was written in Python and

ran as a script. The script then outputted the results on a csv and graphs were produced by excel

and matplotlib, a python library used for graphing. The analysis calculated the average,

minimum, maximum, and standard deviation of the computed Jaccard similarities. The script I

wrote also calculated the Jaccard similarities, average, minimum, maximum, and standard

deviation for every 5-minute interval starting from the interval the data was collected up to 60

minutes. Furthermore, I created a Python script to calculate the cumulative new trends for every

5-minute interval starting from the interval the data was collected up to 60 minutes. This analysis

showed how many brand-new trends appeared in the 24 hours and the results are printed into a

33 “Jaccard Index / Similarity Coefficient.” Statistics How To, www.statisticshowto.com/jaccard-index/.

16

csv file. The graphs for this analysis were also constructed using the same tools as the Jaccard

similarities.

(2) Trends and Tabs

The Trends and Tabs category was an addition to (1) Trends. In addition to collecting

data of Trends, Tabs information was also collected. Tabs data is collected from the news trends

page that consisted of the top articles of that news topic. Once a user clicked on a news trend

from the Trending section, as shown in Figure 7, she was redirected to a Facebook page with

new articles and Facebook communities’ comments and likes, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Tabs – New Trends Facebook Page

For this category, I used the same puppet account and methodology to collect the Trends

data as (1) Trends. To collect the tabs data, I opened a new tab for each news trend’s link,

scraped the data from the first box with the news sources for that topic. Once on the tabs page,

the new source links did not load unless the user hovered over each news box. Thus, I wrote a

hover function that hovered and waited for each new source’s direct link to load before scraping

the data. My script searched for specific HTML elements I defined and collected the data

respectively. For this category, the same attributes were collected for the Trends portion as (1)

Trends. For the Tabs portion, I collected the following:

• Timestamp: The exact time and day the data was collected (YY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS)

• Scrape ID: An integer to keep track of which round of scraping the data is collected from

• Type: The topic (top trends, politics, science and technology, sports, or entertainment)

• Rank: Where the news source is ranked in the list of news sources on tabs page

17

• Title: Title of article for the specific news source

• Source: News source of the article

• Published Date: When the article was published

• Time Since: Time since the article was published on Facebook

• Description: Description of the article

• URL: Direct URL to the article on the original news source page

Timestamp was used to keep track of the time and date the data was collected. The

Scrape ID was used to keep track of which round of scraping the data was from. The Type was

used to distinguish the different topics during analysis. Rank was important to track the news

source Facebook prioritized. Title and description were collected for detail for each news article.

Source was used to analyze which news sources Facebook gave more news exposure to.

Published Data and Time Since was collected to track how recent news articles were. URL was

used to uniquely identify each news article. Facebook only provided Publish Date, Time Science,

and Description data for the first news source.

Collecting Tabs data required a lot of interaction with Facebook in a short amount of

time. However, Facebook has been making serious effort to block data collection. As a result,

limited Tabs data could be collected. Furthermore, the intervals were higher compared to (1)

Trends because there were more data that needed to be collected and it required more time per

scrape. I collected a 26-hour dataset locally. The data collected are listed in Figure 10. I

conducted analysis to answer the following questions:

1. Which news sources does Facebook give the more news exposure to?

2. How many news articles from external news sources does Facebook publish?

3. Which news sources does Facebook include in the “Trending” section?

Start Date/Time End Date/Time Interval (min)

Trends and Tabs 1 Wednesday, 5/15/18

10:00AM

Thursday, 5/16/18

12:00PM

30

Figure 10: Trends and Tabs Data Information

To answer the first question, I calculated how often certain news sources were exposed

overall and per topic. To answer the second question, I calculated the number of unique articles

overall and per topic. To answer the third question, I used a set to include all the unique news

sources Facebook exposed from the data collected. The computation was written in Python and

ran as a script. The script I wrote used Counter from the collections library to rank the news

sources on how frequently they appeared. I exported the data from MySQL database and

conducted data aggregations via Python. The script then outputted the results on a csv and graphs

were produced by excel and matplotlib.

(3) Geographic Location

For the geographic location category, I used the puppet account to gather data from two

locations: Northern California and Chicago, Illinois. I got a proxy for an Internet Protocol (IP)

address located in Northern California through AWS. Every device has an IP address that is

associated with it. When a device connects to a website, the online connection gives your

18

computer an address, so the website knows how to send information to your computer34. This IP

address identifies where that device is in the world. To trick Facebook to think I am logging in

from a different location, I used an IP address from Northern California. The purpose of this

experiment was to discover whether Facebook presented different new trends in different parts of

the world. The Facebook account, time, and day were held constant. The variables collected in

this experiment are the same variables collected in (1) Trends. The same puppet account from (1)

Trends is used.

I collected two datasets of 32 hour from 12:00AM, Sunday, May 13, 2018 to 3:00PM,

Monday, May 14, 2018 locally. The data collected are listed in Figure 11. Geo-location 1 was

compared with Geo-location 2 to analyze if there were any differences between Facebook news

trends depending on location. Every other variable was held constant. In conclusion, for the Geo-

location category I conducted analysis to answer the following question:

1. Do news trends differ depending on geographic location? If so, how?

Start Date/Time End Date/Time Interval per

Round (min)

Location

Geo-location 1 Sunday, 5/13/18

12:00AM

Monday, 5/14/18

3:00PM

10 Northern

California

Geo-location 2 Sunday, 5/13/18

12:00AM

Monday, 5/14/18

3:00PM

10 Chicago, IL

Figure 11: Geographic Location Data Information

To answer the question, I analyzed the differences between the two datasets collected in

terms of similarities and the number of unique trends overall and per topic. The results consisted

of the number of trends for each location, number of unique trends for each location, the number

of same unique trends between the two locations. This analysis was conducted for both the

overall news trends and per topic. The computation was written in Python and ran as a script. I

exported the data from MySQL database and conducted data aggregations via Python. The script

then outputted the results on a csv and tables were produced by excel.

(4) Personal vs Puppet

For the Personal vs Puppet category, I used the same puppet account as the previous

categories and my personal Facebook account. My personal Facebook account was created in

2008 and included many personalization information. It had numerous pictures, statuses, likes,

comments, and overall activity. For the privacy and safety of my account, I will not discuss in

detail about my personal account. The Config file was very helpful for this category’s data

collection because it contained private information that can be separated from the rest of the

scripts. This was critical especially when I uploaded my code on GitHub where other people

have access to it. The purpose of this experiment was to discover whether Facebook presented

different news trends to different Facebook accounts. More specially, I investigated if Facebook

personalized its new trends from what they believe a specific user would be interested. This

would be linked to whether Facebook used the data it collected from its users to present specific

34 “What Is a Proxy Server and Should You Risk Using One?” WhatIsMyIPAddress.com,

whatismyipaddress.com/proxy-server

19

types of new trends on their profile. The bare puppet account did not have any data or activity, so

it was hypothesized that the news trends would be more general. However, my personal account

had 10 years of data and activity. Thus, it was hypothesized to have new trends that would be

personalized to me. As a result, I theorized that the news trends between the two profiles would

be different. The only variable that changed was the Facebook account because I collected data

on the puppet and personal account. All other variables were held constant. The variables

collected in this experiment are the same variables collected in (1) Trends. The same puppet

account from (1) Trends is used. I collected two 40-hour datasets locally and the data collected

are listed in Figure 12. Personal and Puppet 1 dataset were analyzed to investigate whether there

was personalization of news trends. In conclusion, I conducted analysis to answer the following

question:

1. Does Facebook personalize news trends by user? More specifically, do news

trends differ depending on the Facebook account?

Start Date/Time End Date/Time Interval per Round (min)

Personal 1 Sunday, 5/13/2018

2:00PM

Tuesday, 5/15/18

6:30PM

10

Puppet 1 Sunday, 5/13/2018

2:00PM

Tuesday, 5/15/18

6:30PM

10

Figure 12: Personal vs Puppet Data Information

To answer the question, I analyzed the differences between the pair of datasets collected

in terms of similarities and the number of unique trends per topic. The results consisted of the

number of trends for each account, number of unique trends for each account, the number of

same unique trends between the two accounts. The analysis for this category was like the

analysis for (3) Geographic Location but with a focus on per topic data. The computation was

written in Python and ran as a script. I exported the data from MySQL database and conducted

data aggregations via Python. The script then outputted the results on a csv and tables were

produced by excel.

