Audience may be practicing a type of specific network gatekeeping via social platforms, write Gavin Adamson, of Ryerson University, Liam Donaldson, of  Ryerson University and Rob Whitley, of McGill University.

The study explores the relationship between the content of news articles about mental illness and audience reading and sharing habits. In order to study these relationships researchers use web analytics from three major Canadian news sites. The analysis reveals what types of article an audience is more likely to read and share via social media such as Facebook.

Analysis shows that social media users tended to share news about mental health and illness that was neutral in tone and that contained recovery and intervention as themes. The study also notes that newsfeed generated computationally for each Facebook user heightens the distribution of certain types of article based on his or her reading habits or his or her network’s preferences.

The article Sharing recovery stories: Network gatekeeping of online news about mental illness was published by Digital Journalism. It is available here.

Picture: Brains by Neil Conway, licence: CC BY 2.0