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

2022 ◽  
pp. 146144482110638
Author(s):  
Shengchun Huang ◽  
Tian Yang
Keyword(s):  
Media Content ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Information Distribution ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Audience Fragmentation ◽  
Different Content ◽  
Media Choices ◽  
Personal Interests

In today’s high-choice media environment, some scholars are concerned that people selectively consume media content based on personal interests and avoid others, which might lead to audience fragmentation across different content genres. Individually, there might be trade-offs between those genres, especially entertainment versus news. This study analyzed a large user engagement dataset (~40,000 users’ comments) collected from the Chinese information application Toutiao, one of the most popular information distribution platforms in China. The results showed that (1) the commenters were not fragmented between content genres, and (2) the users’ news engagement was positively associated with their entertainment engagement. The findings indicate that the availability of high media choices will not reduce the news engagement of those who have strong interest in entertainment. Instead, news engagement might increase alongside the augmentation of the sum of information engagement. Finally, we discussed the differences between relative news engagement and absolute news engagement.

Using Experiments to Understand How Agency Influences Media Effects

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux ◽  
Martin Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Media Effects ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
Political Advertisements ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Media Choices

Students of public opinion tend to focus on how exposure to political media, such as news coverage and political advertisements, influences the political choices that people make. However, the expansion of news and entertainment choices on television and via the Internet makes the decisions that people make about what to consume from various media outlets a political choice in its own right. While the current day hyperchoice media landscape opens new avenues of research, it also complicates how we should approach, conduct, and interpret this research. More choices means greater ability to choose media content based on one’s political preferences, exacerbating the severity of selection bias and endogeneity inherent in observational studies. Traditional randomized experiments offer compelling ways to obviate these challenges to making valid causal inferences, but at the cost of minimizing the role that agency plays in how people make media choices. Resent research modifies the traditional experimental design for studying media effects in ways that incorporate agency over media content. These modifications require researchers to consider different trade-offs when choosing among different design features, creating both advantages and disadvantages. Nonetheless, this emerging line of research offers a fresh perspective on how people’s media choices shapes their reaction to media content and political decisions.

The Effects of Social Media Content Created by Human Brands on Engagement: Evidence from Indian General Election 2014

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh R. Mallipeddi ◽  
Ramkumar Janakiraman ◽  
Subodha Kumar ◽  
Seema Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Chief Executive Officers ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Key Drivers ◽  
Executive Officers ◽  
Human Brands

With human brands or individual celebrities in fields ranging from sports to politics increasingly using social media platforms to engage with their audience, it is important to understand the key drivers of online engagement. Using Twitter data from the political domain, we show that positive and negative-toned content receive higher engagement, as measured by retweets, than mixed or neutral toned tweets. However, less popular human brands generate higher social media engagement from positive-toned content compared with more popular human brands. Therefore, we recommend that popular human brands (e.g., popular politicians or chief executive officers) keep their content objective rather than emotional. Furthermore, the tone of related brands (i.e., human brands who belong to the same political party) has a strong reinforcement effect; that is, social media engagement is higher when the tone of the focal human brand and related brands are the same and lower when the tones are different. Therefore, we prescribe that human brands actively coordinate their social media content with related brands to generate higher engagement. From human brands’ perspective, our findings recommend a comprehensive social media strategy, which takes into account the tone of content, tone of related brands’ content, and human brands’ popularity.

scholarly journals Introducing three dimensions of audience fragmentation

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (70) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Sergio Roncallo Dow ◽  
Germán Antonio Arango-Forero
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Media Content ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Audience Fragmentation ◽  
Statistical Sample ◽  
Dynamic Relationships ◽  
Theoretical Proposal ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

Audience fragmentation has become a recurrent theoretical framework in the early 21 Century, used mainly to depict the new complex and dynamic relationships established between media and consumers. However, some academic studies have been published which expand on the meanings and implications of the so called fragmentation from the audience perspective. This paper is based on empirical research undertaken in Colombia, among young people (17-24 year-olds) who live in the ten most important urban areas of this country located at the north-west corner of South America. A mixed methodology was used, combining quantitative and qualitative methods with a statistical sample. Conclusions support a theoretical proposal based on what the authors call the three dimensions of audiences’ fragmentation: intramedia, intermedia and transmedia fragmentation as a way to understand the new relationships established between media content producers and active and participative consumers.

