IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v8y2020i3p244-257.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Soft Presentation of Hard News? A Content Analysis of Political Facebook Posts

Author

Listed:
  • Miriam Steiner

    (Department of Communication, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany)

Abstract

The current media environment is primarily characterised by a large amount of information and, in contrast, rather fragmented audience attention. This is especially true for social media, particularly Facebook, which have become important news sources for many people. Journalists cannot help but publish content on Facebook if they want to reach the part of their audience that mainly—or even only—consumes news there. On Facebook, journalists are at the mercy of the algorithm that determines the visibility of their content. Because user engagement is a crucial factor in the algorithm, concerns have been raised that journalists are abandoning their normative quality standards to make the news as attractive as possible to the audience—at the expense of media performance. A softened presentation of the news, particularly in Facebook posts, may help achieve this aim, but research on this subject is lacking. The present study analyses this practice of softening the news in four German media outlets’ (BILD, FAZ, Der Spiegel, Tagesschau) political Facebook posts. The results show that the overall level of news softening is low to medium. Furthermore, comparing them to website teasers reveals that news softening is only slightly higher on Facebook (mainly BILD and Der Spiegel), and that there are no converging trends between quality or public service media and tabloid media. Exaggerated fears about news softening are therefore unnecessary. Continued analysis of news softening, as well as ongoing adaption of the concept according to dynamic developments, is nevertheless important.

Suggested Citation

  • Miriam Steiner, 2020. "Soft Presentation of Hard News? A Content Analysis of Political Facebook Posts," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 244-257.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v:8:y:2020:i:3:p:244-257
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3152
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. José van Dijck & Thomas Poell, 2013. "Understanding Social Media Logic," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 1(1), pages 2-14.
    2. David Quarfoot & Richard A. Levine, 2016. "How Robust Are Multirater Interrater Reliability Indices to Changes in Frequency Distribution?," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(4), pages 373-384, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Melanie Magin & Birgit Stark, 2020. "More Relevant Today Than Ever: Past, Present and Future of Media Performance Research," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 239-343.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mariek Vanden Abeele & Ralf De Wolf & Rich Ling, 2018. "Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(2), pages 5-14.
    2. Luis-Millán González & José Devís-Devís & Maite Pellicer-Chenoll & Miquel Pans & Alberto Pardo-Ibañez & Xavier García-Massó & Fernanda Peset & Fernanda Garzón-Farinós & Víctor Pérez-Samaniego, 2021. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Sport in Twitter: A Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-20, April.
    3. Estela Marine-Roig & Eva Martin-Fuentes & Natalia Daries-Ramon, 2017. "User-Generated Social Media Events in Tourism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-23, December.
    4. Martin Echeverría, 2023. "Experiencing Political Advertising Through Social Media Logic: A Qualitative Inquiry," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(2), pages 127-136.
    5. Celina Navarro & Gemma Gómez-Bernal, 2022. "The Use of Social Media by Spanish Feminist Organizations: Collectivity From Individualism," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 93-103.
    6. Dolata, Ulrich, 2017. "Social movements and the Internet: The sociotechnical constitution of collective action," Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers 2017-02, University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies.
    7. Kenneth L. Hacker & Vanessa R. Mendez, 2016. "Toward a Model of Strategic Influence, International Broadcasting, and Global Engagement," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(2), pages 69-91.
    8. Jacob Groshek & Sarah Krongard, 2016. "Netflix and Engage? Implications for Streaming Television on Political Participation during the 2016 US Presidential Campaign," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-18, October.
    9. Jansson, André, 2018. "Rethinking post-tourism in the age of social media," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 101-110.
    10. Rukhsana Aslam, 2016. "Building Peace through Journalism in the Social/Alternate Media," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(1), pages 63-79.
    11. Kaisu Koivumäki & Timo Koivumäki & Erkki Karvonen, 2020. "“On Social Media Science Seems to Be More Human”: Exploring Researchers as Digital Science Communicators," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 425-439.
    12. Daniele Battista, 2023. "Winning against All Odds: Elly Schlein’s Successful Election Campaign and Instagram Communication Strategies," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-13, May.
    13. Rodrigo Quintas da Silva, 2018. "A Portuguese exception to right-wing populism," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-5, December.
    14. Francois Schalkwyk & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Communities of shared interests and cognitive bridges: the case of the anti-vaccination movement on Twitter," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1499-1516, November.
    15. Sofia P. Caldeira, 2021. "“It’s Not Just Instagram Models”: Exploring the Gendered Political Potential of Young Women’s Instagram Use," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 5-15.
    16. Reimer, Thomas, 2023. "Environmental factors to maximize social media engagement: A comprehensive framework," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    17. Vaibhav Keshav, 2021. "Health Returns to Birth Weight: Evidence from Developing Countries," European Journal of Social Sciences Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 4, July -Dec.
    18. André Jansson, 2015. "Interveillance: A New Culture of Recognition and Mediatization," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(3), pages 81-90.
    19. Kelly, Dr Gráinne & McAdam, Maura, 2022. "Scaffolding liminality: The lived experience of women entrepreneurs in digital spaces," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    20. Maria Schreiber, 2017. "Showing/Sharing: Analysing Visual Communication from a Praxeological Perspective," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 37-50.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v:8:y:2020:i:3:p:244-257. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.