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Pre-print version of paper accepted for publication in Journalism Studies
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The news user on social media –
A comparative study of interacting with media organizations on Facebook and
Instagram
Anders Olof Larsson
Faculty of Management
Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology
anders.larsson@westerdals.no
andersoloflarsson.se
@a_larsson
Abstract
Online trends and platforms come and go, and media professionals have historically shown a
keen interest in adopting novel modes of content distribution in order to capture the interest of
the elusive online audience. The paper at hand provides insights into the employment of
online interactivity by news media users in relation to the social media presences of a
selection of Norwegian media outlets. Adopting a comparative approach, the study features
analysis of data from online mainstay Facebook and from the comparably novel Instagram
platform. Among other things, results suggest that the previously noted tendency for audience
members to prefer ‘lighter’ or less demanding modes of interaction with online news content
is further strengthened – especially on the latter of the two studied platforms. Given that
Instagram tends to attract comparably younger users, implications for the news media
industries as well as for future trends regarding audience interaction in relation to news are
discussed.
Introduction
While some online services become highly popular and succeed in maintaining their
popularity for extended periods of time, other services enjoy comparably shorter periods in
the limelight after which they fade from popularity. As shown in the research field of political
communication, while a service like MySpace was utilized by candidates during the 2008 US
presidential election (e.g. Bronstein 2013), it was described as “declining” (Nielsen and
Vaccari 2013, 2339) in the same political context a mere two years later. Similarly relating to
scholarly efforts dealing with political actors online, Hoffman (2012) suggests that “even
though […] technology is so quickly changing, scholars must be able to adapt to and
investigate the ways in which citizens are using it for political purposes” (2012, 233). The
basic premise of the current study, then, is that very similar claims should be made with
regards to the study of the media industry. Indeed, as pointed out by Nielsen and Schrøder
(2014), the increased use of services and platforms collectively known as social media “is in
the process of changing how news is produced, disseminated, and discussed” (2014, 472).
Given that previous research into online adaptation within the media industry has focused
primarily on either producers (e.g. Chung 2004; Domingo 2008; Hedman and Djerf-Pierre
2013; Larsson and Christensen 2016; Larsson and Ihlebæk 2016) or on users (e.g. Bergström
2008; Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2015; Giglietto and Selva 2014; Larsson 2011;
Picone 2016), scholarly approaches that integrate both types of actors appear to be somewhat
rare (e.g. Almgren and Olsson 2015; Bergström and Wadbring 2015; Karlsson et al. 2015).
Drawing on this, the study at hand provides a structural analysis of activities undertaken by
both types of actors, focusing on how the contents posted on social media by a series of media
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producers is interacted with by their respective audiences (as suggested by Karlsson and
Clerwall 2013; Picone, Courtois, and Paulussen 2015).
With specific regard to the media industry, Chyi and Chada (2012) point out that
“it is indeed difficult to find a technology that newspapers do not embrace” (2012, 431).
Perhaps due to increasingly challenging economic realities, the media industry could be seen
as scurrying from service to service in order to find some financially viable solution that
could perhaps replace traditional paper- or broadcast-type emissions. With this in mind, the
research design employed in the paper at hand features a comparative approach, detailing
media organization and audience activity on two currently popular social media services –
Facebook and Instagram. While the former of the two has been described as the most popular
service of its kind from a global point of view (Ju, Jeong, and Chyi 2013, 2), the latter,
picture-focused Instagram service is primarily gaining traction among comparably younger
users (e.g. Manovich 2016; Shannon Greenwood, Perrin, and Duggan 2016). As such, while
both services should arguably be of relevance for media outlets who are supposedly
scrambling to attract younger consumers, Instagram would appear to be especially interesting
in this regard. Beyond tracing the degree to which Facebook and Instagram are utilized by a
selection of media actors, a series of conceptualizations regarding the ways in which audience
members have chosen to interact with online content will guide the presented analyses.
The study is set in Norway, providing an interesting empirical context for
several reasons. For instance, the Norwegian context is characterized by internationally high
degrees of newspaper readership (e.g. Ihlebaek and Krumsvik 2015) as well as by high levels
of use for the social media services dealt with here (e.g. Ipsos/MMI 2016; Kalsnes 2016).