IV. Results

The purpose of this research was to answer whether Facebook Trends effect news

exposure. There are four categories: trends, trends and tabs, geo-location, and personal vs puppet

accounts. This section will present the results of the different categories. When I refer to all

intervals, it means 5-minute intervals from 5 to 60 minutes. When I refer to new cumulative

news trends, it means brand new, unique news trends.

(1) Trends

There were five datasets used and analyzed to answer the two questions listed in the

methodology section. The first dataset showed that Top Trends had the highest cumulative new

trends on average. The other four topics had similar amounts of cumulative new trends for all

intervals, as shown in Figure 13. In a span of 24 hours, there were 43 new trends in Top Trends,

and between 22 to 28 new trends in the other topics for 5-minute intervals. Furthermore, for 60-

20

minute intervals, there were only 16 news trends for Top Trends while the other four topics had

between 16 to 18 news trends.

Figure 13: Trends 1 – Cumulative New Trends

On average, Top Trends had the lowest Jaccard similarity average for all intervals. Figure

14 shows Top Trend’s Jaccard similarity at 5-minute interval was about the same for the other

topics at higher intervals. Additionally, Top Trend’s Jaccard similarity average for 5-minute

intervals had the biggest difference between the minimum (0.182) and maximum (1) compared

to the other four topics: Politics minimum (0.667) and maximum (1), Science/Tech minimum

(0.538) and maximum (1), Sports minimum (0.667) and maximum (1), and Entertainment

minimum (0.538) and maximum (1) as shown in Appendix 1.

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 43 38 37 28 27 28 24 17 23 22 25 16

Politics 28 26 25 23 19 20 18 20 19 18 20 18

Science/Tech 26 24 22 21 20 19 17 18 18 19 19 18

Sports 22 21 21 19 19 19 17 17 17 17 16 16

Entertainment 25 25 24 25 18 20 18 21 17 17 20 16

05

101520253035404550

Cumulative New Trends - Trend 13/7/18 - 3/8-18 | 4:30PM

Top Trends Politics Science/Tech Sports Entertainment

21

Figure 14: Trends 1 – Jaccard Similarity Average

The second dataset was used to investigate how often news trends are changing. Figure

15 showed that for one-minute intervals, Top Trends had 74 new cumulative trends, Politics 41,

Science/Tech 33, Sports 39, and Entertainment 42 in 24 hours. In Figure 16, Top Trends had 73

new cumulative trends for 5 and 10-minute intervals, Politics 41, Science/Tech 33 and 22, Sports

38 and 37, and Entertainment 39 and 38, respectively. The biggest difference is between 10 to

15-minute intervals for Top Trends by a difference of 3, 30 to 35-minute intervals for Politics by

a difference of 3, 40 to 45-minute intervals for Science/Tech by a difference of 2, 15 and 20-

minute intervals for Sports by a difference of 2, and Entertainment has consistently a difference

of one every interval. This dataset had much higher number of cumulative news trends than

Trends 1 even though they were both collected from Wednesday to Thursday.

Type Interval New Trends

Top Trends 1 74

Politics 1 41

Science/Tech 1 33

Sports 1 39

Entertainment 1 42

Figure 15: Trends 2 – Cumulative New Trends: One Minute Intervals

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 0.58 0.36 0.47 0.31 0.44 0.26 0.44 0.20 0.29 0.21 0.31 0.22

Politics 0.87 0.81 0.74 0.69 0.69 0.60 0.61 0.54 0.46 0.49 0.42 0.42

Science/Tech 0.89 0.81 0.80 0.75 0.72 0.68 0.72 0.68 0.58 0.56 0.54 0.39

Sports 0.87 0.81 0.74 0.75 0.73 0.65 0.65 0.65 0.58 0.60 0.58 0.54

Entertainment 0.85 0.77 0.73 0.68 0.73 0.65 0.67 0.54 0.58 0.54 0.44 0.54

0.000.100.200.300.400.500.600.700.800.901.00

Jaccard Similarity Average - Trend 13/7/18 - 3/8/18 | 4:30PM


22

Figure 16: Trends 2 – Cumulative New Trends: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

For one-minute intervals, Entertainment had the lowest average Jaccard Similarity at

0.800 followed by Top Trends at 0.803, as shown in Figure 17. The other three topics were

between 0.93 and 0.97. For 5 to 60-minute intervals, the results showed Top Trends had the

lowest Jaccard similarity on average followed up Entertainment, and an unclear ranking of the

other three topics, as shown in Figure 18. In the analyzed data table in Appendix 1, it showed

that Entertainment’s Jaccard Similarity is, on average, 0.10 lower than Top Trends.

Figure 17: Trends 2 – Jaccard Similarity Average: One-Minute Intervals

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 73 73 70 68 65 65 63 60 60 58 57 58

Politics 41 41 40 39 40 40 37 37 36 37 36 37

Science/Tech 33 32 33 32 33 32 33 32 30 30 30 30

Sports 38 37 37 35 37 35 33 35 34 35 33 34

Entertainment 39 38 38 38 37 37 38 37 36 37 35 36

01020304050607080

Cumulative New Trends - Trends 23/14/18 - 3/15/18 | 10:30PM


0.803088578

0.969030969 0.937562438 0.926469364

0.800491175

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2



23

Figure 18: Trend 2 - Jaccard Similarity Average: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

Dataset Trends 3 was used to investigate whether there were different levels of news

activity on the weekends verses the weekday. As shown in Figure 19, the most apparent result

was that Science/Tech only had six new cumulative news trends for all intervals. In other words,

there were only six news trends for the 24-hour interval. Top Trends had the highest cumulative

news trends for every interval, then Sports, then Politics then Entertainment. Between 5 and 60-

minute intervals, Politics, Science/Tech, and Entertainment only had differences of 4 or 5

cumulative news trends. Top Trends had 17 cumulative new trends.

Figure 19: Trend 3 – Cumulative New Trends: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 0.77 0.68 0.62 0.57 0.54 0.55 0.50 0.48 0.48 0.48 0.56 0.38

Politics 0.93 0.90 0.89 0.87 0.85 0.83 0.78 0.78 0.77 0.78 0.75 0.73

Science/Tech 0.93 0.90 0.88 0.88 0.82 0.84 0.80 0.80 0.83 0.77 0.82 0.79

Sports 0.94 0.92 0.86 0.88 0.85 0.82 0.88 0.77 0.86 0.79 0.83 0.74

Entertainment 0.81 0.76 0.62 0.69 0.65 0.65 0.71 0.57 0.64 0.48 0.76 0.60

0.000.100.200.300.400.500.600.700.800.901.00



5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 46 44 40 42 36 36 35 34 34 31 31 29

Politics 25 25 24 25 23 24 25 24 22 23 23 20

Science/Tech 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

Sports 29 29 27 28 26 27 27 26 26 23 25 24

Entertainment 24 24 23 24 23 22 23 24 21 21 22 20

05

101520253035404550

Cumulative New Trends - Trend 34/21/18 - 4/22/18 | 6:00PM


24

Figure 20 shows that Top Trends’ Jaccard Similarity was lower than the other four topics

while Politics, Sports, and Entertainment were relatively close to each other. Science/Tech

consistently had a higher Jaccard Similarity on average than other topics. There is a downward

trend of the Jaccard Similarity as the time interval increases. At 50-minute, Politics has a sharp

decrease but returns to the usual trend at 55-minute intervals. The analyzed data for all intervals

are presented in Appendix 1.

Figure 20: Trend 3 - Jaccard Similarity Average: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

Dataset Trends 4 was used to investigate whether different weekdays have different news

trends behavior. Figure 21 shows that Top Trends had the highest cumulative new trends

followed by Sports, then an unclear ranking of Politics, Science/Tech, and Entertainment for

most intervals, excluding 30, 40, 55, and 60-minute. Top Trends had a difference of 28

cumulative new trends between 5 and 60-minute intervals, Sports 16, Politics, 13, Science 10,

and Entertainment 11.

