Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 1
Links to News on Facebook Is There a Multi-Step Flow of Communication?
#ECREA2012 27.10.2012
Katrin Jungnickel, TU Ilmenau
Axel Maireder, Universität Wien
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 2
30% of online Americans receive news via SNS,
6% via Twitter (Purcell et al., 2010)
71% of Canadian SNS users use it
to keep up with the news (Hermida et al., 2012)
28% of German SNS users get informed
about the news on SNS (BITKOM, 2011)
34% of German tweets with link
connect to news sites (Maireder, 2011)
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 3
Two Twitter user groups: Intermediaries receive from
news media, others from intermediaries (Wu et al., 2011)
46% of media tweets reach users via intermediaries (Wu et al., 2011)
Every media tweet gets retweeted 15 times (An et al., 2011)
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 4
Two-Step-Flow online
The Impact of Strong and Weak Ties on the communication process
Discussion of politics often in homophilous
groups of strong ties (Schenk, 1995)
In SNS people are increasingly connected
to weak ties (deZuniga & Valenzuela, 2011)
Bridges important for diffusion of ideas (Granovetter, 1973)
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 5
Is there a multi-step-flow of communication on Facebook?
If yes, are weak or strong ties more relevant?
Difference in interest dependent on content, producer, transmitter?
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 6
Snowball sample for online survey: N=745
We asked respondents to copy the last 5 links received on Facebook, and answer questions connected (e.g interest in content)
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 7
n= 557
Facebook usage 67% several times daily
Gender 52% women
Country of origin 82% Germany
16% Austria
Education 62% Abitur/Matura
(Highschool degree)
36% University degree
Students 78%
Occupation related to media 42%
Mean age (18-55) 25
Mean number of Facebook friends (8-2769) 249
Respondent Sample
75% of respondents (total: 745) copied links
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 8
2653 Links, 2 coders
Variables: - Data type - Language - Producer - Content political? - Content public issue?
Inter-coder-reliability (Holsti coefficient): >.70 for all variables
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Axel Maireder 9
n percent
Number of copied links 2635 100%
Link was not external/ just text -186 -7%
Link was dead -308 -12%
Link destination was in a language
other than German or English
-71 -2%
Total amount of analyzed links 2070 79%
Link Sample
Exclusion
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Axel Maireder 10
Link Sample Transmitters, Producers, Content
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 11
Multi-Step-Flow? Producers and transmitters of links
Transmitters
Producers
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Axel Maireder 12
Link Content Transmitters and content of links
Transmitters
Content
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Axel Maireder 13
Interest in Links
Main effects on interest in links
Independent Variables F-Value Significance
Political content *** 28.433 .000
Product information .721 .396
Public issue 1.553 .213
Producer 2.290 .058
Transmitter *** 41.054 .000
Language 1.496 .221
Additional information by transmitter 2.010 .156
Data type ** 5.366 .001
Multi-factorial ANOVA, Model significant (p<.001), corrected R²= .135
Interest higher in
poltical content
Interest higher in
links from strong ties
Interest higher in text and pictures than in
video/audio/apps and homepages
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 14
Interest in Links Interest in links depends on transmitter and political content
Low
interest
High
interest
Transmitters
Significant interaction effect (p< .001) of content and transmitters
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Axel Maireder 15
Is there a multi-step-flow of communication on Facebook?
Yes!
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 16
Are weak or strong ties more relevant?
Strong ties! at least in terms of interest in the content shared
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 17
Transmitter and political content
Difference in interest dependent on content, producer, transmitter?
Katrin Jungnickel
Axel Maireder 19
An, J., Cha, M., Gummadi, K. P., & Crowcroft, J. (2011). Media landscape in Twitter: A world of new
conventions and political diversity. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved
from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/out/twitter-diverse.pdf
BITKOM (2011). Soziale Netzwerk werden zum Informationskanal. Bundesverband Informationswirtschaft,
Telekommunikation und neue Medien e.V., November 28, 2011.
http://www.bitkom.org/70397_70419.aspx.
de Zuniga, H. G., & Valenzuela, S. (2011). The Mediating Path to a Stronger Citizenship: Online and Offline
Networks, Weak Ties, and Civic Engagement. Communication Research, 38(3), 397–421.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380.
Hermida, A., Fletcher, F., Korell, D. & Logan, D. (2012). Share, Like, Recommend: Decoding the Social
Media News Consumer. Journalism Studies,13, 815-824.
Maireder, A. (2011). Links auf Twitter - Wie verweisen deutschsprachige Tweets auf Medieninhalte?
Retrieved from https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:64004/bdef:Content/get
Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory
news consumer. How internet and cell phone users have turned news into social experience. Pew Internet
& American Life Project. Washington, D.C. Retrieved from:
http://infousa.state.gov/media/internet/docs/participatory-news-consumer.pdf
Schenk, M. (1995). Soziale Netzwerke und Massenmedien. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Wu, S., Hofman, J. M., Mason, W. A., & Watts, D. J. (2011). Who Says What to Whom on Twitter. WWW
'11, Hyderabad, India. Retrieved from http://research.yahoo.com/files/twitter-flow.pdf
References
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