Social Media Diet Audit
I became curious about how big a part of my Twitter/X feed urban planning/issues were becoming. It's a topic I'm interested in, but it felt like the space of my attention it was taking up was disproportionately large.
I Googled "Social Media Feed Audit" but the results are all about auditing what an account is putting out, not what one is taking in. That can be useful for businesses or brands, but for the individual consumer, I think I'd like to treat it like looking at one's diet - how many calories are you taking in, which macro nutrients and in what proportions, any vitamin or mineral deficiencies etc. How do we convert those ideas to metrics in social media?
1. Time
Knowing how much time you spend on Facebook, Twitter/X, etc. is a gross measurement of quantity and not necessarily that informative of what you are consuming
2. Fact Vs Fiction
Not only a way to measure how much misinformation you're taking in, but also whether you spend time on purposeful fiction (e.g. Marvel fan-fiction, tv episode recaps) or sources of learning.
3. Emotional Content
This one could be tricky and would need to be implemented by a third party, as it exposes what the algorithms do to mental health. Is the content I'm consuming geared toward hitting my dopamine centres, increasing my anxiety (or depression) or making me angry/outraged?
4. Media Type
How much video am I consuming versus photos or long-form text?
5. Topics/Keywords
What topics am I actually reading/viewing? In what proportion?
6. Engagement
There's what the algorithm puts in my feed and what I actually engage with. Ideally, these 2 should start to align over time, but we don't really know what the algorithm is actually up to, do we?
7. Subjective vs Objective
Am I consuming content with a personal/subjective bent (blogs, first-person narratives of experiences, editorials) or objective (articles with strict journalistic standards, academic studies)?
8. Geography
Where in the world is the content coming from?
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