Following Nielsen and Schrøder (2014), then, it could be especially interesting to study issues
like the ones dealt with here in a country like Norway, where indeed “more than half the
population use Facebook” (2014, 2). Given these factors, the Norwegian case could be
considered as an especially interesting one to study in relation to our current interests.
With the above in mind, our efforts are guided by the following two research
questions, geared towards assessing the activities undertaken by a selection of Norwegian
media organizations and their audiences:
RQ1: To what extent are the studied media organizations making use of their
Facebook and Instagram accounts?
RQ2: To what extent are media consumers interacting with the content provided
by the studied media organizations?
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Following this introduction,
a section on the possibilities and difficulties involved when applying a comparative
perspective to studying the specified social media platforms is offered. A section detailing the
concepts relating to interaction utilized in the paper is next, followed by a description of the
methods employed for data collection and analysis. After the subsequent results section, the
findings are discussed and the limitations of the work performed are acknowledged.
Comparing Facebook and Instagram
While social media services like the ones under scrutiny are often understood as separate
entities, van Dijck (2013) suggests that they are not independent of one another but that they
“ecosystem of connected media” (van Dijck 2013, 21) , suggesting considerable overlap
between these and other, similar platforms (see also Vis 2013). With media producers in
mind, then, previous research from the US and the UK (Bastos 2015) as well from our current
case country (Skogerbø and Krumsvik 2015) have pointed out that overlapping tendencies are
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indeed present also from an organizational point of view. Indeed, while previous work
looking into the use of social media by media industry professionals has largely focused on
Twitter (as pointed out by Engesser and Humprecht 2015; Hermida 2013; Lawrence et al.
2013), a comparably smaller amount of work has featured insights into the uses of Facebook
(Skogerbø and Krumsvik 2015). Even fewer insights are available into the uses of Instagram
in this regard (e.g. Brandtzaeg et al. 2015; Larsson and Ihlebæk 2016), save for a few studies
dealing with the visual aspects of photo journalism on Instagram (e.g. Alper 2014; Borges-
Rey 2015). As such, our current efforts will provide a structural overview of media producer
– and consumer - engagement on the two platforms.
For analytical purposes, Facebook and Instagram must be seen as two separate
platforms, employed in potentially different contexts and for potentially different reasons.
Moreover, the two services are – at the time of this writing, at least - different with regards to
appearance, terminology and technological infrastructure. Nevertheless, Facebook and
Instagram alike offer their users a series of options for interacting with posted content that
appear as similar. Drawing on previous work (e.g. Larsson 2015a, 2015b; Sormanen et al.
2015), we can identify two main options for audience engagement that were equally
integrated into both services at the time of data collection for the study at hand. First, both
Facebook and Instagram allow for users to provide what could be regarded as some sort of
acknowledging reaction – a like – to a specific provided post. Partaking in ‘liking’ posts has
been considered as “slacktivism” (e.g. Morozov 2011) or indeed “clicktivism” (Karpf 2010),
and has as such largely been viewed as a less demanding mode of interaction. Similarities can
arguably be found between the affordances of the proverbial ‘like’ button and the
functionalities that were typically available on the web pages of media organizations. For
instance, studies on media audiences online have typically found the utilization of comparably
less demanding features, such as reader polls, to reach higher levels of use than functionalities
that could be considered as more demanding - such as providing comments or engaging in
citizen journalism (e.g. Bergström 2008; Larsson 2011). While Facebook redesigned and
diversified the ‘like’ functionality into a series of Reactions during the studied time period,
the end-user aspect remains the same – an easy-to-use, one-click mode of interaction (Krug
2016; Stinson 2016). Similarly, from a technical standpoint, reactions appear to be treated by
the Facebook API in bulk with likes – an amalgamation of sorts that makes our current cross-
platform comparative efforts suitable.
Supposedly more demanding, then, is the possibility for users of both studied
services to provide comments to content posted on a Facebook Page or an Instagram account
operated by a media organization. Indeed, previous studies have shown that at least for
audience interaction on Facebook, comments tend to be few and far between in comparison to
‘likes’ as described above (Larsson 2016a, 2016b). Certainly, such a scarcity of audience
interactvity through commenting could have to do with the sometimes rather low levels of
online engagement found among journalists (e.g. Hille and Bakker 2013). Taken together,
these results could be seen as contributing to a situation where media professionals and media
consumers alike appear as rather skeptical towards the functionality under discussion (see also
Bergström and Wadbring 2015).
