Facebook and the News

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On February 4, 2004 “Thefacebook” was launched. It was created by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard University. This website was the result of a pervious site called “Facemash” which was created by Zuckerberg and three of his friends from Harvard. “Thefacebook”, which has been known as just “Facebook” since its name change in 2005, was originally just for the use of other students at Harvard University. A month after its creation the site expanded to Stanford University, Colombia University, and Yale University. It continued to grow its membership and in October of 2005 had expanded to high school and universities in America and in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. About a year later, in September 2006 anyone who was 13 years or older with a valid email address could become a member of Facebook (Burt). As of January 1, 2014 Facebook as 1.3 billion monthly users. (Source 2)

Who uses Facebook for news

The use of Facebook is extensive in the media now. Many news outlets will have an online presence, and most will also have a Facebook page as well. Because of the media’s use of Facebook and the amount of Facebook users, many people now get news from Facebook both intentionally and unintentionally. Of the 30% of adults who get news from Facebook, 22% percent says that Facebook is their main source of news according to the Pew Research Center. (Source 3) This paper will discuss the effects that Facebook has on society and traditional news and media.

Facebook users looking to Facebook as their main source of news is a good and bad thing, and although there is a large amount of people that use Facebook as their main source of news content, it is still very small compared to the amount of people w...

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...ary.arizona.edu/ehost/detail?sid=7a479554-9349-432f-828b-4c5ea9675e12%40sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=83356294

10) http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/ehost/detail?sid=f949f786-d02e-4857-aa16-4dc584456290%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=67138166

11) http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/ehost/detail?sid=b43652a7-a8c8-493b-ae4d-03d188949bfe%40sessionmgr113&vid=1&hid=109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=83003333

12) http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2012/03/introducing-interest-lists/

13) http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Portals/1/documents/Fact%20Sheets/Facebook%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

14) http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/10/01/how-social-media-solves-crimes/

15) http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/police-turning-facebook-fight-crime

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