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 0.83 0.73 0.70 0.61 0.57 0.52 0.53 0.46 0.40 0.35 0.37 0.34

Politics 0.92 0.86 0.82 0.78 0.72 0.73 0.68 0.67 0.66 0.52 0.59 0.61

Science/Tech 0.97 0.94 0.90 0.89 0.84 0.81 0.80 0.77 0.74 0.73 0.68 0.69

Sports 0.91 0.83 0.82 0.76 0.72 0.67 0.65 0.62 0.58 0.59 0.54 0.47

Entertainment 0.93 0.88 0.84 0.81 0.76 0.76 0.73 0.67 0.67 0.65 0.61 0.61

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

1.20



25


Figure 22 shows Top Trends and Sports had the lowest Jaccard Similarity averages while

the other three topics had higher but similar Jaccard Similarity with each other. On average, as

the intervals increase, Jaccard Similarity decreases. There is a sharp increase at 15-minute

interval for Science/Tech, Entertainment, and Sports and a sharp decrease at 25-minute for

Science/Tech and Politics. For most sharp changes, the trend returns to the usual at the next

interval.

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 60 55 51 47 43 40 36 39 39 31 32 32

Politics 37 36 34 32 32 28 27 28 27 23 25 24

Science/Tech 35 35 29 30 31 29 27 26 25 26 24 25

Sports 49 47 46 45 43 42 36 42 38 28 37 33

Entertainment 35 34 31 31 28 30 27 27 28 23 27 24

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Cumulative New Trends - Trends 4 4/26/18 - 4/27/18 | 1:00PM


5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 0.79 0.67 0.58 0.54 0.48 0.44 0.46 0.37 0.32 0.35 0.33 0.24

Politics 0.85 0.74 0.74 0.69 0.51 0.64 0.59 0.55 0.48 0.42 0.49 0.45

Science/Tech 0.82 0.67 0.78 0.60 0.46 0.61 0.63 0.61 0.59 0.35 0.57 0.44

Sports 0.75 0.57 0.62 0.50 0.46 0.42 0.48 0.40 0.39 0.36 0.31 0.29

Entertainment 0.80 0.63 0.71 0.58 0.59 0.51 0.50 0.59 0.55 0.45 0.50 0.48

0.000.100.200.300.400.500.600.700.800.90



26

Figure 22: Trend 4 Jaccard Similarity Averages: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

Dataset Trends 5 was compared with Trends 4 to investigate whether different weekdays

have different news trend behavior and with Trends 2 to investigate whether there is consistency

in news trends’ behavior in daytime and nighttime. Figure 23 shows that for every interval, Top

Trends had the highest cumulative new trends followed by Politics, and a tie between

Science/Tech and Entertainment, and then Sports. Top Trends had the biggest different between

5 and 60-minute intervals at 49, then Politics at 22, then Science/Tech and Entertainment at 12,

then Sports at 8.


Figure 24 shows that Science/Tech had the highest Jaccard similarity for all intervals.

Top Trends had the lowest Jaccard Similarity most of the time, excluding at 20, 25, and 50-

minute intervals when Entertainment had the lowest. There is a sharp increase at 15-minute and a

sharp decrease at 50-minute for Sports and Entertainment. The other three topics did not have

any sharp increases or decreases. In general, as the interval increases, Jaccard similarity

decreases for all topics.

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 83 70 64 55 52 50 47 40 41 42 35 34

Politics 53 49 45 43 40 40 39 36 37 37 31 31

Science/Tech 43 41 40 38 38 37 36 33 35 37 32 31

Sports 34 32 33 30 32 31 29 27 28 30 25 26

Entertainment 42 42 41 40 41 40 37 34 37 36 31 30

0102030405060708090

Cumulative New Trends - Trends 5 5/15/18 - 5/16/18 | 10:00AM


27

Figure 24: Trend 5 – Jaccard Similarity Average: 5 to 60-Minute Intervals

In the five datasets, there are some similar behavior. Top trends tend to have the highest

cumulative new trends and the lowest Jaccard similarity averages for all intervals in all datasets.

As expected, cumulative new trends and Jaccard similarity averages decreased as the interval

increased for the five datasets. Trends 1 and 2 showed that behavior of the same days of the

week but different weeks do not have similar trends behavior. There were more cumulative new

trends on Wednesday and Thursday, March 7-8 than on March 14-15 and the Jaccard similarity

averages were different as well. Trends 2 showed there was roughly double the amount of

cumulative new trends for 1-minute intervals than 5-minute intervals. As expected, the Jaccard

similarity averages were higher for 1-minute intervals than 5-minute intervals. Trends 3 showed

that cumulative new trends were lower on the weekends than on the weekdays and Jaccard

similarity was slightly higher on the weekdays than weekends. Trends 2 and 5 showed that news

trends’ behavior were more active at daytime than nighttime. Daytime had slightly more

cumulative new trends but significantly lower Jaccard similarity averages than nighttime. Trends

4 and 5 showed that different weekdays do not have the same news trend behavior. There were

different numbers of cumulative new trends overall and different topics had different cumulative

new trends compared to each other.

(2) Trends and Tabs

There was one dataset analyzed to answer the three questions listed in the methodology

section. Figure 25 shows Top Trends had the highest total unique news articles, then Politics,

then Science and Technology, then Entertainment, and then Sports. Overall, there were 6601

total unique news articles in all five topics, majority of them from Top Trends and Politics.

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

Top Trends 0.62 0.49 0.39 0.34 0.30 0.26 0.18 0.24 0.15 0.13 0.17 0.21

Politics 0.76 0.66 0.58 0.48 0.45 0.42 0.37 0.30 0.25 0.25 0.29 0.30

Science/Tech 0.79 0.71 0.68 0.61 0.52 0.52 0.45 0.46 0.37 0.30 0.33 0.41

Sports 0.63 0.53 0.65 0.41 0.31 0.48 0.42 0.35 0.32 0.10 0.25 0.25

Entertainment 0.66 0.55 0.63 0.32 0.23 0.40 0.37 0.29 0.23 0.04 0.20 0.29

0.000.100.200.300.400.500.600.700.800.90

Jaccard Similarity Average - Trends 5 5/15/18 - 5/16/18 | 10:00AM


28

Figure 25: Trends and Tabs 1 - Total Unique News Articles

Figure 26 shows the top 15 news sources that had the highest exposure overall. MSN had

the highest exposure with 356 articles and the number of articles between the first and the second

had the largest difference amongst the top 15. The rest of the ranking can be found in Figure 26.

Ranking of News Source

Exposure Overall News Source # of Articles

MSN 356

CNN 272

The Hill 202

Fox News 199

The New York Times 198

Reuters 190

USA TODAY 163

CBS News 137

NBC News 127

HuffPost 126

Washington Post 124

BBC News 106

Business Insider 104

Yahoo 104

People 103

Figure 26: Trends and Tabs 1 - Ranking of News Sources Overall

Figure 27 shows the top 15 ranking of news sources Facebook published by topic. MSN

was ranked 1 for Top Trends, Politics, Science/Tech, and 2 for Sports, and 3 for Entertainment.

There are more recurring news sources between different topics such as CNN, but there are also

news sources that only occur in one topic, such as NPR. The list of all news sources Facebook

published on its “Trending” section can be found at Appendix 2.

