Feed Audit Worksheet: Ten Items, Three Questions
What you will be able to do: Observe the selection at work in your own feed and stop reading frequency within it as prevalence outside it.
- Time required
- 20 minutes
- Version
- 1.0
- Reviewed
- Format
- Web page with print styles
To use this on paper, print this page from your browser. The site header, navigation, and footer are removed automatically from the printed output. Downloadable PDF and DOCX versions are not published yet. The process for adding them is documented for site maintainers in CONTENT_GUIDE.md.
How to use this
Pick one feed you use regularly. Work through the first ten items in it without scrolling past anything, and record three things for each.
Do this on a normal day, not a day when something unusual is happening. The exercise is about ordinary selection, not about a news event.
The three questions
1. What is this item, in five words?
Force the compression. Long descriptions let you smuggle in interpretation.
2. What signal probably caused this to be selected for me?
Reasonable candidates: an account you interact with, a topic you have engaged with, high engagement from people like you, recency, a paid placement, or a format the platform is currently promoting. You are guessing, and the guess is the useful part.
3. How common is this view or event outside my feed, and what would I base that estimate on?
Write an estimate and a basis. If your only basis is the feed itself, write that.
After the ten items
Answer three summary questions.
How many of the ten came from accounts you deliberately chose to follow? In most modern feeds the answer surprises people.
How many items did you have any basis for estimating prevalence on? Usually very few. That is the finding.
Which of the ten produced the strongest reaction, and where did it sit in the order? Note whether the strongest reactions clustered near the top.
An optional second pass
If the platform offers a chronological or list-based view, run the same ten-item audit there and compare. The difference between the two lists is the selection, made visible in about ten minutes.
For facilitators
This works well as homework between two sessions. Participants return with concrete material from their own environment, which avoids the difficulty of choosing a shared example that is relevant to everyone.
Ask participants to share only their summary answers, never their actual feed contents. Feeds are personal, and the exercise does not require disclosure.
Version and reuse
Version 1.0, reviewed August 2026. Reuse terms are described on the Terms of Use page.
Topics covered: Digital Literacy
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