Keywords: New sources of information on public opinion and the use of social media to voice public opinion

On Facebook, journalistic content competes with other professional as well as user-generated content for users’ news attention. News is presented in an environment of various social characteristics such as web metrics or opinions in user comments. Although there is numerous research on the impact of news cues from an information processing perspective (e.g., Engelmann & Wendelin, 2017), it is rather unclear which of these criteria users apply to what extent when they select news on social media platforms. The concept of social navigation assumes that users’ content choices are guided by information on other users’ media use behavior (Lünich, Rössler, & Hautzer, 2012). However, recent research findings question the role of such user-related characteristics (Engelmann & Wendelin, 2017) and suggest a greater importance of the content of journalistic posts and user comments. Research on selective exposure states that individuals prefer news content that is congruent to their own attitudes (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2014). At the same time, users do not always avoid dissonant information because of aspects of newsworthiness or information utility or they even explicitly look for dissonant content. Investigating the relative importance of social media characteristics (web metrics and user comments) compared to the topic of the news post, we also ask if the incongruence or congruence of the journalists’ reported political opinion and the political opinion in the related user comments increases the article’s likeliness of being selected by the audience. Moreover, relying on the informational utility approach, we argue that user characteristics such as opinion leadership as well as social anxiety lead to diverging criteria when selecting news in social media.
We applied a choice-based conjoint design resulting in 16 fictional news teasers in which we manipulated the number of likes, shares and comments (low/high) as well as the journalistic opinion and the opinion of two visible user comments below the news post. Teasers were presented to participants (n = 260; 62% female; MAge = 32.6, SDAge = 10.5) of an online survey on Facebook. Findings illustrate the importance of user-generated figures and opinions for the selection of journalistic news posts on Facebook and suggest that controversy between the reported journalistic and a user’s opinion is more likely to foster selection than congruent opinions. The journalistic opinion and the opinion in user comments are more important to opinion leaders than to non-opinion leaders. Opinions in user comments are more relevant for people with high social anxiety than for people with low social anxiety.

References
Engelmann, I., & Wendelin, M. (2017). Comment counts or news factors or both? Influences on news website users’ news selectioners’ news selection. International Journal of Communication, 11, 2501-2519.
Lünich, M., Rössler, P., & Hauzer, L. (2012). Social Navigation on the Internet: A Framework for the Analysis of Communication Processes. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 30(3-4), 232-249.
Knobloch-Westerwick, S. (2014). Choice and preference in media use: Advances in selective exposure theory and research. New York: Routledge.