Rank Top Trends

Politics

Science/Tech

Sports

Entertainment

1

MSN 163 MSN 124 MSN 23

The New

York Times 24 ESPN 27

2 CNN 121 CNN 122 CNN 21 MSN 24 USA TODAY 25

3 Fox News 108 The Hill 115 Reuters 21 TechCrunch 20 MSN 22

4 The New

York Times 104 Reuters 88 ABC News 13 Engadget 16

Bleacher

Report 21

3109

2242

509

459

493

6601

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000

Top Trends

Politics

Science and Technology

Sports

Entertainment

Overall

Total Unique News Articles

29

5 USA

TODAY 80 CBS News 75

Al Jazeera

English 13 ESPN 14 New York Post 12

6 People 75 Fox News 68 Fox News 12 Reuters 13 CBS Sports 11

7

HuffPost 73

The New York

Times 56 The Guardian 11

Business

Insider 10 E! News 11

8

BBC News 71

Washington

Post 55

Washington

Post 11

Washington

Post 10 BBC News 10

9

Reuters 68 NBC News 54 NBC News 10

The

Guardian 10 Daily Mail 8

10

The Hill 68 POLITICO 48

Business

Insider 9

Bleacher

Report 8 Fox News 8

11

NBC News 56 USA TODAY 46 NPR 9

USA

TODAY 8 Bloomberg 8

12

Yahoo 53 ABC News 44 The Hill 9 CBS Sports 8

Washington

Post 8

13

CBS News 52 Yahoo 42 TechCrunch 8 The Hill 8

Deadline

Hollywood 8

14

CBS Sports 50 HuffPost 39

The

Independent 8

Yahoo

Sports 7 Boston.com 8

15

CNBC 48

Business

Insider 37 The Verge 8 CNNMoney 7

The

Independent 7

Figure 27: Trends and Tabs 1 - Ranking of News Sources per Topic

In conclusion, there was a large amount of news sources Facebook published on its

“Trending” section, however, Facebook gave more news source exposure to certain news sources

than others. This suggested there may have been some favoritism for certain news sources. There

was 6601 total unique news article Facebook published on its “Trending” page in 26-hours.

(3) Geo-Location

There were two datasets analyzed to answer the question listed in the methodology

section. Figure 28 shows that the only difference between trends in Chicago and Northern

California was the quantity of news trends in Science/Tech, Sports, and Entertainment. However,

in all topics, there were the same number of unique trends in both locations. This meant that

every news that was exposed in Northern California was also exposed in Chicago, but at lower

frequency. Overall, there were 7917 news trends in Northern California and 7943 in Chicago but

only 129 unique news trends. Thus, on average, a Trending Topic was exposed for roughly 610

minutes or 10.16 hours.

Topic

Total Trends

in IL

Total Trends

in CA

Total Unique

Trends in IL

Total Unique

Trends in CA

Total Similar Unique Trends

Between IL and CA

Top Trends 1930 1930 52 52 52

Politics 1852 1852 33 33 33

Science and

Technology 852 858 15 15 15

Sports 1640 1650 41 41 41

Entertainment 1643 1653 32 32 32

Total: 173

Overall 7917 7943 129 129 129

Figure 28: Proxy 1 – Total Trends and Similarity by Topic


There were two datasets analyzed to answer the question listed in the methodology section.

Figure 29 shows that there is a slight difference in the unique news trends between a personal

30

and puppet account. There were 95 unique trends for both accounts for Top Trends, but there

was one Trending Topic that appeared on the personal and not the puppet account. Thus, there

was only 93 similar unique trends. News trend “Lewis Hamilton” appeared in Top Trends for

the personal account once but did not appear in the puppet account. Lewis Hamilton news

appeared in Sports for both accounts. This means, this topic was promoted from Sports to Top

Trends for the personal account. News trend “Peru Two” appeared in the personal account once

but not in the puppet account for any of the topics.

Topic

Total Trends

in Personal

Total

Trends in

Puppet

Total Unique

Trends in Person

Total Unique

Trends in Puppet

Total Similar Unique Trends

Between Personal and Puppet

Top Trends 2559 2559 95 95 93

Politics 2507 2507 52 52 52

Science and

Technology 1854 1858 30 30 30

Sports 1937 1938 40 40 40

Entertainmen

t 2260 2249 42 42 42

Figure 29: Personal vs Puppet 1 - Total Trends and Similarity by Topic

V. Discussion

This paper investigated four categories: how often Facebook Trends change, if Facebook

personalizes its Trending Topics by demographic and geo-location, and if Facebook gave more

news exposure to certain news sources.

(1) Trends

I discovered that there was not an exact number on how often Facebook Trends update,

which aligned with my hypothesis. The highest number of new cumulative trends in 5-minute

intervals was 83 for Top Trends from Tuesday to Wednesday 10am (Trends 5) while the lowest

was 6 for Science/Tech from Saturday to Sunday 6pm (Trends 3). Even the lowest number for

Top Trend’s new cumulative trends was 43 (Trends 1), which was almost half of 83. However,

Trends 1 had the lowest Jaccard Similarities, which meant Trending Topics were changing often

but between news that have already been published before. This suggested that Facebook’s News

Trends truly updated news according to how often news update in the world. I believe it was no

coincidence there was a high amount of new cumulative trends for Trends 5 because it was only

a couple of days before the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In fact, Trends

5’s Politics and Entertainment new cumulative trends were the highest compared to the other

datasets. However, Science/Tech and Sports were not. Again, it was probably no coincidence

since a royal wedding would fall under the Politics and/or Entertainment topics. Topics 2 showed

Facebook Trending’s behavior was similar between 1-minute intervals than 5-minute intervals.

This suggested that Trending news were not changing as frequently as one-minute. In fact, it

seemed 10-minute intervals was plenty to gather most of the new cumulative trends and the

Jaccard Similarity had its first large difference between 5 and 10-minute intervals. Top Trends

had the most updates for a large majority of the intervals for all five datasets. This makes sense

since Top Trends can consist of the highest trending news from the other four topics, which

makes it more competitive for news to hold its stance.

31

The next question investigated whether different days and times of the week had different

Trending behavior. Trends 1 and 2 were both collected between Wednesday to Thursday and

were compared to investigate if same weekdays, but different weeks have different Trending

behavior. The data showed that even on the same weekdays, Facebook’s Trending behavior

differs. This aligns with the finding of how often Facebook Trends update. I hypothesize that

when Trends 2 was collected, there were more news produced that week than when Trends 1 was

collected. Trends 3, 2, and 1 showed that there was difference in Trending behavior between the

weekend and weekday. However, there is no clear trend on behavior because on average, Trends

1 had lower new cumulative trends than Trends 3, but Trends 2 had higher new cumulative

trends. The unexpected behavior was from Trends 3 where Science/Tech only had size new

cumulative trends for all intervals. This makes sense because most Science/Tech news are from

big technology companies which are usually closed on weekend. Furthermore, Trends 2 and 3’s

average Jaccard Similarity were more similar than between Trends 1 and 2. Again, this aligned

with the two findings from above and supports my hypothesis that Facebook Trending truly

follows the news industry. Lastly, Trends 4 and 5 were investigated to compare if different

weekdays have different behavior. On average, Tuesday to Wednesday had higher number of

new cumulative trends than Thursday to Friday, except for Sports. Additionally, Thursday to

Friday had higher Jaccard Similarity than Tuesday to Wednesday. Thus, it’s clear there were

more news activity on Facebook from Thursday to Friday. However, it was unclear whether this

result was a norm because I discovered that same weekdays on different weeks have different

trend behaviors. It could be that for the week Trends 4 and 5 were collected, the news industry

was had more news one week than the other. On the other hand, if this trend is a norm, it

suggests that there was more activity on Thursday and Friday than earlier in the week, which

may be because more people are more activity on social media near the end of the weekday than

the beginning.

The findings from (1) Trending suggest that there may be a relationship between how

often Facebook’s Trending news update and the overall news industry updates. This suggestion

aligned with Groshek’s paper which stated Facebook’s news agenda and traditional news

agendas have strong similarities35.