In relation to liking and commenting, while the functionality to redistribute
posts made by other users is available on both studied platforms, this possibility for sharing
must be considered as more integrated into Facebook. While sharing has been a basic
functionality of this service for some time, the ability to repost or indeed ‘re-gram’ content
posted to Instagram was only available through a series of plug-ins or separate apps that
needed to be installed in combination with the original one at the time for the study at hand
(Schwarze 2017; Walters 2016). Given this imbalance with regards to the sharing
functionality on the two studied platforms, our empirical focus will be placed on a
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comparative assessment of the uses of likes and comments across the profiles upheld by a
series of Norwegian media actors on Facebook and Instagram.
Regardless of platform, the studied functionalities can be understood as
providing opportunities for users of the services under scrutiny to interact in some way with
the content offered, or indeed with other users. The subsequent section of the paper at hand,
then, provides an overview of how the how the online news user and online interactivity have
been conceptualized.
The interactive news user
So far, the term ‘media consumer’ or ‘media audience’ has been employed to denote those
involved as readers, viewers or listeners in relation to content made available. While such a
conceptualization might seem straightforward enough, it also signals a certain degree of
docility in that it describes the audience member primarily as a passive consumer. Granted,
such consumption has been shown to take a series of different forms. For instance, research
has shown how presumed consumers are indeed active in terms of interpreting or rejecting
what are sometimes referred to as the “preferred readings” (Hall 1980, 134) of mediated
content.
Such a more active role for the media consumer leads to the necessity of seeking
out new ways way of conceptualizing the group under discussion. With the influx of the
Internet, the view of media consumers as active in relation not only with regards to the
interpretation of content, but also in relation to the creation of media products gained traction
(e.g. Bowman and Willis 2003; Bruns 2005; Gillmor 2004). Other scholars would point to the
rather low interest of audiences to collaborate with journalists to any larger or more
demanding extents (e.g. Bergström 2008; Larsson 2012b), or to similar difficulties with
audience participation as expressed by media producers (e.g. Domingo 2008). Indeed, the
literature seems to suggest that such collaborations between producers and consumers seemed
like a good idea in theory but proved to be difficult in practice. A series of issues have been
pointed to as explanatory factors – among others, financial reasons (e.g. Karlsson et al. 2015),
the perceived low quality of audience contributions as expressed by media professionals (e.g.
Braun and Gillespie 2011) or a general sense of losing control over one’s journalistic integrity
(e.g. Curran et al. 2013; Heise et al. 2013)
While problematic, the potential for increased audience engagement has
nevertheless led scholars to elaborate on suitable conceptualizations for those who in some
way, shape or form take part of online media content. For our current purposes, the term news
user could be deemed as a suitable term with which to gauge the concepts under investigation.
Relating to what Singer and co-authors (Singer 2011; Singer et al. 2011) have described as
active recipients of news, Picone (2016) suggests that the term at hand provides a suitable
description of activities typically undertaken when visiting the web presences upheld by
media actors – commenting on articles, clicking and selecting various options et. c. Moreover,
the term also suggests a delimitation of the types of activities that such news users are allowed
to partake in. For instance, Hille and Bakker (2013) have demonstrated that the types of
functionalities typically made available for news users tend to primarily focus on the latter
stages of news production – such as the types of functionalities for Facebook and Instagram
dealt with in the current study.
Regardless of the collaborative interests of these news users, they are dependent
on the opportunities provided to them to interact with news items. As alluded to previously,
the initial attempts of news media online involved a certain degree of openness and
experimentation with their web page presences. These early efforts sometimes allowed for
visitors to engage in the earlier stages of news production – providing news items of their
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own, for instance (as shown by e.g. Chung 2004; Larsson 2012a). Understanding these
functionalities as examples of online interactivity, Himelboim and McCreery (2012) suggest
that the literature on the use of interactive features on news websites goes almost as far back
as the scholarship on interactivity itself (2012, 428-429). Indeed, a number of models and
conceptualizations regarding online interactivity appear to co-exist and have done so for some
time (e.g. Bordewijk and Kaam 1986; Downes and McMillan 2000; Heeter 1989; Kiousis
2002; McMillan 2002a, 2002b; McMillan 2005; Rafaeli 1988; Rafaeli and Sudweeks 1997;
Rogers 1986). While these conceptualizations all provide varying foci with regards to
interactivity, it is often suitable to differentiate between two main, overarching varieties of
interactive functionalities – medium interactivity and human interactivity (as suggested by e.g.
