Examining the benefits of audience integration

Abstract

This study investigates whether sharing of or commenting on online news enhances loyalty toward online news outlets. We identify two mediators of audience integration and loyalty: satisfaction and trust, which are measured by attitudinal attributions toward a news outlet. Loyalty is measured by frequently and exclusively using an online news outlet and an absent willingness to change to another online news outlet in the future. The relations between audience integration, satisfaction, trust, and loyalty are estimated with a mediation model. Results from an online survey with N = 1825 Swiss online news users reveal small but significant effects of sharing and commenting quantities on loyalty. Sharing tends to increase satisfaction, which in turn enhances loyalty. In contrast, commenting deteriorates satisfaction and trust, but directly improves loyalty. Overall, sharing and commenting slightly increase loyalty. In conclusion, sharing has a small, positive attitudinal relationship-building capacity for online news outlets, whereas commenting does not. Nonetheless, commenting features should not be abandoned by news outlets.

Facebook Comments Influence Perceptions of Journalistic Bias: Testing Hostile Media Bias in the COVID-19 Social Media Environment

“…One explanation may be the induction of reactance among participants who encounter the quiz. Considering the observed trends, the withdrawal of expected freedoms introduced by mandating a knowledge quiz may compound a sense of helplessness or failure, and arouse frustration ( Mikulincer, 1988 ; Wortman & Brehm, 1975 ). That is, the presence of the quiz may have upset respondents, resulting in a change of their evaluation.…”

“…Yet, the inclusion of a knowledge-based assessment could benefit social media news consumers because it would encourage retention. However, considering the observed trends, the withdrawal of expected freedoms that a mandated knowledge quiz introduces may further contribute to a sense of reactance due to perceived helplessness or failure, which has been found to arouse frustration ( Mikulincer, 1988 ; Wortman & Brehm, 1975 ).…”

“…This approach to amplifying journalistic content has also changed how audiences consume news. Although the internet allows outlets to maximize their reach, news websites with comment sections were burdened with the need to provide moderation, unlike social media which foster audience engagement without this needed resource (Lischka & Messerli, 2016). As such, publishing and distributing news on platforms, such as Facebook, has become a welcomed means for sharing stories, especially as comment sections disappear from news websites (Ellis, 2015).…”

Social Media Metrics as Predictors of Publishers’ Website Traffic

“…Specifically, they find that native videos predict greater interaction (likes, shares, and comments) but only for a very small portion of variance. Commenting and sharing in a news website environment do not significantly affect traffic, as stated by Lischka and Messerli (2015). A positive correlation between (a) the number of Facebook page likes and Twitter followers and (b) the number of website visitors was recorded by Ju et al (2014), who spoke about a symbiotic relationship between social and legacy news media.…”

“…Our study builds upon the work of Ksiazek et al (2014) and Wallace (2017) by investigating the relationship between social media metrics and publishers' website traffic. Based on estimates that public participation increases website traffic (Edmond 2017;Philips 2012) and that relevant indicators (such as likes, shares, and retweets) cannot be ignored (Tandoc and Vos 2015), we expand the research on social media's impact on website traffic (Lischka and Messerli 2015;Ju et al 2014;Hong 2012;Lee et al 2010). At this point, we should underline that in the case of our research, regression is used to make predictions about the dependent variable based on the observed values of the independent variables without further causal analysis, i.e., whether our independent variable actually affects the dependent variable.…”