Consumptive News Feed Curation on Social Media as Proactive Personalization: A Study of Six East Asian Markets

Abstract

Social media platforms allow people to exert some control over their news feeds, even though not everyone utilizes the relevant features. This article conceptualizes consumptive news feed curation on social media as a special type of proactive personalization in news consumption. Survey data were analyzed to examine the extent and correlates of the practice in six East Asian societies. The findings indicated that East Asian news consumers do not frequently engage in consumptive news feed curation on social media. Engagement in relevant practices was consistently related to age, interest in the news, news participation, and news avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that consumptive news feed curation is employed primarily by young people to navigate the sea of information of uneven quality.