Is Social Media Killing Local News? An Examination of Engagement and Ownership Patterns in U.S. Community News on Facebook

Abstract

This article focuses on two forces linked to declines in coverage of genuinely local civic affairs: (a) the impact of increasing corporate consolidation in ownership among news providers, and (b) the degree to which the economic incentives and logics of digital platforms may also drive editorial decision-making at news organizations away from coverage of local news. Using a unique dataset of 2.4 million Facebook posts published by local news organizations in three U.S. states between 2018 and 2019, we find evidence that both factors matter. Long-running trends toward conglomeration in the industry have a demonstrable impact on how much and what kinds of local news gets posted on the site, but we also find that the platform itself may incentivize certain types of coverage over others. Specifically, we find organizations owned by chains are more likely to post duplicative, repurposed content that receive fewer interactions per postevidence of quantity being valued over quality-as well as higher rates of engagement with national, hard news stories over unique content about local affairs. Findings shed light on how Facebook-combined with media ownership structures-may hinder the task of serving local communities with original news that satisfies important civic needs.

An Examination of Affiliate and Network Television Channels’ Facebook Use for Addressing Audiences’ Critical Information Needs

“…This result may potentially allude to the influence of ownership on the quality of local news content on social media. A recent study (Toff & Mathews, 2021) showed that while ownership mattered in the relationship between a local news channel's social media content and the level of audience engagement received, it was the frequency of posting local content that was an important predictor of audience engagement on Facebook. In our sample, ABC15 had the greatest number of CIN posts while NTV, the Sinclair-owned channel in our sample had the least number of CIN posts.…”

Trends in the interest in COVID-19 news of the local media and their readers: The case of Spain

“…This is important as it measures whether the interest of the local media in coronavirus news changed as the pandemic evolved. Second, (RQ2) we analyzed the evolution of the public participation, given by the proportion of Facebook interactions that were associated to COVID-19 related news ( García-Perdomo et al, 2018 ; Toff and Mathews, 2021 ; Weber et al, 2019 ). This is relevant as it can shed light on whether the audience interest in COVID-19 progressed throughout the pandemic.…”

“…We frame our analysis in the context of local journalism as it plays a critical role in keeping the public properly informed. Local news organizations are currently under immense financial pressure ( Jenkins and Nielsen, 2020 ; Olsen et al, 2020 ) and if they are to survive, then they need to understand the dynamics of local news consumption, evaluation, and dissemination in social media ( Almgren, 2017 ; Toff and Mathews, 2021 ; Olsen, 2021 ; Thorson et al, 2020 ). A cataclysmic crisis like the COVID-19 presents a cogent opportunity for doing so.…”

“…According to Thorson et al (2020) , local news media are increasingly displaced from the center of local political information infrastructures, while Facebook moves to take up a central infrastructural role. In fact, as Facebook has captured more and more online traffic, the company has also been accused of being one of the main factors of the crisis of the local media ( Toff and Mathews, 2021 ). So, it is not surprising that in the last decade, the news industry has devoted considerable resources to attract consumers on social media platforms and publishing free content on these digital platforms has become a common practice.…”

“…We consider a measure of public engagement based on Facebook’s reactions (shares, comments, likes, loves, Ha-has, etc.) for the news articles about COVID-19 to estimate the interest of the audience, following previous engagement measurements in the literature ( García-Perdomo et al, 2018 ; Lev-On and Steinfeld, 2015 ; Toff and Mathews, 2021 ; Weber et al, 2019 ). For these reasons we post the following research questions.…”