(2) Trends and Tabs

This section investigated if Facebook gave more news exposure to certain news sources

and how many news articles Facebook exposed on average. Data showed that MSN had the

highest news exposure by 84 more than the 2nd highest, CNN which had 70 more than the 3rd

highest, The Hill. However, after the 3rd highest, the rest of the list did not have as significant

gap between the ranking. In fact, the 10th had about 1/3 the number of articles than the 1st. It’s

interesting to note that CNN and Fox News are liberal and conservative leaning news outlets,

respectively, and even though CNN was ranked 2nd and Fox News was 4th, there was a gap of 73

articles. This meant every hour there were 2.8 more CNN articles than Fox News. Furthermore,

CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, CBS News, NBC News, HuffPost, Washington Post,

BBC News, and Yahoo have more consistently liberal audience, according to Figure 30, and they

ranked within the top 15 news sources with the highest number of articles posted on Facebook

35 Groshek, Jacob, and Megan Clough Groshek. “Agenda Trending: Reciprocity and the Predictive Capacity of

Social Networking Sites in Intermedia Agenda Setting across Topics over Time.” 2013

32

Trending36. While only Fox News ranked within the top 15. In other words, 9 liberal news

sources and 1 conservative new source ranked within the top 15 most number of articles

published on Facebook Trending. Out of the news sources in Figure 30, only three conservative

news outlets were published on Facebook Trending in the 26-hours at least once while at least 19

liberal news sources were published. In fact, the number was higher than 19 because, for

example, Yahoo had Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Canada, which are

different news outlets under the same parent company. This aligned with my hypothesis that

Facebook gave more news exposure to certain news sources, more specifically liberal news

sources.

Figure 30: Liberal and Conservative Leaning News Source Metric

(3) Geo-location

This category investigated whether Facebook Trending news differed depending on

geographic location. The results from this category was shocking because there was no

difference in the type of Trending Topics Facebook posts between Chicago, IL and Northern

California. This showed that Facebook did not personalize its news trends based on location of

the user. However, different Trending Topics were presented at different times, but all Trending

Topics were exposed at some point in the data collection period for both locations. There are

different local news stations and local news in Northern California than in Chicago, IL. It was

highly unlikely trending local news in Chicago would become a trending local news in Northern

California and vice versa, or else it defeats the purpose of local news. In the beginning of the

year, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook would try to increase exposure of local news on

their News Feed37. It seems Facebook plans to only apply that for News Feed and not Trending

Topics, at least as of now.


36 Engel, Pamela. “Here's How Liberal Or Conservative Major News Sources Really Are.”Business Insider,

Business Insider, 21 Oct. 2014, www.businessinsider.com/what-your-preferred-news-outlet-says-about-your-

political-ideology-2014-10. 37 Brown, Pete. “Facebook Struggles to Promote 'Meaningful Interactions' for Local Publishers, Data Shows.”

33

This category investigated whether Facebook Trending news differed between different

demographics. The results showed it did, but to an insignificant degree. There was only one news

trend that showed up on a personal account but not the puppet account. A possible explanation

for the minor difference between the puppet and personal account was that there was a 17 second

lag between the data collection of the two accounts. This meant the Trending Topic that appeared

on the personal account could have appeared for the 17 second grace period and disappeared

before the next scrape. The news trend that did show up on the personal account was about Peru

Two drug smuggling and how one of the smugglers gave birth to twins. In theory, a younger

female has a higher chance on clicking on this news than a middle-aged male because many

celebrity media companies (i.e., People) that report on celebrity pregnancy and babies have a

readership of 70% women38. This study with the results from Chakraborty, Messias, and

Benevenuto’s study showed that even though certain demographics had a stronger influence on

what ended up on Trending Topics, the news trends that get placed on Trending Topics were

presented to all demographics with very little personalization. This means topics certain

demographic find interesting or meaningful may not be meaningful to other demographics.

Furthermore, this meant that under-represented demographics on Facebook are forced to view

news that over-represented demographics boost. This raises concern because news presented on

Trending could favor one demographic over another.

Limitation

There were a few limitations in the methodology. Facebook has been making efforts to

prevent scraping of its data. Though I hacked around to get the data I collected for this study, I

had to scale back on the amount of data I originally wanted to collect. Initially, I planned to

collect a week’s worth of data for each category. Some of the limitations with Facebook included

the following: Issue with multiple Facebook logins, Account safety, Trends that do not have full

information, Fake accounts. Additionally, I planned to collect data with Amazon Mechanical

Turk (MTurk), a crowd sourcing tool, to gather Facebook Trending data from other personal

accounts from specific demographics and/or geo-location. However, after the Cambridge

Analytica data scandal, my adviser and I decided it would be best to stay away from MTurk data

crowd sourcing because the data given to Cambridge Analytica was collected through MTurk.

Facebook detected when an account was logged in multiple times in short periods of

time. This raised an issue for my data collection because when debugging my data scraping code,

I had to log into Facebook multiple times in short periods of time. From learning from my study,

I believe when an account was logged in multiple times, Facebook no longer allowed the HTML

elements to be recognized so the login would fail.

Facebook tracks where a user’s account logs in from and when there is “unusual

behavior” in an account. When Facebook notices unusual activity, they log the account out of all

devices and ask the user to change their password. This was an issue when I was collecting data

on the cloud on my personal account. The cloud was in Columbus, Ohio which is a location I

have never logged into Facebook from. When I tried to log into my account from the cloud,

Facebook thought someone was hacking my account and forced me to change my password. As

a result, I was not able to collect data for (4) Personal vs Puppet on my personal account from the

cloud. Furthermore, when I was scraping the data too fast, Facebook labeled this as “unusual

38 “35 Eye Opening People Magazine Demographics.” BrandonGaille.com, 14 Jan. 2017, brandongaille.com/35-

eye-opening-people-magazine-demographics/.

34

behavior” too. The results were similar, Facebook logged out of all devices and asked me to reset

my password. As a result, (2) Trends and Tabs data could only be collected at 30-minute

intervals.

Sometimes, Facebook’s Trending Topics would be missing information such as a pop-up

to the news article links or description of the topic. I noticed in my data collection that there was

no consistency in this random behavior. Thus, I hypothesized that Facebook purposely added

inconsistently throughout the Trending section to catch automatic scraping of its data. This

caused issues in data collection because once one of Facebook’s random tests caught my script,

my script would terminate and no longer collect data for that run. This limited how long I could

collect data for consistency.

Issues with scraping data from Facebook was expected, especially after the Cambridge

Analytica data scandal. However, there was added complications when Facebook announced

they were taking down fake accounts. Mark Zuckerberg posted about how Facebook has been

making effort to shut down fake accounts on May 15, 2018, as shown in Figure 31. I only ran

into issue with the puppet account once, but I did notice that when Facebook detected “unusual”

behavior” in my personal account, it only asked me to change my password. When it noticed

“unusual behavior” in the puppet account, it asked me to verify my phone number by typing in a

code it sent to the phone. In other words, Facebook was checking to make sure that account was

a true account with a real phone number instead of a fake bot account.

Figure 31: Zuckerberg’s Post

There was a limitation with the AWS cloud server. I experienced a bug where

Chromedriver cannot be reached. This error occurred about 2.5 hours after a script was launched

on the cloud. Once the error occurred, the script would no longer scrape data because the UI was

35

no longer reachable. My adviser and I did the best of our ability to try to fix the issue. Memory

was not an issue as there was consistent free memory available when the script first started until

when the error occurred. I tried closing and relaunching the chrome driver every interval but that

caused red flags with Facebook. I added no-sandbox into my script, as many internet sources

recommended but that did not fix my issue. All software and packages were updated to the latest

version. Overall, this limited my ability to collect data for a long, continuous amount of time.

Further Research

One of the insights of my study concluded that there may be a correlation on news

industry activity and Facebook Trending Topics. A future research could compare the news

activity in the news industry, both traditional and online, and Facebook Trending news to

investigate whether Facebook truly follows the new industry patterns. The results of this

suggested study would show whether Facebook filters certain news. If the news activity did not

closely follow the news industry’s activity that means Facebook presents bias in their Trending

by selecting specific type of news topics. Another suggestion is to collect Facebook Trending

data from different countries and study if different countries have different Trending Topics.

This study discovered that different US cities do not have different Trending Topics, but the

suggestion enlarges the scale internationally.

VI. Conclusion

This study investigated whether Facebook personalizes its Trending Topics by

demographic and geo-location. It further investigated how often Facebook trends change and if

Facebook gives more news exposure to certain news sources. In the data collect and analysis, I

find that Facebook does not personalize by geo-location and only slightly personalize by

demographic. Furthermore, my results show that Facebook gives more news exposure to liberal

news sources than conservatives. Lastly, the analysis showed Facebook Trending Topics update

irregularly. This leads to a hypothesize that Facebook follows the news industry and publishes

news when the news industry publishes news. This is significant because Facebook has claimed

they do not include any bias or filter their Trending News, but my results show otherwise.