Bucy 2004; Chung 2007; Lee 2000; Stromer-Galley 2000, 2004). Medium interactivity,
sometimes also referred to as user-to-system, user-to-document or content interactivity,
denotes interaction between a user and some technological interface. In studies of the web
pages operated by online newspapers, such features would typically involve the ability to
click and select news items in a variety of ways. As for our current empirical setting, the
process of interacting by means of ‘likes’ could be seen as an example of medium
interactivity. For the human variety, then, these types of functionalities are sometimes also
labeled as user-to-user or interpersonal interactivity. Again relating to newspaper web pages,
these types of features typically involve opportunities for users to engage with each other by
means of online chatting or through partaking in discussion forums. Relating to our current
empirical context, the comment functionality available on both Facebook and Instagram could
be understood as an example of the human variety of interactive features – a variety that is, as
mentioned previously, often seen as more demanding that its medium counterpart.
These conceptualizations of interactivity were derived from what could be
considered as a previous iteration of the Internet – a ‘web 1.0’, if you will. Employing them
for analyzing activities on social media platforms is arguably not without its challenges. The
selected approach nevertheless appears as suitable given the need for longitudinal insights
regarding how these modes of interaction are employed over time, and on different services
(e.g. Larsson 2015a). As such, the paper at hand heeds the call by Ksiazek and co-authors
(2016) who suggest that “it would be interesting to compare user–content [understood here as
medium interactivity] and user–user [understood here as human interactivity] interactivity as
they play out on news sites and on other sites” (Ksiazek, Peer, and Lessard 2016, 12). Given
the previously discussed tendencies for news users to be rather conservative in their
employment of interactive functionalities, we should expect similar patterns to emerge from
the empirical material dealt with in the paper at hand. Specifically, levels of medium
interactivity (understood here as likes) are likely to be higher than levels of human
interactivity (operationalized here as comments). While these expectations seem very likely
given the findings from previous research projects, our current comparative design adds to the
research field by allowing for insights into any differences regarding organizational and
audience employment on the two platforms under scrutiny. As previously mentioned,
Facebook is used by a majority of Norwegians, while Instagram is currently seen as the social
media of choice for comparably younger cohorts. As such, the study design employed here
will allow for diversified insights into preferences regarding news interaction across different
platforms with different demographics.
Method
Four Norwegian media outlets were selected for the study: the broadsheet newspaper
Aftenposten; its tabloid print competitor VG; public service broadcaster NRK and commercial
broadcaster TV2. These are among the most popular media outlets in Norway (e.g. Vaage
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2016) and were thus deemed as suitable for our current purposes. Table One provides some
basic information regarding the social media presences of the selected media outlets.
- INSERT TABLE ONE HERE -
The descriptive statistics presented in Table One provides insights into the diversions that
these market leading media actors apparently undergo when making the transition to social
media. For instance, while the public service broadcaster in our sample – NRK – appears as
more popular than their commercial competitor (TV2) in terms of the percentage of
Norwegians taking part of their contnet on an average day, the state-operated media actor
emerges as less successful when it comes to gaining traction on the online platforms under
scrutiny. On these, TV2 emerges as enjoying more popularity – especially, it would seem, on
Instagram. Essentially, then, what we are studying here are two tabloid actors (VG and TV2)
and two broadsheet actors (NRK and Aftenposten). As previous research has suggested that
actors within the former of these two “media traditions” (Karlsson and Clerwall 2013, 69)
might employ novel services such as those under study here to higher extents, the
comparative aspect detailing both different actors and different platforms as used by those
actors and their respective audiences should come in handy.
Focusing on the official Facebook and Instagram presences of the specified
media actors, data for the former were collected using the Netvizz application (Rieder 2013),
while data for the latter were gathered by means of the instaR package for the R programming
language (Barbera 2016). Every post made by the specified media organizations between
January 1st and May 31st 2016 were gathered. While other, similar studies analyzed data from
comparably shorter periods – a week (Hedman 2016) or a month (Engesser and Humprecht
2015) – the study at hand thus features a lengthier empirical set-up, as recommended by a
series of previous authors (e.g. Ksiazek, Peer, and Lessard 2016; Sjøvaag, Stavelin, and Moe
2015).
