BuzzFeed Tries to Break Readers Out of Their Social-Media Bubbles
- Publisher will expose audience to opinions from across the web
- News outlets seek out other viewpoints after surprise election
The Buzzfeed app.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
BuzzFeed News, attempting to address a problem media companies have grappled with since the presidential election, introduced a feature to help readers see what people outside their social-media networks are saying about the news.
The idea is an attempt to get readers to understand -- or even acknowledge the existence of -- the viewpoints of people who don’t think like them. BuzzFeed’s “Outside Your Bubble” feature will appear at the bottom of its widely-shared articles. A BuzzFeed staffer will curate different opinions from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs and elsewhere with help from data tools, Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith said in an interview.