nordmedia 2013 villi, matikainen & khaldarova

11.04.2023 1www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto

Recommend, Tweet, Share News Media and User-distributed

Content (UDC)

Mikko Villi

Janne Matikainen

Irina Khaldarova

[email protected]

University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research, Media and Communication Studies

www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 11.04.2023 2

• The challenging relations between social media and the legacy news media

• Focus on the role of communication and sharing in audience communities

• User-distributed content (UDC) as a conceptual framework

• UDC refers to the process by which the mass media converge with the online social networks through the intentional use of social media features and platforms in order to expand the number of content delivery channels and maximize visibility online.

Background

www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 11.04.2023 3Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi

Internal use of social media tools


External use of social media tools


• RQ1 How social plugins are used on news media websites (internal use of social media)?

• RQ2 How active is audience participation on social media platforms used by the news media (external use of social media)?

• RQ3 Does the activity of the news media in social media (especially on Facebook and Twitter) impact the activity of the audience?

Research Questions


• Data collected from the websites of 15 different news media (six of them Nordic) and their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

• The data consists of almost 50,000 news items, collected during a four-month period, January-May 2012 (RQ1)

• The Facebook pages and Twitter accounts were monitored for one month, March 2012 (RQ2 & RQ3)

• News items put through statistical observation in order to reveal how and what of them were shared.

Method and Data


• Finland: Helsingin Sanomat (newspaper), MTV3 (commercial television), YLE (public service broadcasting company)

• Germany: Die Zeit (newspaper)

• U.S.: The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times and Huffington Post

• Sweden: Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen (all newspapers)

• UK: The Guardian

• Russia: Argumenty i Fakty, Izvestia (both newspapers)

• Qatar: Al Jazeera.

Selected news media


• All but one of the selected 15 media websites used plugins for both Facebook and Twitter

• During the data-gathering period 49,247 news items were released

• Those news items were tweeted 315,989 times and recommended 3,035,743 times on Facebook

• On average, there were 6.4 tweets per news item and 61.4 FB recommendations per news item

Main findings: internal use (RQ1)


The ratio of tweets and recommendations per news item


• On Facebook, the different media had a high variety of

• likers (7,000 – 3,500,000)

• own posts (1 – 1,084)

• likes (0 – 166,870)

• comments (1 – 243,988)

• shares (0 – 240,728)

• The participation rate illustrates how much interaction there was on the Facebook pages on average for each liker. It is calculated by using the following formula: total number of interactions (comments, likes, shares) divided by the number of likers.

Main findings: external use (RQ2)


Number of own posts on Facebook pages vs. own Tweets on Twitter


• The level of presence and activity of the news media on Facebook and Twitter impacts positively the participation rate of the audience.

• strong correlation between the amount of Facebook posts and the participation rate (r=.58 p<.05) and the number of tweets and followers (r=.66, p<.01)

Main findings (RQ3)


• The news media are more active on Twitter than on Facebook, even though the audience is more active on Facebook.

• Twitter suits well the conventions and preferences of the mass media: a content flow to a rather anonymous audience.

• Facebook might be better suited for the more interpersonal and intimate relations in the audience communities where the content is distributed.

Conclusions


• The degree to which media companies facilitate social sharing might become an important factor in the consumption of their content.

• As the news media have partly converged with social networks they can take advantage of the connections within the audience communities and gain by nurturing them

• Practices related to UDC should be more strongly incorporated into the management strategies in media companies.

Conclusions

nordmedia 2013 villi, matikainen & khaldarova

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