l’hebdo using facebook polls for article - not good
This week’s hebdo contains an article talking about Obama’s popularity throughout the world. They start of by mentionning different polls conducted by polling agencies or themselves to show how Obama is the world’s most popular candidate. But then they do one thing which I don’t think can be justified from an journalist view point, they do quote facebook polls (!) to show that 54% of Iraqis support Obama or 71% of Brazilians. As they mention correctly, the poll has been conducted by asking 1000 facebook users in each of these countries. How on earth can this be representative? They do mention that it is an “exotic” way of conducting polls, but reads these details anyway? Especially in the headlines.
They also quote a poll conducted on a polish website where they do in fact remark that this is a questionable way of polling people (it is probably totally useless).
Now you don’t really want to sell me that 1000 facebook users is representative. It is anything BUT representative for obvious reasons!
Just to make sure, in case someone in hebdo’s redaction is reading this, here the reasons:
- Facebook users is a highly biased group of any population, because it contains proportionally more young people. On top of that the people on facebook are more openminded, internet connected people that certainly do not represent the entire population.
- Do you know how easy it is to create a fake facebook account and then vote in these polls?
Where are we today that a major Swiss publication uses facebook as a major source for their articles?
Come on hebdo, you can do better than that.
Tags: facebook, hebdo, journalism, polls, press