Furthermore, only a small subset of Facebook’s demographic influence what goes on the

Trending, but my analysis show there is very little personalization by demographic. This raises

concern because under-represented demographics have Trending News that do not attractive

their interest or even worse, skew their views to a different demographic’s views. Lastly, even

though Facebook claims they do not present any bias in their news, my results show it gives

more news exposure to liberal news source than conservatives.

36

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democracy.

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scandal-explainer/index.html?iid=EL.

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2018, www.invensis.net/blog/it/benefits-of-python-over-other-programming-languages/.

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Post, 16 Oct. 2017, blogs.sas.com/content/hiddeninsights/2017/10/16/algorithm-audits/.

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privacy/index.html.

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www.facebook.com/tstocky/posts/10100853082337958.

38

Appendix

Appendix 1: Data from Trends

Trend 1: Jaccard Similarity – Wednesday, 3/7/18 to Thursday, 3/8/18

Type Interval Average Min Max Standard Deviation

Top Trends 5 0.5839342 0.181818 1 0.764155876

Top Trends 10 0.36485084 0.083333 0.666667 0.604028837

Top Trends 15 0.46557987 0.181818 0.818182 0.682334137

Top Trends 20 0.30984848 0.083333 1 0.556640355

Top Trends 25 0.43504274 0.266667 0.666667 0.659577694

Top Trends 30 0.26260823 0.181818 0.428571 0.512453144

Top Trends 35 0.43818681 0.357143 0.538462 0.661956806

Top Trends 40 0.19772727 0 0.5 0.444665349

Top Trends 45 0.28869048 0.1875 0.428571 0.537299243

Top Trends 50 0.21010101 0.181818 0.266667 0.458367767

Top Trends 55 0.31111111 0.266667 0.333333 0.557773351

Top Trends 60 0.22424242 0.181818 0.266667 0.473542421

Politics 5 0.86720143 0.666667 1 0.931236504

Politics 10 0.80554739 0.428571 1 0.897522921

Politics 15 0.73529501 0.428571 1 0.857493445

Politics 20 0.68851981 0.333333 1 0.82977094

Politics 25 0.69191919 0.333333 1 0.831816802

Politics 30 0.604662 0.333333 0.818182 0.777600157

Politics 35 0.60714286 0.333333 1 0.779193722

Politics 40 0.53627622 0.25 0.818182 0.732308831

Politics 45 0.46053293 0.176471 0.666667 0.678625767

Politics 50 0.48504274 0.25 0.666667 0.696450095

Politics 55 0.41666667 0.25 0.666667 0.645497224

Politics 60 0.42156863 0.176471 0.666667 0.649283164

Science/Tech 5 0.88660359 0.538462 1 0.9415963

Science/Tech 10 0.80707528 0.538462 1 0.898373685

Science/Tech 15 0.80313626 0.538462 1 0.896178697

Science/Tech 20 0.75203963 0.538462 1 0.867202183

Science/Tech 25 0.72105672 0.538462 0.818182 0.849150588

Science/Tech 30 0.67599068 0.538462 0.818182 0.822186521

Science/Tech 35 0.71794872 0.538462 1 0.847318546

Science/Tech 40 0.67832168 0.538462 0.818182 0.823602864

Science/Tech 45 0.58119658 0.538462 0.666667 0.7623625

Science/Tech 50 0.55555556 0.333333 0.666667 0.745355992

Science/Tech 55 0.53554779 0.25 0.818182 0.731811305

Science/Tech 60 0.39423077 0.25 0.538462 0.627877989

Sports 5 0.86987522 0.666667 1 0.932671015

Sports 10 0.81461676 0.666667 1 0.90256122

Sports 15 0.7425302 0.538462 1 0.861701919

Sports 20 0.75203963 0.538462 1 0.867202183

Sports 25 0.73304473 0.428571 1 0.856180316

Sports 30 0.65401265 0.428571 0.818182 0.808710488

Sports 35 0.64502165 0.428571 0.818182 0.803132396

Sports 40 0.65084915 0.428571 0.818182 0.806752224

Sports 45 0.58119658 0.538462 0.666667 0.7623625

Sports 50 0.5950716 0.428571 0.818182 0.771408838

Sports 55 0.58119658 0.538462 0.666667 0.7623625

39

Sports 60 0.53846154 0.538462 0.538462 0.733799386

Entertainment 5 0.85451803 0.538462 1 0.924401445

Entertainment 10 0.76923077 0.538462 1 0.877058019

Entertainment 15 0.73151091 0.538462 1 0.855284113

Entertainment 20 0.67810315 0.25 1 0.823470186

Entertainment 25 0.72999223 0.538462 1 0.854395827

Entertainment 30 0.64568765 0.538462 0.818182 0.803546916

Entertainment 35 0.67249417 0.538462 0.818182 0.82005742

Entertainment 40 0.53627622 0.25 0.818182 0.732308831

Entertainment 45 0.58119658 0.538462 0.666667 0.7623625

Entertainment 50 0.54456654 0.428571 0.666667 0.737947522

Entertainment 55 0.44230769 0.25 0.538462 0.665062172

Entertainment 60 0.53846154 0.538462 0.538462 0.733799386

Trend 2: Jaccard Similarities – Wednesday, 3/14/18 to Thursday, 3/15/18

Topic Interval Avg Min Max Standard Deviation

Top Trends 5 0.771027 0.181818 1 0.87808125

Top Trends 10 0.67951 0.083333 1 0.824324262

Top Trends 15 0.617197 0.083333 1 0.785618687

Top Trends 20 0.570689 0.181818 1 0.755439935

Top Trends 25 0.540294 0.083333 1 0.735046675

Top Trends 30 0.552632 0.083333 1 0.743392519

Top Trends 35 0.504391 0.083333 1 0.710204997

Top Trends 40 0.482348 0.083333 1 0.694512595

Top Trends 45 0.476563 0.083333 1 0.690335064

Top Trends 50 0.478761 0.083333 0.818182 0.691925498

Top Trends 55 0.559239 0.2 0.818182 0.74782316

Top Trends 60 0.381854 0 1 0.617943571

Politics 5 0.934812 0 1 0.966856783

Politics 10 0.903866 0 1 0.950718806

Politics 15 0.892534 0.666667 1 0.944739955

Politics 20 0.865741 0.666667 1 0.930451901

Politics 25 0.847842 0.538462 1 0.920783261

Politics 30 0.827506 0.538462 1 0.909673473

Politics 35 0.775712 0 1 0.880745192

Politics 40 0.783929 0.538462 1 0.88539767

Politics 45 0.770313 0.428571 1 0.87767478

Politics 50 0.775179 0.538462 1 0.880442414

Politics 55 0.754335 0.428571 1 0.868524846

Politics 60 0.726787 0.538462 1 0.852518095

Science/Tech 5 0.925648 0 1 0.962106145

Science/Tech 10 0.900104 0 1 0.948738369

Science/Tech 15 0.8816 0 1 0.938935301

Science/Tech 20 0.882997 0 1 0.939679005

Science/Tech 25 0.819106 0 1 0.90504485

Science/Tech 30 0.837753 0 1 0.91528822

Science/Tech 35 0.803059 0 1 0.896135442

Science/Tech 40 0.80303 0 1 0.896119581

40

Science/Tech 45 0.827433 0.538462 1 0.909633434

Science/Tech 50 0.774054 0 1 0.879803122

Science/Tech 55 0.815313 0.538462 1 0.902946783

Science/Tech 60 0.791667 0.666667 1 0.889756521

Sports 5 0.936478 0 1 0.967718029

Sports 10 0.921373 0 1 0.959881701

