New article by Jonathan Bright explores the question why some news articles are shared more than others on social media.

Results of the study show that editorial promotion of the article on the front page and the topic of the article are both significant. There is also different sharing patterns for different types of article: News about technology and social welfare is well shared but not very well read. For news about politics, crimes, accidents, and disasters it’s the other way around.

The study presents two main arguments. First, news editors have considerable power to shape the news agenda on social media. Second argument is that those who receive news by social media end up having a different perception of the news agenda than those who get their news straight from a traditional outlet.

The article is published by Journal of Communication. Read the article here.

Picture: Gap by Kevin Doncaster, licence: CC BY 2.0