The social sharing of news

Jakob Linaa JensenAssociate professor

Media Studies and Center for Internet Studies, Aarhus University

Paper presented at IR15, Daegu October 23rd 2014

New wine on old bottles?

"What a strange practice it is, when you think of it, that a man should sit down to his breakfast table and, instead of conversing with his wife, and children, hold before his

face a sort of screen on which is inscribed a world-wide gossip!"

Charles Cooley in 1908 on the perils of the daily newspaper

Agenda

• Project presentation• Theoretical approaches• Future methodology• First empirical findings

• The access to producing news is widening through blogs, websites, citizen journalism (Axel Bruns, Graham Meikle)

• News are shared through social media, not at least social network sites like Twitter and Facebook

• Borderline between production, consumption and sharing is evaporating

Some existing studies on (online) news

• Pew Internet & The American Life reports (2011-12)

• OFCOM : News Consumption in the UK (2013)

• Schrøder & Kleis Nielsen: Danish Studies (2012-13)

• Reuter Institute reports

• Produsage (Bruns, 2008)• Ambient news (Hermida, 2010)• Social sharing (Hermida, 2010)• Facebook as meta-medium (Linaa

Jensen & Tække (2013)

Project “Meaning Across Media”

• 3 year project sponsored by Danish National Research Council (thanks )

• Focusing on content across media and platforms rather than media and platforms themselves

• Various sub-projects but a strong focus on news

• Production, consumption and sharing

News is not new…

Theories on newsThe mass media age

Macro level Agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972)News cycles (Cook, 1997; Rosenberg & Feldman, 2008)Newsworthiness (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & o’Neill (2001)

Meso level Opinion leadership (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955)

Micro level Consonance/dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957; Perloff, 2003)Credibility (Hovland, 1959; Meyer et al., 2010)

Theories on newsThe social media age

Macro level Agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972)News cycles (Cook, 1997; Rosenberg & Feldman, 2008)

Meso level Newsworthiness (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & o’Neill (2001)Spreadability (Jenkins, 2013)

Micro level Opinion leadership (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955)Consonance/dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957; Perloff, 2003)Social presence (Short et al., 1976; Meyer et al., 2010)Immediacy (Wiener & Mehrabian, 1968; Bolter & Grusin, 2000“Sense of being with another” (Skalski & Tamborini, 2005)

Theoretical moves

• From macro- to micro level• Encompassing logics of sharing,

virality

• Social interaction logics become important

• From newsworthiness to shareworthiness

From search to filter culture

• The age of libraries: getting information• The age of internet: getting rid of information

• Gate-keeping is not dead• But more filters needed

• Filtering based on interactivity on socialization

• Folksonomies, curation

• From information to social interaction• Knowledge and information defined

by networks (and algorithms)

Hypotheses

• The news shared in social media are partly overlapping with those presented in TV, radio, papers etc.

• When news cycles are changed because of the introduction of social media, new dynamics of importance, relevance and newsworthiness come true

• Shared news might be framed according to these criteria (Dog Bites Man might get more shares than Man Bites Dog)

Methodology

Macro level

Quantitative survey (N=1070) on media use

Meso level

Hashtag analysis – networks + content

Micro level

Qualitative interview – patterns of sharing, logics, motivation

News consumption  Danish political

newsInternational political news

Celebrity news

Face to face 28 17 19

       

Old media      

Printed 37 30 31

TV, radio 74 66 60

       

New media      

Websites, blogs 34 27 31

Email, sms 7 4 5

Social media 19 11 21

       

Other 2 1 1

Did not read news 13 22 25

News sharing  Danish political

newsInternational political news

Celebrity news

Face to face 21 15 13

       

Printed media 1 1 1

       

New media      

Websites, blogs 4 2 2

Email, sms 5 4 3

Social media sharing 9 5 6

Social media commenting

10 6 6

       

       

Other 0 0 0

Did not share news 70 78 80

Findings

• Much more consumption than sharing

• TV still dominant for consumption• National politics and celeb news

most popular

• More F2F than social media sharing• Sharers and commenters the same

User clusters

Social media sharer

sNew media consumers

Old media consumers F2F sharers

Thanks!

• Jakob Linaa Jensen• E-mail: jakoblinaa@gmail.com

• Twitter: jakoblinaa• Skype: jakoblinaa