Social network site Facebook reportedly made slight changes to the news feeds of 1.9 million users prior to the 2012 US election to enable them to see more "hard news" shared by friends.
The Huffington Post reports that the change may have boosted voter turnout by as much as 3 percent, according to a little-known study first disclosed Friday by Mother Jones.
The researchers changed the news feed in a way that news articles posted by users' friends appeared on top instead of the general status and photo updates.
The researchers wanted to find out whether increasing exposure to news-which were general and not political in nature- shared by friends before an election would convince users to vote.
The report added they came from a list of 100 top media outlets from the New York Times to Fox News, according to the Mother Jones story written by Micah Sifry, a democracy activist.