Research into news sharing on social media is, among other things, too Twitter-centric, write Anna Sophie Kümpel, Veronika Karnowski and Till Keyling, all of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. They reviewed articles and conference papers related to the topic, published from 2004 to 2014. Their eventual sample consisted of 109 pieces of literature, out of which majority were conference papers.

The researchers recognized a number of shortcomings. Firstly, research is focused on avid news sharers and successful news sharing events – more research should be done on the conditions that inhibit news sharing. Secondly, most of the research is empirical, and only little effort is put into theory construction. Similarly news sharing networks have been neglected as research subjects.

Also cultural context is largely ignored, while majority of research data is clearly US-focused. Finally, researchers should keep up with the times and include new, trending social media services in addition to established juggernauts like Facebook.

The article News Sharing in Social Media: A Review of Current Research on News Sharing Users, Content, and Networks is open access, and available online.

Picture: Untitled by geralt, licence CC0 1.0.