Eli Pariser's article, "Beyond the Front Page of the Newspaper," brings up the fact that consumers finding news content from social media has been increasing. The issue with that is people tend to follow softer stories rather than hard stories when finding them on social media. According to Pariser, a Jerry Seinfeld article received more than 12 times as many Facebook shares as a story about children killed in Syria.
The front-page no longer has as much drive as it used to because of people sharing stories through social media. Some readers may never even go to the homepage of a publication, instead opting to rely on others to show them what they should read.
Pariser's point about advocacy groups taking up the social media charge makes sense. Considering the fact that journalism is meant to make readers aware of what important things are happening, I do not believe relying on advocacy groups for production is a bad idea. In some cases, media that are too unbiased can be admittedly boring. Bringing in a slice of human interest and passion can help increase eyeballs.
News sites could reach out to these advocacy groups to write pieces and have them mutually shared, and advocacy groups could share news pieces and comment on them to spread information.
I still think an issue of social media sharing is that people are probably less likely to follow hard news when they see it on Facebook. Most people are on Facebook for leisure and a bit of thoughtless downtime. When faced with a hard-hitting piece about child deaths in Syria, I think many people would skip over it because that is not what they are looking for at the moment.
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