The (non)use of likes, comments and shares of news in local online newspapers

Abstract

This paper utilizes a nationally representative survey to gauge the ways in which media users engage with their local newspapers by using features that allow for sharing, liking, and commenting. The main results indicate that significant predictors for different types of news engagement vary, but that age and education emerge as two of the more interesting varieties. Implications are discussed—for instance, how both psychological and behavioral experiences constitute the concept engagement and how our results challenge the technology-optimistic argument that social media presence on a newspaper website promotes audience engagement in the journalistic process.

Newspaper executives’ positioning toward the evolving use of social media

“…Albeit not universal, our broad finding that newspaper executives take a positive positioning toward the strategic priority of social media contrasts with studies suggesting a weakening of the initial enthusiasm for social media usage in newspapers (Solvoll & Larsson, 2020; Weaver & Willnat, 2016). Specifically, we find all but one leader type to be positive toward the strategic priority of social media, as measured by perceptions of product expectancy, performance expectancy, or the motivation to trial new ways of working with social media.…”

“…Resistance to social media may arise from a perceived risk that, in sharing news articles on a third-party platform, news media might lose control of digital distribution and traffic data harvesting possibilities (Lehtisaari et al, 2018). Countering this are potential benefits including the utilization of social audiences for the distribution of news content (Angelou et al, 2020; Krumsvik, 2018), audience participation in news making and news gathering (Solvoll & Larsson, 2020), and social media’s role in embedding of web analytics in the newsroom for a stronger audience focus (Blanchett Neheli, 2018; Ferrucci, 2020).…”

Is nothing like before? COVID-19–evoked changes to tourism destination social media communication

“…Likes, comments, and shares are all responsive behaviors, but they differ in the level of psychological and behavioral involvement they reflect. Clicking ‘like’ is the least demanding reaction; commenting on and sharing a social media post require more effort and thus signal higher levels of involvement ( Solvoll and Larrson, 2020 ).…”

No trade-offs between news and entertainment: Evidence from online engagement data

“…Thus, we argue if the conclusion we find from the engagement data is consistent with the previous results based on exposure data, we should be more confident in making an argument about users’ consumption patterns. Nevertheless, news engagement behaviors were conducted by people with certain characteristics (see Kalogeropoulos et al, 2017; Larsson, 2018; Solvoll and Larsson, 2020) on content with particular features (see Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, 2012; Ksiazek, 2018), which were still different from consumption. We would like future scholars to contribute more advanced measures to further substantiate our conclusions identified here.…”