Team DailyPedia
A new study carried out by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute revealed that 59% of links shared on social media sites have never actually been clicked, reports The Washington Post.
To verify their findings, Arnaud Legout and his study co-authors gathered two data sets. The first set were all tweets containing Bit.ly-shortened links to five major news sites during a one-month period last summer. Meanwhile, the second set included all of the clicks attached to the set of shortened links, as logged by bit.ly during the same period.
Their findings showed that while “viral” news are widely shared, they are not necessarily read.
“People are more willing to share an article than read it,” explained Legout.
“This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper,” he added.
The researchers also noted that most clicks to news stories were made on links shared by regular Twitter users instead of the links from the media organization.