Beyond assessing the extent of posting undertaken by the studied media
organizations (as expressed in RQ1), the data also allows for insights into the number of likes
and comments that each post had received at the time of collection (as expressed in RQ2).
The date at which data collection was aborted was not arbitrarily chosen – rather, as
Instagram instated a set of limitations on the ways in which data could be accessed on June
1st, 2016 (Instagram 2016), the collection process had to be adjusted according to these
changes (see also Rieder et al. 2015 or Vis 2013 for more in-depth discussions on working
within API limits). As such, the study at hand provides insights into uses of social media
based on data that have recently become rather difficult to obtain.
Summing up the principles applied for data collection, the study at hand follows
the call from previous research and places its focus on both media actors and news users (as
suggested by Almgren and Olsson 2015; Bergström and Wadbring 2015). Featuring actual
use data (as recommended by Karlsson and Clerwall 2013; Ksiazek, Peer, and Lessard 2016;
Livingstone 2013; Picone, Courtois, and Paulussen 2015), the study provides comparative
insights regarding the online prioritizations of the media companies listed above – as well as
findings concerning how news users have chosen to interact with the contents provided as
defined previously.
Data analysis was performed by means of a series of quantitative approaches
(utilizing SPSS). In an attempt to provide some nuance and detail to the findings, the
quantitative results are complemented by a few closer looks at the posts made by the studied
media organizations that succeeded in gaining particularly high amounts of traction.
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Results
Relating to RQ1 and our interest in the use of Facebook and Instagram by media professionals
and media users, Figure One provides an overview of the degree to which these two services
were employed during the studied time period.
- INSERT FIGURE ONE HERE -
Employing the interpretation guidelines provided for Figure One, the comparably larger white
bars suggest that for three out of four studied media organizations, Facebook emerges as the
preferred platform when compared to Instagram. Given the aforementioned high levels of
popularity for the specified service among Norwegian Internet users, such a prioritization is
perhaps not that surprising. Indeed, such arrangements of activities would seem even more
suitable when one considers the ease with which posts on Facebook can be shared by news
users. As discussed previously, while such sharing is indeed possible on Instagram as well, it
was not integrated into the basic user interface for this latter service at the time of the study at
hand. With this in mind, a focus on Facebook by media actors is likely to result in higher
amounts of redistributed posts – possibly increasing the potential for the content provided by
the media organization to ‘go viral’ (e.g. Nahon and Hemsley 2013).
What could be considered as somewhat surprising, however, are the bars
representing the activity undertaken by the commercial broadcaster TV2, visible to the right
in Figure One. In comparison to their competitors, TV2 emerges as having taken a rather
equal approach to the two platforms under study. This differing prioritization on behalf of
TV2 could be seen as a strategic attempt to cater to comparably younger viewers – indeed, a
group that makes up a large part of their key demographic (e.g. Vaage 2016) and that are, as
discussed previously, often pointed to as ardent users of Instagram. Moreover, given the
comparably recent diminishing broadcast ratings reported for the commercial broadcaster
(Hauger 2015), the focus on Instagram uncovered here could be seen as an attempt by TV2 to
increase their popularity.
TV2 aside, the remaining three media organizations – the broadsheet newspaper
Aftenposten, its tabloid competitor VG and the PSB actor NRK - are shown in Figure One as
adopting rather similar modes of social media engagement across Facebook and Instagram.
Such similarities, then, have been uncovered in the Norwegian case as well as for other cases
when it comes to a variety of modes of online engagement by media organizations. Results
emanating from Sweden has shown similar tendencies when it comes to the use of multimedia
features across broadsheet and tabloid news sites (Karlsson and Clerwall 2012), the use of
hyperlinks on such sites (Karlsson, Clerwall, and Örnebring 2015) as well as regarding
frequency of Facebook use by media organizations (Larsson 2016b) - albeit not with regards
to the types of news stories shared on Facebook by such organizations (Larsson 2016a).
Nevertheless, the strategy sometimes labeled as “hedging” (Boczkowski 2005), where media
actors closely follow the behavior of competitors, appears to be present also in the Norwegian
context – with the commercial broadcaster TV2 exhibiting a different approach as shown
above. As such, while the dominance of Facebook over Instagram is less stated for this latter
actor than for its competitors, our first research question can clearly be answered in favor of
Facebook.
