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Citation: Hendrickx, Jonathan,
Annelien Van Remoortere, and
Michaël Opgenhaffen. 2023. Love,
Like or Angry in Times of COVID-19?
Analysing News Brands’ Audience
Engagement on Facebook Amidst a
Pandemic. Journalism and Media 4:
931–945. https://doi.org/10.3390/
journalmedia4030060
Academic Editor: María
Luisa Humanes
Received: 25 May 2023
Revised: 14 August 2023
Accepted: 21 August 2023
Published: 5 September 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
Love, Like or Angry in Times of COVID-19? Analysing News
Brands’ Audience Engagement on Facebook Amidst a Pandemic
Jonathan Hendrickx 1, * , Annelien Van Remoortere 2and Michaël Opgenhaffen 3
1Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Austria
2Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University, 6700 HB Wageningen, The Netherlands;
annelien.vanremoortere@wur.nl
3Institute for Media Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium;
michael.opgenhaffen@kuleuven.be
*Correspondence: jonathan.hendrickx@univie.ac.at
Abstract:
As an integral part of their online strategies and business models, news outlets diffuse
their online content on social media platforms such as Facebook to increase traffic. They thereby
succumb to the contingencies and constraints of third platforms infamous for their sudden changes
in algorithms. In this article, we assess engagement patterns of 140,359 Facebook posts of 17 Belgian
news brands between March 2020 and 2021. We map out differences in audience engagement of
news outlets’ Facebook posts related and unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic and differences
between mainstream and alternative news outlets. We find that COVID-19-related posts generate
more engagement and more so for mainstream media than for alternative media outlets.
Keywords: audience engagement; news; social media; COVID-19; pandemic
1. Introduction
The rise of social media platforms has dramatically disrupted our relationship with
media content in general and news content specifically. The 2021 Digital News Report was
the first to rank social media over search engines and direct traffic as primary gateways to
online news, with a much more pronounced difference among its respondents under the age
of 35 (Newman et al. 2021). Around the world, private and public service media alike invest
time and resources in building and maintaining active presences across the wide array of
social media platforms currently available. Structural factors affecting all media corporations
lead to similarities in business models and strategies, with social media platforms frequently
perceived as ‘frenemies’, so both as friends as enemies (Sehl et al. 2021).
While being highly dependent on Facebook for online traffic and audience engagement
(Hendrickx et al. 2023;Opgenhaffen and Hendrickx 2023), using it as an additional content-
diffusion platform comes with a hefty price. News titles necessarily succumb to the
contingencies and constraints of third platforms infamous for their sudden changes in
algorithms and preferred content types (Nieborg and Poell 2018). This also means that
news titles, dependent on social media, adopt distinct social media logics in diffusing news
content to attract wide audiences (van Dijck and Poell 2013). For instance, their Facebook
posts share many of the characteristics and lay-out of those posted by individuals and
all other types of organisations or groups and effectively compete with them in order to
increase engagement.
News media used to be delivered to people in easily discernible packages consumed
habitually (Steensen and Westlund 2020). In the contemporary digital media era, they
have to vie for ‘eyeballs’ or attention, particularly on social media amidst personalised
timelines and different posts and media content originating from a host of different actors
(Nixon 2020). Citizens still have some agency in relating to social media posts that even
can reinforce certain pre-programmed steps of the platform (such as a like that gives the
Journal. Media 2023,4, 931–945. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4030060 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/journalmedia
Journal. Media 2023,4932
message more visibility) or change them (such as Facebook that had to change its policy
around clickbait headlines because users started to distrust them and clicked less on them)
(van Dijck and Poell 2013). For Facebook specifically, these include sharing or commenting
on a post, or liking it through a collection of seven options, visualised in Figure 1below. The
traditional ‘Like’ button was compounded with other reaction types in 2016, which “allows
users to provide emotive feedback, and allows for the collection of ever-more granular data
from those users” (Sturm Wilkerson et al. 2021, p. 1043). It is noteworthy that the ‘Care’
like option was introduced only in April 2020 at the height of the first series of lockdowns
following the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was explicitly intended to make “people feel a bit
more connected with their friends and family during the pandemic” (Lyles 2020).
