title: Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook.
abstract: The advent of social media and microblogging platforms has radically changed the way we consume information and form opinions. In this paper, we explore the anatomy of the information space on Facebook by characterizing on a global scale the news consumption patterns of 376 million users over a time span of 6 y (January 2010 to December 2015). We find that users tend to focus on a limited set of pages, producing a sharp community structure among news outlets. We also find that the preferences of users and news providers differ. By tracking how Facebook pages "like" each other and examining their geolocation, we find that news providers are more geographically confined than users. We devise a simple model of selective exposure that reproduces the observed connectivity patterns.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
authors.forename: Ana Lucía
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabiana
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0833-5388
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zollo
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
authors.forename: Michela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Del Vicario
authors.affiliation: IUSS Institute for Advanced Study, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6260-4422
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bessi
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.|ISC-CNR Uos "Sapienza," 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3414-2686
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scala
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.|ISC-CNR Uos "Sapienza," 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Guido
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9377-3616
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Caldarelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02115.
authors.forename: H Eugene
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2800-4495
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Stanley
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Social Science, Networks Department, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy; walterquattrociocchi@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Quattrociocchi
keywords: Facebook; computational social science; misinformation; news consumption