politics

The 2013 Australian Federal Election has already been coined the ‘Social Media Election’, but even savvy users who frequently turn to social media platforms to track trending political issues may have been surprised by last week’s announcement that Yahoo!7 and Seven News were partnering with Facebook to provide unique insights into Australian opinions on the election. Unlike Twitter, which is known as a public forum, many users view Facebook as a more ‘private’ or ‘restricted’ space for sharing content. We wondered whether this partnership may see individual users’ status updates shared on news broadcasts, and decided to investigate.