Sports 15 0.860981 0 1 0.927890588

Sports 20 0.877428 0 1 0.936711336

Sports 25 0.846797 0 1 0.920215671

Sports 30 0.824835 0 1 0.90820421

Sports 35 0.883052 0.538462 1 0.939708416

Sports 40 0.772339 0 1 0.878828068

Sports 45 0.864875 0.538462 1 0.929986402

Sports 50 0.79238 0 1 0.890157308

Sports 55 0.832526 0.538462 1 0.912428873

Sports 60 0.739899 0 1 0.860173814

Entertainment 5 0.812246 0 1 0.90124701

Entertainment 10 0.755799 0 1 0.869367226

Entertainment 15 0.619494 0 1 0.787079353

Entertainment 20 0.686027 0 1 0.82826743

Entertainment 25 0.652299 0 1 0.807650203

Entertainment 30 0.646465 0 1 0.804030252

Entertainment 35 0.708625 0 1 0.841798496

Entertainment 40 0.574722 0 1 0.758103934

Entertainment 45 0.638258 0 1 0.798910243

Entertainment 50 0.483321 0 1 0.695213116

Entertainment 55 0.757576 0 1 0.87038828

Entertainment 60 0.598533 0 1 0.773649411

Trend 3: Jaccard Similarity – Saturday, 4/21/18 to Sunday, 4/22/18


Top Trends 5 0.830378 0.538462 1 0.911250764

Top Trends 10 0.734254 0.428571 1 0.856886131

Top Trends 15 0.695804 0.333333 1 0.834148785

Top Trends 20 0.613648 0.428571 1 0.783357043

Top Trends 25 0.566767 0.428571 0.666667 0.752839005

Top Trends 30 0.51974 0.333333 0.666667 0.720929622

Top Trends 35 0.528846 0.333333 0.666667 0.727218092

Top Trends 40 0.462062 0.333333 0.538462 0.67975124

Top Trends 45 0.403694 0.25 0.538462 0.635368813

Top Trends 50 0.354762 0.25 0.428571 0.595618926

Top Trends 55 0.37381 0.25 0.428571 0.611399643

Top Trends 60 0.342949 0.25 0.538462 0.585618236

Politics 5 0.922619 0.666667 1 0.960530607

Politics 10 0.861472 0.666667 1 0.928155085

Politics 15 0.819477 0.538462 1 0.90524959

Politics 20 0.780886 0.538462 1 0.883677419

Politics 25 0.719856 0.538462 1 0.848443222

Politics 30 0.731121 0.428571 1 0.855055981

Politics 35 0.679196 0.538462 1 0.824133366

Politics 40 0.665668 0.333333 0.818182 0.815884591

Politics 45 0.656122 0.428571 0.818182 0.810013368

41

Politics 50 0.516484 0.428571 0.538462 0.718667876

Politics 55 0.593407 0.428571 0.666667 0.770328887

Politics 60 0.607143 0.428571 0.666667 0.779193722

Science/Tech 5 0.96875 0.666667 1 0.984250984

Science/Tech 10 0.9375 0.666667 1 0.968245837

Science/Tech 15 0.902778 0.666667 1 0.950146188

Science/Tech 20 0.886905 0.5 1 0.941756212

Science/Tech 25 0.840909 0.666667 1 0.917010955

Science/Tech 30 0.805556 0.666667 1 0.897527468

Science/Tech 35 0.802083 0.5 1 0.895591053

Science/Tech 40 0.77381 0.5 1 0.879664438

Science/Tech 45 0.736111 0.5 1 0.857969178

Science/Tech 50 0.733333 0.5 1 0.856348839

Science/Tech 55 0.683333 0.5 1 0.826639785

Science/Tech 60 0.6875 0.5 1 0.829156198

Sports 5 0.906926 0.666667 1 0.952326838

Sports 10 0.830087 0.666667 1 0.911090874

Sports 15 0.819477 0.538462 1 0.90524959

Sports 20 0.760906 0.538462 1 0.872299124

Sports 25 0.716011 0.428571 0.818182 0.846174486

Sports 30 0.674437 0.538462 0.818182 0.821240936

Sports 35 0.645646 0.428571 0.818182 0.803521014

Sports 40 0.622378 0.333333 0.818182 0.788909134

Sports 45 0.584249 0.428571 0.666667 0.76436188

Sports 50 0.589744 0.538462 0.666667 0.767947648

Sports 55 0.535714 0.25 0.666667 0.731925055

Sports 60 0.470925 0.25 0.666667 0.686239687

Entertainment 5 0.934217 0.8 1 0.966549105

Entertainment 10 0.884668 0.666667 1 0.940567972

Entertainment 15 0.841362 0.538462 1 0.917258056

Entertainment 20 0.81292 0.538462 1 0.901620992

Entertainment 25 0.763479 0.428571 1 0.873772822

Entertainment 30 0.763533 0.538462 1 0.873803618

Entertainment 35 0.726399 0.538462 0.818182 0.85229021

Entertainment 40 0.669997 0.538462 0.818182 0.818533243

Entertainment 45 0.665584 0.357143 0.818182 0.815833571

Entertainment 50 0.649351 0.428571 0.818182 0.805822964

Entertainment 55 0.609424 0.357143 0.818182 0.780656076

Entertainment 60 0.61297 0.428571 0.818182 0.782924238

Trend 4: Jaccard Similarity – Thursday, 4/26/18 to Friday, 4/27/18


Top Trends 5 0.785834 0.538462 1 0.886472813

Top Trends 10 0.674623 0.428571 1 0.821354367

Top Trends 15 0.584166 0.25 1 0.764307421

Top Trends 20 0.54326 0.25 0.818182 0.737061945

Top Trends 25 0.483971 0.333333 0.818182 0.695679937

Top Trends 30 0.435435 0.25 0.818182 0.659874939

Top Trends 35 0.46131 0.25 0.666667 0.679197706

Top Trends 40 0.367139 0.176471 0.666667 0.605920097

Top Trends 45 0.323063 0 0.666667 0.568385924

Top Trends 50 0.351961 0.176471 0.666667 0.593262829

42

Top Trends 55 0.330159 0.111111 0.666667 0.574594405

Top Trends 60 0.238051 0.052632 0.538462 0.487904762

Politics 5 0.849266 0 1 0.921556259

Politics 10 0.738833 0 1 0.859553719

Politics 15 0.73856 0.333333 1 0.859394953

Politics 20 0.691642 0.333333 1 0.831649981

Politics 25 0.511814 0 1 0.71541173

Politics 30 0.639435 0.333333 0.818182 0.799646572

Politics 35 0.594364 0.333333 0.818182 0.770950043

Politics 40 0.554814 0.25 0.666667 0.744858532

Politics 45 0.484235 0.176471 0.666667 0.695869758

Politics 50 0.415385 0 0.666667 0.644503387

Politics 55 0.488095 0.25 0.666667 0.698638131

Politics 60 0.452543 0.176471 0.666667 0.672712833

Science/Tech 5 0.819245 0 1 0.905121584

Science/Tech 10 0.665085 0 1 0.815527385

Science/Tech 15 0.776837 0.538462 1 0.881383684

Science/Tech 20 0.596023 0 1 0.772025275

Science/Tech 25 0.462326 0 0.818182 0.679945258

Science/Tech 30 0.612684 0.428571 1 0.782741089

Science/Tech 35 0.632784 0.333333 1 0.795477142

Science/Tech 40 0.610473 0.25 1 0.781327627

Science/Tech 45 0.591187 0.333333 1 0.768886592

Science/Tech 50 0.354762 0 0.666667 0.595618926

Science/Tech 55 0.571429 0.333333 1 0.755928946

Science/Tech 60 0.439139 0.176471 0.818182 0.662675857

Sports 5 0.754958 0 1 0.868883474

Sports 10 0.574212 0 1 0.757767446

Sports 15 0.618364 0 1 0.786361299

Sports 20 0.499304 0 0.818182 0.706614653

Sports 25 0.455333 0 1 0.674783333

Sports 30 0.422198 0 0.818182 0.649767783

Sports 35 0.476604 0 1 0.690365322

Sports 40 0.397762 0.111111 0.818182 0.630683863

Sports 45 0.389632 0.176471 0.818182 0.624204782

Sports 50 0.360218 0 0.818182 0.600181273

Sports 55 0.307516 0.111111 0.666667 0.554541558

Sports 60 0.286442 0.052632 0.666667 0.53520296