While Figure One provided overarching details of media organization
employment of Facebook and Instagram respectively, it does not provide us with much detail
in relation to our second research question - detailing the degree to which news users interact
by means of medium (liking) and human (commenting) interactivity. Figure Two, then,
provides more insights regarding these matters.
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- INSERT FIGURE TWO HERE -
Given the highly skewed distributions shown, Figure Two presents medians rather than
averages (as suggested by e.g. Larsson 2017; Nielsen and Vaccari 2013; Raynauld and
Greenberg 2014).
We turn first to the reported uses of likes, represented in Figure Two by white
bars for both services. For both services, this variety of medium-type interactivity emerge as
clearly more popular than the commenting or indeed human variety. A series of independent
samples Kruskal–Wallis tests revealed that the differences between the median amount of
likes and comments emerged as significant within the data emanating from Facebook and
Instagram respectively (p < 0.05) – except for the case of comments and likes as measured
from the Facebook Page operated by the broadsheet newspaper Aftenposten (p > 0.05). As
such, the supposedly less-demanding liking functionality is clearly the most popular one
across both studied platforms – with its dominance emerging as even more stated for the
Instagram service as seen in the right part of Figure Two.
Focusing next on internal differences for likes on Facebook and Instagram
respectively, the patterns of likes for the former of these platforms show that while the more
tabloid of the four studied news organizations – VG and TV2 – enjoy significantly higher
median amounts of likes per post than their competitors (Independent samples Kruskal–
Wallis tests resulted as p > 0.05 for VG and TV2 compared to both Aftenposten and NRK),
no significant difference could be discerned between the included tabloid newspaper and
commercial broadcaster. At least for Facebook, then, these more tabloid media formats appear
to be more prone to audience ‘liking’ rather than commenting on the content provided (see
also Larsson 2017). For the two tabloid media outlets, VG and TV2, the content that appears
to raise the level of ‘likes’ in this regard is largely related to two separate categories. For VG,
the data suggest that they gain comparably higher numbers of Facebook likes when posting
ready-made video content, more often than not from international media houses – content that
can simply be funneled on to the Facebook Page without much editing needed. For instance,
we can point to a series of posts that emerged as comparably popular in this regard: a clip of a
fisherman videotaping his chance meeting with a whale while disembarking from a small-boat
marina1, news about Norwegian2 as well as Swedish3 royalty, stories about celebrities4,
sports5 or human interest-type news items6. For TV2, they appear to reach higher numbers of
likes when they provide content related to their own choice of programming – largely
consisting of a variety of reality television series franchises7, but also relating to what is
seemingly a format of their own – Petter Uteligger (Norwegian for ‘Homeless Peter’), about a
reporter who goes undercover to live as a homeless person on the streets of the Norwegian
capital. In sum, while TV2 emerges as successful in terms of gaining Facebook likes when
featuring self-produced content, the same does not appear to be true for VG, where newswire
type content of the more tabloid variety emerge as particularly ‘likeable’.
For comments, then, while this mode of interaction is literally dwarfed by the
‘like’ variety, the median amount of comments per post on Facebook emerge as significantly
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 https://www.facebook.com/vgnett/videos/10154240674411995/
2 http://www.vg.no/rampelys/kongehuset/prinsesse-ingrid-alexandra-12-aar/a/23599890/
3 https://www.facebook.com/vgnett/videos/10154154572156995/
4 http://www.vg.no/rampelys/film/oscar/leo-fikk-endelig-sin-foerste-oscar-takket-foreldrene/a/23626659/
5 http://www.vg.no/sport/haandball/haandball-em-menn-2016/norsk-bragd-mot-frankrike-klar-for-em-
semifinale/a/23604262/
6 http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/nigeria/naa-er-heksegutten-hope-3-paa-bedringens-vei/a/23650173/
7https://www.facebook.com/tv2norge/photos/a.193427799689.129432.179748179689/10153578482724690/?typ
e=3&theater
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higher than the comparable statistic for Instagram across all studied media organizations
(independent samples Kruskal–Wallis test: p < 0.05) save for TV2 (p > 0.05), indicating that
while commenting is indeed not as common as likes, Facebook appears to be the platform of
choice for the former of these activities.