Which Bad News to Choose? The Influence of Race and Social Identity on Story Selections Within Negative News Contexts

2019 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-662
Author(s):  
Lanier Frush Holt ◽  
Dustin Carnahan
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Negative News ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Media Choices

This study provides a clearer understanding of how audience members’ race influences their media choices. It finds that in today’s overwhelmingly negative media environment, people prefer reading negative stories about persons in their own racial group over stories about racial out-group members. This suggests social movements seeking to change the attitudes of people of different races using media (e.g., Black Lives Matter) might not be as successful as those in the past (e.g., Civil Rights Movement). Today, people tend to ignore such news when there is other bad news that affects people in their own racial group.

scholarly journals Popularizing party journalism in China in the age of social media: The case of Xinhua News Agency

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Xin Xin
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
News Agency ◽  
Xinhua News Agency ◽  
The Status ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Ruling Party

The phenomenon of the “popularization” of journalism has become widespread in the process of media marketization, globalization and digitalization. This phenomenon has been studied mostly in the Anglo-American context. This article instead draws attention to China, where the tendency toward popularizing (party) journalism is also occurring but taking a rather different form. It focuses on the case of Xinhua News Agency—the pioneer as well as the most representative case of traditional party journalism in the country. The article considers to what extent Xinhua’s online media content concerning the ruling party since 1949—the Communist Party of China—has been popularized both in terms of content and style. The changes to online media content made by Xinhua are indicative of the extent to which it is possible to combine the status of a state-owned central news organization with a new journalistic orientation that seeks to make the messages from and about the party more appealing to technology-savvy and entertainment-driven audiences in the new media environment in mainland China.

News, entertainment, or both? Exploring audience perceptions of media genre in a hybrid media environment

Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 807-826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Edgerly ◽  
Emily K Vraga
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
Experimental Designs ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Source Attribution ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Talk Show ◽  
Political Talk

This study uses two experimental designs to examine how audiences make genre assessments when encountering media content that blends elements of news and entertainment. Study 1 explores how audiences characterize three different versions of a fictitious political talk show program. Study 2 considers whether audience perceptions of ‘news-ness’ are influenced by shifts in headline angle and source attribution. The implications of audience definitions of news and its social function are discussed.

The Online Media Environment of the North Caucasus: Issues of Preservation and Accessibility in a Zone of Political and Ideological Conflict

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 166-176
Author(s):  
Kit Condill
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Web Content ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Additional Risk ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
The North ◽  
Multiple Languages

Abstract:As one of the world's most ethnolinguistically-diverse and conflict-prone regions, the North Caucasus presents particular challenges for librarians seeking to preserve its rich and varied online news media content. This content is generated in multiple languages in multiple political and ideological contexts, both within the North Caucasus region and abroad. While online news media content in general is ephemeral, poorly-preserved, and difficult to access via any single search interface or search strategy, content relating to the North Caucasus is at additional risk due to ongoing insurgency/counterinsurgency activity, as well as historical, political and linguistic factors. Various options for preserving and searching North Caucasus web content are explored.

Reflections of German Football Journalists on Their Relationships With Bundesliga Club Public Relations Practitioners

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph G. Grimmer ◽  
Edward M. Kian
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Multimedia Content ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Newspaper Industry ◽  
Public Relations Practitioners ◽  
German Newspaper ◽  
The Impact

This article examines German print sport journalists’ perceptions, experiences, and relationships with Bundesliga clubs’ public relations (PR) staffers and each club’s designated press spokesperson, as well the impact of a competitive, multitier 21st-century media environment on their jobs. All Bundesliga clubs are now disseminating more multimedia content on their own through official Web sites and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Meanwhile, the German newspaper industry is in a state of transformation and decreased prominence among mediums in German sport journalism. A survey of print journalists who cover Bundesliga clubs showed that these changes have affected the historic symbiotic relationship between the sporting press and Bundesliga clubs. Power and media autonomy have increased for Bundesliga clubs and their designated press spokespersons, while print reporters are more dependent on the clubs’ PR staffers to provide access. The surveyed journalists recognize the increasing power of television in German sport journalism, but nearly half do not consider this as negative for their jobs. These print sport journalists are called on to find new ways and types of media content to begin restoring the needed balance in a symbiotic relationship between independent press and PR, while also distinguishing their work from televised media content.

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