Entertainment 5 0.797166 0 1 0.892841527

Entertainment 10 0.627964 0 1 0.792441609

Entertainment 15 0.707398 0 1 0.841069477

Entertainment 20 0.578897 0 0.818182 0.760853004

Entertainment 25 0.592438 0 1 0.769699854

Entertainment 30 0.505236 0 1 0.710799202

Entertainment 35 0.502245 0 1 0.708692672

Entertainment 40 0.59431 0.333333 0.818182 0.770915334

Entertainment 45 0.54917 0.176471 0.818182 0.741059906

Entertainment 50 0.452525 0 0.818182 0.672699972

Entertainment 55 0.503692 0.176471 0.818182 0.70971289

Entertainment 60 0.478355 0.333333 0.818182 0.691632112

43

Trend 5: Jaccard Similarity – Tuesday, 5/15/18 to Wednesday, 5/16/18


Top Trends 5 0.621414 0.25 1 0.788297871

Top Trends 10 0.49392 0.071429 1 0.702794129

Top Trends 15 0.392564 0 0.818182 0.626548963

Top Trends 20 0.34303 0 0.666667 0.58568722

Top Trends 25 0.295228 0 0.538462 0.543348802

Top Trends 30 0.259829 0 0.538462 0.509734303

Top Trends 35 0.179038 0 0.428571 0.423129155

Top Trends 40 0.238311 0 0.538462 0.488170778

Top Trends 45 0.153651 0.034483 0.25 0.391983565

Top Trends 50 0.131865 0.034483 0.25 0.363131689

Top Trends 55 0.166667 0 0.333333 0.40824829

Top Trends 60 0.214286 0 0.428571 0.46291005

Politics 5 0.759806 0.2 1 0.871668392

Politics 10 0.65994 0.153846 1 0.812366949

Politics 15 0.580551 0.153846 1 0.761938857

Politics 20 0.483766 0.071429 0.818182 0.695533057

Politics 25 0.452298 0.071429 0.818182 0.672530819

Politics 30 0.42371 0 0.818182 0.650929815

Politics 35 0.365764 0.034483 0.666667 0.604783884

Politics 40 0.302093 0.034483 0.538462 0.54962946

Politics 45 0.246032 0.071429 0.333333 0.496015873

Politics 50 0.25 0.071429 0.428571 0.5

Politics 55 0.286472 0.034483 0.538462 0.53523093

Politics 60 0.304945 0.071429 0.538462 0.552218304

Science/Tech 5 0.787653 0 1 0.887498286

Science/Tech 10 0.709751 0.25 1 0.842467424

Science/Tech 15 0.678055 0.153846 1 0.82344112

Science/Tech 20 0.607567 0.111111 1 0.779465866

Science/Tech 25 0.524032 0.153846 0.818182 0.723900217

Science/Tech 30 0.515917 0.071429 0.818182 0.718273914

Science/Tech 35 0.454924 0.034483 0.818182 0.674480827

Science/Tech 40 0.463709 0.034483 0.818182 0.680961603

Science/Tech 45 0.370469 0.034483 0.538462 0.608661328

Science/Tech 50 0.302093 0.034483 0.538462 0.54962946

Science/Tech 55 0.333333 0 0.666667 0.577350269

Science/Tech 60 0.409091 0 0.818182 0.639602149

Sports 5 0.626893 0 1 0.791765888

Sports 10 0.526892 0 1 0.72587358

Sports 15 0.654069 0.428571 0.818182 0.808745488

Sports 20 0.414038 0 0.666667 0.643458113

Sports 25 0.305556 0 0.538462 0.552770798

Sports 30 0.478555 0.333333 0.636364 0.691776538

Sports 35 0.420214 0.176471 0.583333 0.64823926

Sports 40 0.353846 0.25 0.461538 0.59484969

Sports 45 0.324405 0.1875 0.5 0.569565415

Sports 50 0.095238 0 0.285714 0.3086067

Sports 55 0.24697 0.227273 0.266667 0.496960458

Sports 60 0.24697 0.227273 0.266667 0.496960458

Entertainment 5 0.656177 0 1 0.810047626

Entertainment 10 0.546753 0 1 0.739427648

Entertainment 15 0.634911 0.26087 1 0.796813319

44

Entertainment 20 0.322594 0 0.818182 0.567973655

Entertainment 25 0.226018 0 0.428571 0.475413445

Entertainment 30 0.398289 0.176471 0.818182 0.631101779

Entertainment 35 0.369545 0.16 0.818182 0.607902504

Entertainment 40 0.291644 0.16 0.538462 0.540040778

Entertainment 45 0.232906 0.115385 0.333333 0.482603339

Entertainment 50 0.038462 0 0.115385 0.196116135

Entertainment 55 0.203704 0.074074 0.333333 0.451335467

Entertainment 60 0.287088 0.035714 0.538462 0.535805853

Appendix 2: Data from Trends and Tabs

Trends and Tabs 1: Every News Source Facebook Published

CNNMoney

The New York

Times Ars Technica Liverpool FC www.gizbot.com

7News - WHDH

Boston WDSU News MarketWatch

Idaho State

Journal

moneycontrol.co

m WESH 2 News

WGN TV PCWorld inews.co.uk Mirror Football GSMArena.com Fox 35 WOFL WFMJ Tennessean

nativenewsonline

.net

www.nationalne

wswatch.com

Tulsa's Channel 8

- KTUL

ESPN

Portland Press

Herald

lovinmanchester.

com NHL Guitar World SB Nation

www.13wmaz.co

m

WGRZ - Channel

2, Buffalo

Idaho Press-

Tribune

www.nationalobs

erver.com Bradenton Herald

Reuters RealClearPolitics

medicalxpress.co

m

London Evening

Standard

www.phonearena

.com

The Seattle

Times

Anchorage Daily

News

atlantablackstar.c

om www.kivitv.com

www.palmbeach

post.com

ABC Action

News - WFTS -

Tampa Bay

6abc Action

News Recode Autoblog theScore SlashGear

Talking Points

Memo Bustle

CBS7 News /

KOSA-TV KTVB The Raw Story NBC 6

The Bangor

Daily News

Smithsonian

Magazine

www.belfastlive.

co.uk talksport.com SPIN WDTN-TV Inverse

Hawaii News

Now Mic Teen Vogue TheBlaze

Bleacher Report The Epoch Times Digital Trends

Las Vegas

Review-Journal Stars and Stripes

The Columbus

Dispatch

The Washington

Times

WMC Action

News 5 National Post teleSUR

morungexpress.c

om

WPMT FOX43 The Guardian www.kqed.org IGN TechRadar

WRCB Channel

3 Eyewitness

News WebMD news360.com

Fox Carolina

News www.whio.com Quartz

News 12 Long

Island The Verge LiveScience ComicBook.com

www.zerohedge.

com WWLP-22News WWLTV Slate.com

East Idaho

News.com 9to5toys.com WMUR-TV

FOX8 Washington Post MacRumors

Entertainment

Weekly

taskandpurpose.c

om

www.consumeraf

fairs.com

www.dailywire.c

om Townhall.com www.wtol.com BGR WPSD-TV

NBC Sports WFAA

Manchester

Evening News New York Post

Android

Authority 13 On Your Side KMBC 9

www.centralmain

e.com

www.dailypost.c

o.uk

www.smartbrief.

com News 12 NBC 26

TechCrunch WSOC-TV

www.moneysavi

ngexpert.com

signup.freebies.c

om CBC Sports

www.fox25bosto

n.com

Washington

Examiner KVUE philly.com The Next Web

www.algemeiner.

com

The Hill Yahoo

www.news-

mail.com.au Variety CTV News speedsociety.com

WHO TV

Channel 13 News blogs.edweek.org

Lebanon Daily

News VentureBeat VICE News

TIME Daily Telegraph

www.sciencedail

y.com

The Baltimore

Sun VICE

www.bollywoodl

ife.com

KXXV Central

Texas News Now junkee.com exclaim.ca

www.512tech.co

m ABC 7 Chicago

WGNO - News

With A Twist www.edweek.org

www.sciencenew

s.org

www.catchnews.

com

www.comingsoo

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