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)

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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

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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

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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!

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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 18

Thanks! katrin.jungnickel@tu-ilmenau.de

axel.maireder@univie.ac.at

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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