We turn next to gauging internal differences on Facebook and Instagram
respectively. A few tendencies stand out in this regard. For instance, while VG emerges as
successful in terms of gaining higher median amounts of comments on Facebook than the
three other media organizations (independent samples Kruskal–Wallis test: p < 0.05 when
comparing VG with Aftenposten, NRK and TV2 respectively), no such significant difference
was found on Instagram. Indeed, while TV2 emerged as more popular in this regard on
Instagram - boasting a median amount of seven comments per post made - this difference did
not prove significant using the independent samples Kruskal-Wallis test (p > 0.05).
Nevertheless, we can gauge the data emanating from these media organizations to get a closer
look at what kind of content appear to yield comparably higher amounts of comments. On
Facebook, then, the most popular actor in this regard – the tabloid newspaper VG – succeed in
gaining higher amounts of comments when providing content similar to that which was
discussed previously – dealing with what could be described as tabloid or indeed ‘softer’
news items (Reinemann et al. 2012). Focusing on Instagram – more specifically, on the
commenting activity undertaken by visitors to the comparably popular TV2 account – the
majority of such content involves the broadcaster encouraging their Instagram visitors to
comment – for instance, urging them to tag other users who they think would be suitable
participants in an upcoming reality TV-show8. Much as for the most ‘liked’ posts, then, TV2
appear as most successful in this regard when featuring their own content over other types of
content. As for the results in relation to RQ1, the results presented with regard to the use of
interactive features appear to differ across the studied platforms. Indeed, the medium-type
interactive feature found on both platforms – likes – dominate over the human variety –
comments - on both Facebook and Instagram. At the same time, Figure Two clearly showed
that this dominance was arguably more stated on the latter of the two studied services. These
findings are discussed in the subsequent final section of the paper.
Discussion
History tells us that each new technological innovation within the field of communication will
come paired with ideas, predictions and sometimes even visions regarding the proposed uses
and indeed effects that the novelty du jour will have in relation to some societal issue or
malady (e.g. Winston 1998). Such tendencies are perhaps especially visible when studying the
history of technology in conjunction with journalism. Remembering Pavlik’s claim that
“journalism has always been shaped by technology” (2000, 229), we can point to a series of
historically more distant as well as recent suggestions as to how developments in the
technological realm would come to influence both production and consumption of media (e.g.
Cardoso 2007; Castells 1996). Curran (2010), for instance, discussed how the developments
leading up to cable television and supposedly interactive digital television were seen as
bringing extensive changes to the ways in which media content was produced and consumed -
or indeed, used. As discussed elsewhere, such often overtly techno-utopian views on the
influence of innovations on rather established practices – like that of news consumption and
interaction (Larsson 2012b) – have often been met with empirical efforts suggesting that these
types of developments tend to develop in an incremental fashion at best (e.g. Karlsson et al.
2015; Picone, Courtois, and Paulussen 2015).
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With specific regard to social media, the results presented in the study at hand
could be seen as in line with such previous scholarly efforts. Indeed, the perceived difficulty
for media professionals to handle more attention-intensive human interactive features –
operationalized as comments in the current study - has been pointed to in a series of preceding
studies that have focused on these issues as they played out on newspaper web pages. Such
skepticism on behalf of both producers and consumers has already been mentioned, and the
findings presented here thus indicates that the introduction of Instagram into the fold of social
media platforms utilized by media producers does not challenge the apparent preferences of
the average online news user. Thus, the results presented here could be regarded as
reinforcing the previously uncovered lack of interest in human type interactive features,
strengthening what more and more appears as the preferred medium type of interaction –
exemplified in the study at hand as the act of ‘liking’ posted content. While this claim needs
to be somewhat modified for the data emanating from Facebook, the overall trend is
nevertheless clear and present on both services.
Nevertheless, the results presented here need to understood in relation to
practical and technical issues that are undoubtedly at play here. For instance, while Facebook
– at least in its current form – is largely built around a ‘feed’ of news, events and updates that
one encounters when logging on to the specified service, Instagram does not feature a similar
stream of suggestions regarding what to interact with. Future research could perhaps shed
more light on end-user perspectives to interaction on these services, utilizing interview
methods or perhaps ethnographic or “walk-along” varieties for data collection (see, for
instance, Hujanen and Pietikainen 2004, who studied similar issues in relation to newspaper
web pages.)
