Dive Brief:

• Research from Columbia University and the French National Institute found that 59% of links shared on social media are shared without ever being read, according to the Chicago Tribune.
• The research was conducted after the Science Post, a satirical website, published an article titled, "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting." The body of the article contained nothing more than "lorem ipsum” placeholder text. The piece was shared 46,000 times.
• "People are more willing to share an article than read it. This is typical of modern information consumption," study co-author Arnaud Legout said in a statement. "People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper."

Dive Insight:

After tracking shares and clicks of five major news sources during a month, researchers found that more users shared the news than actually clicked on it — by a wide margin.

While the research has a more direct impact on publishers than marketers, it should give marketers pause over common social media engagement metrics, such as likes and shares. The study shows that people on social media are willing to share content just for the sake of sharing: Just because someone likes or shares something, that isn’t a clear indication of actual engagement with the content.

The research shows that "going viral" on social media isn't necessarily about the content itself, but more about the text or headline used on social media, an interesting revelation of how people today consume media (i.e., quickly and without a second thought). 

The research also uncovered another interesting data point: Most clicks on content shared on Twitter came from regular Twitter user accounts and not the publisher’s account, suggesting that shares from influencers are far more valuable to getting something to go viral than shares from publishers.