Journal. Media 2023, 4, FOR PEER REVIEW 2
have to vie for ‘eyeballs’ or attention, particularly on social media amidst personalised
timelines and different posts and media content originating from a host of different actors
(Nixon 2020). Citizens still have some agency in relating to social media posts that even
can reinforce certain pre-programmed steps of the platform (such as a like that gives the
message more visibility) or change them (such as Facebook that had to change its policy
around clickbait headlines because users started to distrust them and clicked less on them)
(van Dijck and Poell 2013). For Facebook specifically, these include sharing or comment-
ing on a post, or liking it through a collection of seven options, visualised in Figure 1
below. The traditional ‘Like’ button was compounded with other reaction types in 2016,
which “allows users to provide emotive feedback, and allows for the collection of ever-
more granular data from those users” (Sturm Wilkerson et al. 2021, p. 1043). It is notewor-
thy that the ‘Care’ like option was introduced only in April 2020 at the height of the first
series of lockdowns following the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was explicitly intended to
make “people feel a bit more connected with their friends and family during the pan-
demic” (Lyles 2020).
Figure 1. Standard Facebook like options as of 2022, from left to right: ‘Like’, ‘Love’, ‘Care’, ‘Haha’,
‘Wow’, ‘Sad’ or ‘Angry’.
In this paper, we assess Facebook users’ engagement of a vast set of news posts (n =
140,359) published by 17 different Belgian news outlets between 1 March 2020 and 2021.
We differentiate the different reaction types and set these off against different types of
news topics (COVID-19 vs. non-COVID-19 news) and different types of news outlets
(mainstream vs. alternative (see for instance Hiaeshutter-Rice and Weeks 2021)). This mul-
tifaceted approach enables us to contribute to scholarship by offering empirical evidence
on how people perceive and engage with online news from an array of different brands
in unprecedented times of crisis. Our study allows us to shine light on how Flemish main-
stream and alternative news media reported on COVID-19 on Facebook in the first year
of the pandemic and how audiences engaged differently with the outlets’ Facebook posts.
2. Literature Review
2.1. News Brands and Audience Engagement: It’s Complicated
Engagement plays a crucial role in the conceptual Audience Dimensions framework
of Philip Napoli. He argues that attentiveness, exposure, and loyalty are the key drivers
of engagement, which through the degree of appreciation and emotion has the power to
alter audiences’ behaviour (Napoli 2011). The specific relationship between audience en-
gagement and news brands has been discussed among scholars for decades, though it has
re-emerged as an interesting and intricate topic of debate in the light of social media plat-
forms as new diffusion and consumption platforms (Ørmen 2016). He argued to better
understand “how people attend to information about issues of public concern, become
aware of the intricacies of these issues, and address each other about such issues” (Ørmen
2016, p. 18). Nelson later built on this definition and distinguished reception-oriented and
production-oriented audience engagement, in which the former is more appropriate to
our study as it “refers to the ways that audiences attend to the news” (Nelson 2021, p.
2357). Zayani (2021, p. 25) held the view that digitality and audience engagement are “the
hallmark” of the current journalistic field. He operationalised this in his study of the Al
Jazeera Network’s digital initiative AJ+ by collecting data of social media posts’ reactions,
comments and shares as the key drivers of audience engagement on social media. Zayani’s
approach ties in with Ørmen’s definition of audience engagement and news, as well as
with our own conceptual and methodological frameworks as we too seek to operationalise
Figure 1.
Standard Facebook like options as of 2022, from left to right: ‘Like’, ‘Love’, ‘Care’, ‘Haha’,
‘Wow’, ‘Sad’ or ‘Angry’.
In this paper, we assess Facebook users’ engagement of a vast set of news posts
(
n = 140,359
) published by 17 different Belgian news outlets between 1 March 2020 and
2021. We differentiate the different reaction types and set these off against different types
of news topics (COVID-19 vs. non-COVID-19 news) and different types of news outlets
(mainstream vs. alternative (see for instance Hiaeshutter-Rice and Weeks 2021). This multi-
faceted approach enables us to contribute to scholarship by offering empirical evidence
on how people perceive and engage with online news from an array of different brands in
unprecedented times of crisis. Our study allows us to shine light on how Flemish main-
stream and alternative news media reported on COVID-19 on Facebook in the first year of
the pandemic and how audiences engaged differently with the outlets’ Facebook posts.