The results presented in relation to our second research question seem to suggest
a series of benefits for news providers seeking to curate their online presences. As Twitter is a
relatively small platform – at least in the Scandinavian context – and as the number and
content of comments on Facebook as well as elsewhere can be overwhelming to deal with for
editorial staff, the apparent limited interest of Instagram users to engage in human
interactivity could be seen as beneficial in terms of decreasing the workload of those
employed within media organizations. Add to this equation that Instagram use is particularly
frequent among comparably younger cohorts, and the benefits seem obvious – the platform is
primarily used by a group whose attention is particularly coveted by the media industry, and
this group of users do not seem to be explicitly interested in modes of interaction that demand
more attention from those professionals who are involved in updating, curating or otherwise
working with the online presences of media organizations. As pointed out by Hujanen and
Pietkainen (2004) in their study of young Finnish news consumers, news items were very
much seen by their informants as finished products, provided for them by professional
journalists and in little need of comments, amendments or other types of more advanced or
demanding interaction. This tendency, then, seems to be very much present on Instagram,
while somewhat less tangible on Facebook.
Another interesting difference between the two platforms under scrutiny –
although not one that was explicitly studied here – has to do with the sharing of content. As of
this writing, Instagram was not as clearly geared towards redistribution of content as was the
case with Facebook – as discussed, posts can be shared on Instagram, but such a utilization of
the service demands that one or more third-party applications are installed. Such a limitation
of the ways in which content can be shared can be observed also in other comparably novel
social media platforms - like Snapchat, for instance. Comparably newer social media services,
then, would seem to be less oriented towards sharing and more towards personal, private
interaction. As such, while the utilization of such novel services for journalistic purposes
could be seen by media professionals as positive as these services apparently do not
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encourage more demanding forms of audience interaction, the fact that platforms like
Instagram and Snapchat do not easily allow for the sharing of content in the same way as
Facebook or Twitter does is perhaps a downside or a challenge. Without the possibility to
share, viral effects are unlikely to occur - arguably a challenge for professionals within the
news media industry, who must seek to spread their content beyond the original receiver.
Finally, while the quantitative approach presented here has provided useful
insights into the uses of social media in the online news context, it is limited in that it cannot
fully take into account the specific topics dealt with in the posts provided by the studied news
organizations. Future research might find it useful to approach the study of interactivity in the
online news context with some form of qualitative design in mind. Nevertheless, as the
analysis of what content emerged as more ‘liked’ or indeed more commented upon found that
such stories were more or less aligned towards tabloid or ‘soft’ news content, one can wonder
what kinds of repercussions such patterns might have with regard to the priorities of news
media organizations. Given that younger cohorts tend to get their news from various online
platforms – such as social media (Vaage 2016) – we might be wary of the content
prioritizations of news providers in relation to Instagram in particular. Most likely, results
similar to those presented here have been reached in a series of news media audience analysis
departments operated by the studied media organizations. Giving these younger cohorts more
of what they like in terms of news content might be a valid strategy for keeping them coming
back to an Instagram account – but such a mode of practice could and should be seen as
problematic when one considers the role of the media in contemporary democracies.
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Media
organization
Type
Average
print or
broadcast
audience /
day1
Facebook
followers2
Instagram
followers2
Aftenposten
Broadsheet
newspaper
827 000
321 374
30 700
VG
Tabloid
newspaper
1 920 000
379 682
25 100
NRK
Public
Service
Broadcaster
35 %
120 183
35 600
TV2
Commercial
Broadcaster
28 %
169 973
73 100
Table One. Followers for the studied media organizations across Facebook and Instagram.
1 = For newspapers, average online visitor data from 2015 are presented (Medienorge 2016).
For broadcasters, the average percentage of Norwegians who reported to had taken part of the
specified channel on an average day is presented (Vaage 2016).
2 = N of followers at the time of data collection (May 31st, 2016). While Facebook provides a
precise number of followers for each Page, Instagram appears to round off their follower
counts to the nearest hundreds.
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Figure One. Degree of activity by media organizations on Facebook (white bars) and
Instagram (black bars).
N of posts, % of posts by each organization on both services shown.
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Figure Two. Median N of likes (white bars) and comments (black bars) per post provided by
the studied media outlets on Facebook (left part of Figure Two) and Instagram (right part of
Figure Two).
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