社交媒体在美国政治新闻传播中的作用日益重要。《华尔街日报》由此为报道美国大选选取了一个非常有意思的角度——对比不同政治倾向信源的Facebook帖子。2015年，期刊《科学》上发表的一篇文章就Facebook用户对信息流中新闻推送的反应进行了调查。研究者根据用户自己在Facebook上注明的政治倾向，将他们转发的新闻的信源分为“非常自由”、“自由”、“中立”、“保守”、“非常保守”五个类别，并给出了500个信源的名单。《华尔街日报》以此为依据进行了一次新闻实验。报道将来自“非常自由”和“非常保守”信源的新闻内容制作成了蓝色和红色两组信息流。通过在页面上并置两组信息流的方式，报道直观地呈现了两类信源在希拉里、特朗普、枪支、堕胎、ISIS等重要人物或议题上的不同看法。值得一提的是，《华尔街日报》不对信源内容进行人工筛选，所有帖子都用Facebook的开发者工具（Graph API）抓取，每小时更新，从而保证了报道的客观性。

Does Facebook think you are liberal or conservative? Here are the 98 things the site believes it knows about you.Facebook may know your political leanings, labelling you as liberal, conservative or moderate, just based on your profile.

In the US, the social media giant has been working out people’s politics based on the pages they like and their activity on the site.

But it isn't just your politics. For users worldwide, the site has revealed it uses 98 pieces of information it believes it knows about users.Among the personal data used are benign pieces of profile information -  such as age, gender and location - to more complex traits, such as if someone has donated to charity to the restaurants they have eaten at and even where they have been on holiday.

But reports indicate this stretches to politics too.

Depending on whether someone has liked a particular politician’s campaign page, such as Donald Trump, the platform builds up a profile.

For instance, users who like Donald Trump will be classed as conservative.

But the New York Times explains that even if users don’t like the politicians directly, they can be lumped into the same political category based on their other likes which other conservatives like, such as the National Rifle Association.

According to the Times, the information is used to better target advertising. When incorporating political information, it means campaigners can actively target demographics beyond their core support, such as conservatives targeting moderate.

But this could also potentially see campaigners targeting core supporters with more hard line messages and softening their stance slightly for moderates.

MailOnline contacted Facebook for comment.

Facebook recently revamped its ad preferences settings to show its billions of users how they are being targeted by advertisers.

In the golden age of information, having insight into a person’s habits, interests and political leanings can be invaluable.

The social media giant has recently revealed that it gleans 98 personal data points in order to target users with ‘useful and relevant’ ads, based on everything from the device they use to where they are based.

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According to the New York Times, users can see how the social media behemoth has categorised them by digging into their settings.

​【编辑】文洳荞