社交共享是评判新闻的好标准吗？

    我在上期专栏中曾经指出，社交共享（一篇文章在Facebook和Twitter等社交网站上被分享的次数）是评判一篇文章的通用、且可以公开获取的量化标准，因为只有它是唯一一个通用、且可以公开获取的量化标准。

    这并不是一个很有争议性的立场，但我猜许多人会攻击这个事实。我承认：“任何新的衡量指标势必将引发一场涉及其完善程度的激烈争辩——页面浏览量的价值就被激烈争论了逾10年之久。‘社交共享’当然也自有它的优点和缺点。我将在下篇专栏文章中对此进行分析。”

    一位记者同意我的看法，他在Twitter上说：“尽管令人烦恼，但自我推销现在是必不可少的。”另一位记者搞笑式地补充道：“请转发。”沙龙网（Salon.com）则发起了攻击：“干媒体这行可以带来许多世俗的、但正在迅速消失的乐事。不说别的，加兰特先生显然没有听说过薪酬支票、工作、宴会邀请、演讲、奖品、出席电视节目，签订出书合同等等这些好事。”顺便说一下，沙龙网每一个文章页面都在显示相关文章被十几家社交媒体转发的数量。

    当然，这些指标没有一项是公开的，可量化的。如果薪水是公开的，这项指标肯定会被重视。当初自由职业者诺亚•戴维斯在《锥子》杂志（The Awl）上透露了出版商支付给他的稿酬之后，他的文章被分享了3,000多次，其中包括来自大约100名记者的分享转发。《锥子》杂志给这篇文章支付了250美元的稿费。虽然薪酬数据如果公开的话，肯定是一个备受欢迎的衡量指标，但它或许并不是一个非常好的指标。声誉不大好的新闻工作往往可以获得更高的报酬。就总体而言，薪酬反映的是过去的表现，而不是目前的成就。

    所有这一切都引导我们重新回到眼前这个问题：社交共享是一个用来评判新闻的好指标吗？

    我询问了一些精明的记者和社交媒体编辑对社交共享的看法，从而进一步确定了关于这个问题的争论。首先，让我们审视一下业内人士针对社交共享最大的反对意见和这种衡量尺度的弱点：

    人们可能没有阅读就分享，或者读了但没有分享。每个人都非常关心自己在社交媒体上的形象。一些人喜欢分享来自《经济学人》（The Economist）和《哈佛商业评论》（Harvard Business Review）等高端出版物的文章，以显示自己的睿智，或者分享来自《洋葱新闻》（The Onion）的文章，以显示自己的幽默感，但他们其实并没有阅读相关文章。正如艾米•弗农在我上篇专栏文章下面所写的评论，“所谓的浏览量，只能说明某个人在看这个页面，最起码停留了一会。”这是一个很公允的看法。

    社交共享仅仅是一场竞赛，比拼的是受欢迎程度。与浏览量、独立访问量、发行量、图书销量或民主选举相类似，社交共享在一定程度上能够衡量一篇文章的受欢迎程度。这种反对意见似乎相当反动。我们已经使用大量与受欢迎程度相关的指标来评判新闻的影响力，甚至用这类指标来选举一个国家的领导人。不同于学术研究，新闻的使命之一就是让公众获得知情权。试问，如果没人阅读新闻报道，或者说根本就不想讨论它，辛苦了大半天的记者们会满意吗？

    In my last column I pointed out that social shares (the number of times an article is shared on social media services like Facebook and Twitter) is the universal and publicly accessible metric for judging an article, simply because it's the only universal and publicly accessible metric for judging an article.

    Not exactly a controversial stance, but I suspected many would take offense at this fact. I acknowledged "Any new metric invites a vigorous debate on how healthy it is -- the value of the pageview has been hotly debated for over a decade -- and the social share has its pros and cons. I'll leave that analysis for another column."

    One journalist agreed with me and tweeted "Self-promotion now annoyingly essential." Another rwryly added "(Please RT :/)." Salon.com, a site that displays over a dozen social media counts on a single article page, took offense: "Apparently Galant has never heard of paychecks, jobs, party invitations, speaking gigs, prizes, television appearances and book deals to mention only a few of the earthly, though rapidly vanishing, delights of a media career."

    Of course, none of those metrics are public and quantifiable. If paychecks were public, they'd certainly be paid attention to. When freelancer Noah Davis revealed in The Awl what publications paid him for his work his article was shared over 3,000 times, which included shares from about a hundred journalists. The Awl paid him $250 for the piece. While pay data would certainly be a popular metric if it were public, it probably wouldn't be a very good metric. Often the pay is higher for less prestigious journalism work, and in general compensation reflects past performance rather than current achievements.

    All this leads us back to the question at hand: Are social shares a good metric to use to judge journalism?

    I asked a number of savvy journalists and social media editors what they thought of social shares, which helped define the issues. Let's start by examining the biggest objections to and weaknesses of the social share:

    People may share a link without reading it, or read without sharing. We all care how we're perceived on social media. Some people share articles from publications like The Economist andHarvard Business Review just to look smart, or from The Onion to appear to have a sense of humor, without actually reading them. As Amy Vernon commented on my last post, "with pageviews, you actually know someone looked at the page, for at least a brief moment." Fair point.

    Social shares are just a popularity contest. Similar to pageviews, unique visitors, circulation numbers, book sales or democratic elections, social shares to some degree measure how popular something is. This objection seems to be rather reactionary. We already use plenty of metrics related to popularity to judge the impact of journalism and even to choose leaders for our nation. Part of the mission of journalism, as opposed to academic research, is to inform the public. What journalist would be satisfied if no one read their work or cared to talk about it?