A new Rutgers study compares social media platforms (SMPs) to four case studies (brick-and-mortar booksellers, supermarkets, and public libraries) to better understand SMPs as sources of public information. It has found all four are information intermediaries that influence public information via three key mechanisms: strategic direction of attention, moderation of content, and intervention in third-party content production.

The study, “Platform Analogies: How Bookstores, Libraries, and Supermarkets Can Inform Thinking on Social Media,” by Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Caitlin Petre and Ph.D. Candidate Nicole Weber was published open-access in the International Journal of Communication in January 2024.

“Discussions about social media platforms often tend to focus on what is unprecedented about them,” Petre said, “So for this piece, Nicole and I wanted to flip that around to consider the ways these technologies are the current iteration of institutions and companies that have faced similar issues for many, many years. Looking at these historical precedents and making explicit comparisons helps us to understand platforms in a different way.”

Petre and Weber said despite the clear differences in the business models between the case studies examined in the paper and SMPs, by historically contextualizing SMPs as a next-generation type of information intermediary they have been able to distinguish between what is truly unprecedented about SMPs (their unparalleled scale and their use of algorithms in ranking and filtering third-party content) and, just as importantly, what is not unprecedented about SMPs (the role they play).

"Looking at these historical precedents and making explicit comparisons helps us to understand social media platforms in a different way.”

These findings, the authors said, have significant implications for the ability of scholars, the government, policymakers, and the public to think about and address current and pressing questions surrounding SMPs such as regulation, their role as sources of public information in democratic contexts, and the civic responsibilities they may or may not have.

Booksellers, supermarkets, and public libraries, the authors wrote, are all “institutions that have confronted similar normative questions and have mediated information in various ways—some salutary, some harmful, some in-between,” and thus this study’s comparison of the four as information intermediaries can help scholars, policymakers, and others “consider a wider array of possible paths forward for SMPs.”

Petre said she was inspired to write this paper after an epiphany she had waiting in line at a supermarket. “I was looking at the magazine rack, and I saw Time Magazine next to The New York Times, next to the National Enquirer and Weekly World News, which had a story about Elvis giving birth to an alien baby. It was really a mishmash of information. And I thought, this is just like the Facebook newsfeed. All these different sources of information are near each other, and it's really unclear how they coexist in one information space.

“The supermarket news rack also made me think about the aftermath of the 2016 election when there was a lot of anxiety about fake news, and the idea that fake news could show up on Facebook‘s newsfeed sandwiched between a story from The New York Times and The Nation. It could be a piece of propaganda that looked like news. And this was really concerning to people. And so initially I thought, well, that is just like the news rack at a supermarket.”

While researching supermarkets as sources of information, Petre said she learned about a major controversy supermarkets faced in 1997 which presents a useful comparison to some of the concerns the public currently has about SMPs.

“In the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death,” Petre said, “there was a backlash against the paparazzi and tabloid press because of the role they played in her fatal accident. There were many calls for supermarkets to take the tabloids off their news racks. What I discovered as I started going through some of the supermarket trade publications is there was a debate among supermarkets and chain grocery stores about this call for the removal of tabloids.”

While researching supermarkets as sources of information, Petre said she learned about a major controversy supermarkets faced in 1997 which presents a useful comparison to some of the concerns the public currently has about SMPs.

Petre said some stores said they would take the tabloids off because they were not appropriate. Other said they would keep the tabloids on the racks, but they would add a piece of laminated paper in front of them telling the public they could choose to look at them or not. And there were others that said they would keep them on the racks because it wasn’t their job to be the arbiter of what consumers wanted in terms of information. If they wanted to buy a tabloid, they could buy it.

“This was a fascinating historical anecdote to me because it is so similar to content moderation controversies social media platforms now struggle with repeatedly as they cope with content that's deemed inappropriate or offensive or graphic or whatever,” Petre said. “This is also an analog for YouTube or Facebook, when they will sometimes put a similar digital placard in front of content noting, ‘this content is graphic. Do you want to click on it and see it?’ Sometimes platforms do deplatform or remove certain types of content. And then sometimes, people like Mark Zuckerberg have said, ‘We're not the arbiter of what people want.’ So this hands-off stance echoes some of the supermarket chains in 1997. History shows that this controversy isn't new at all. And that clarified for me the value of thinking through these historical comparisons.”

For their analysis, Petre and Weber also chose to compare SMPs to independent and chain booksellers because, Petre said, “Booksellers have long debated whether selling books is like selling any other consumer good such as chairs, or bags, or grapes, or if it isn’t because books are special; they are information. These types of debates intensified in the mid-twentieth century, as chains began to take over independent booksellers. The chains’ attitude was that books are like any other consumer good, but many independent booksellers generally felt that books are a kind of sacred consumer product, so selling books is not the same as selling shoelaces. And that surprised me because I saw so many similarities between these debates and the debates we as a society are now having about SMPs.”

“Booksellers have long debated whether selling books is like selling any other consumer good such as chairs, or bags, or grapes, or if it isn’t because books are special; they are information."

“Today, some of the questions being debated are, should certain types of information, such as news, be treated differently on SMPs because they have civic importance or contain critical information for the public good, such as information about vaccine safety? There are lots of debates in the content moderation conversation that are basically just new versions of these older debates of: What does it mean to be an information intermediary? Is it the same as being an intermediary for any other type of consumer good or is it different? Does it come with different kinds of responsibilities? And that is really fascinating to me.”

While comparing libraries to SMPs, Petre said Weber, a trained librarian, “provided a depth of knowledge about the ways libraries currently think about what it means to be information providers in their communities as they work to both curate collections and respond to book challenges.”

Looking ahead, Petre and Weber said future research could continue to “enlist analogies as tools to further explore how SMPs represent not only a departure from analog modes of information curation and distribution but also a continuation of them.”

Discover more about the Journalism and Media Studies and the Ph.D. Program at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.