Once, when discussing our changing habits online, Mark Zuckerberg told his colleagues, “a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”

This memorable though insensitive quote suggests that social media platforms are optimized to support local news over international coverage. In other words, the events that are most relevant to people are likely the ones closest to home, rather than those that happen to distant people far away.

Does this assumption hold up to closer scrutiny though? I decided to test this idea, along with fellow communications scholar, April Lindgren… Read what we found by accessing my full article on The Conversation Canada.