"If The News Is Important, It Will Find Me”

Earlier this year I spoke to a university class. I asked the 20 or so people in the room where they got their news.

Newspapers? (Online or in print.) Two or three.

Radio? A couple.

TV news? One brave soul put up her hand.

So if they didn’t get their news from traditional media outlets, where did they get it from?

Facebook, they replied.

My tiny poll confirmed what research is increasingly finding out on a wider scale: When it comes to news, many people learn about the world from social media.

According to the Pew Research Center, one in three Americans get their news through Facebook today.

This is why some of the largest media outlets in the U.S., such as the New York Times, recently struck an agreement with Facebook to host its news on that site.

Of course, people aren’t going to Facebook for news; they find it there while looking for something else.

"People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally," says Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew.

And how do they do that?

The same way we all do: A friend posts a link and says: “Check this out!”

This is more than just a shift in the source of information. It also represents a profound shift in thinking.

Among the first to notice this was Jane Buckingham of Intelligence Group, a market research company.

As reported by the New YorkTimes in 2008, Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group on where people got their news.

A college student said: “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

Let that sink in a moment: If news is important, it will find me.

For the mainstream media, or for any non-profit group trying to share its messages, this is represents a reversal of how news dissemination has worked for a very long time.

Previously, people depended on experts to help them make sense of the world—to select the stories they thought people should see.

It was what’s known as a “push” strategy. A few individuals at the centre push information out to consumers.

Today we live in a “pull” world. People look for the information they want and discard the rest.

Of course, it was probably always this way; few people read everything an editor put into a magazine or newspaper.

But social media changes things dramatically. Instead of a few sources of information about the world, people have access to a multitude—including their friends.

Increasingly, that is the new filter being applied when deciding what to consider.

So instead of subscribing to a newspaper or newsletter, or watching a newscast, people check their Facebook feed to see what’s coming their way.

Their friends are the new editors, in other words, and they do the same for the people they know.

Again, it was always this way, whether around the campfire, the church foyer or talking over the backyard fence. Social media changes the scale.

For non-profit groups, this means using people (donors) to amplify and pass along their messages—being part of the social media conversation.

We can contribute to the conversation, and try to shape it, but in the end it’s what the audience decides is important that will get shared, and which others will finally see.

Because when it comes to making the news these days, many people don’t go looking for it. They wait for it to find them.

 Infographic at top from Daniel Zeevi.