Facebook and Twitter bias: it all depends how you look at it | Emily Bell

Social media platforms face internal debates over what line to take on politics and news

Over the past week Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, might have felt a twinge of sympathy for countryman Mark Geiger. Geiger, you will remember, was the referee in the thrilling Colombia v England clash in the last 16 of the World Cup. If you were cheering for England, you will probably remember him as a referee who did a decent job in fraught circumstances. If you are Colombian, you might think of him as the bumbling idiot who disallowed a perfectly good goal, was hopelessly biased towards England and turned a blind eye to diving and play acting.

Search Twitter and you will see all of these beliefs, strongly held, about the role of the hapless referee. The issue of “bias” is hotly contested, even though, thanks to video footage, every single angle is recorded and analysed. If you read the Spanish version of CNN you might be forgiven for thinking you had been watching an entirely different match from the English-language CNN.

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