2. Literature Review
2.1. News Brands and Audience Engagement: It’s Complicated
Engagement plays a crucial role in the conceptual Audience Dimensions framework
of Philip Napoli. He argues that attentiveness, exposure, and loyalty are the key drivers
of engagement, which through the degree of appreciation and emotion has the power
to alter audiences’ behaviour (Napoli 2011). The specific relationship between audience
engagement and news brands has been discussed among scholars for decades, though it
has re-emerged as an interesting and intricate topic of debate in the light of social media
platforms as new diffusion and consumption platforms (Ørmen 2016). He argued to better
understand “how people attend to information about issues of public concern, become
aware of the intricacies of these issues, and address each other about such issues” (Ørmen
2016, p. 18). Nelson later built on this definition and distinguished reception-oriented
and production-oriented audience engagement, in which the former is more appropriate
to our study as it “refers to the ways that audiences attend to the news” (Nelson 2021,
p. 2357). Zayani (2021, p. 25) held the view that digitality and audience engagement are
“the hallmark” of the current journalistic field. He operationalised this in his study of the Al
Jazeera Network’s digital initiative AJ+ by collecting data of social media posts’ reactions,
comments and shares as the key drivers of audience engagement on social media. Zayani’s
approach ties in with Ørmen’s definition of audience engagement and news, as well as
with our own conceptual and methodological frameworks as we too seek to operationalise
audience engagement with news through an overt social media lens. As news consumption
becomes increasingly steered by social media platforms (Newman et al. 2021) and the
pandemic has been argued to only fuel this (Quandt and Wahl-Jorgensen 2021), we venture
that it is only appropriate that research designs adapt to changing news consumption
patterns. To complement this, we echo Krumsvik (2018), who notes how user engagement
Journal. Media 2023,4933
has become increasingly important for news organisations in recent years as user metrics
including numbers of followers and clicks help “to ensure media’s social role”.
Chen and Pain (2021) have also looked at the interplay between audience engagement
and social media. Based on a different survey of 588 Americans who have used Facebook
to get news, they distinguished two types of social media news engagement: content
interaction (interacting with content through commenting, sharing, quoting, or posting
feelings about it) and exposure engagement (users’ measured attention for and positive
emotions towards news on social media). The same survey was used for a different
study which found that Facebook users are less likely to engage in news that people
consider as controversial or makes them angry or anxious (Chen 2020, pp. 848–50). In
our study, we solely focus on content interaction exposure through an assessment of over
140,000 Facebook news posts and users’ varying degrees of interacting with them.
Our study period covers the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reporting of
which has become a prime example of disaster communication (Perreault and Perreault
2021). It also relates to what Vasterman (2005) calls ‘media hype’, where a key event (e.g., in
our case, the first death by COVID-19 or first vaccine administered) is followed by similar
events, generating more and more media attention. News about COVID-19 often also had
a scientific angle; just think of the many statistics about the number of infections or the
scientific publications that (whether after going through a peer review) were used as a
source to prove the effectiveness of the vaccines. Typical of this type of reporting is that a
growing interest from the public leads to an increased media coverage that then ends up
in a so-called hype pipeline (Caulfield and Condit 2012). Under the pressure of various
actors and factors, scientific news can become more and more sensational, generating
additional engagement, and thus, making it extra interesting to be covered, resulting in
even more pressure. By comparing news about the pandemic with other news, we aim
to effectively understand if and how the public exhibits a different form of engagement
towards these two types of news stories. We venture that news related to the pandemic
is more prone to making people feel more anxious, sad, or angry, exposes them to other
types of news content, and makes them engage with it accordingly. In this regard, we seek
to use our study to answer how people experience news in these times, which was one of
the questions raised by Lewis (2020) in his commentary on journalism research during and
beyond COVID-19. To strengthen our contribution, we deliberately offset news content
that is and is not related to the pandemic to further shine light on how Facebook users
engaged differently with these distinct types of news in the pandemic’s first year.
2.2. News Brands and Facebook: In an Open Relationship
The detrimental consequences of Facebook as a news diffusion platform and a gen-
uine news source have been frequently discussed in scholarship from a host of different
disciplines. Just like traditional newspapers or news outlets’ websites, social media plat-
forms too ‘can provide individuals with information on pertinent political and social affairs
that can engender further expression and participation’ (Chan 2016, p. 436). But from its
inception, a key difference in online news consumption, be it via search engines, news
aggregators or later social media platforms, is that citizens tend to come across news content
unintentionally and incidentally without explicitly wanting to be informed (Matthes et al.
2020). On social media, news-related posts appear at ostensibly random places between
personal status updates of Facebook friends in algorithmically personalised timelines. This
means that social media platforms can indeed attract previously unserved audiences to
news brands, but the latter also risks a dilution of their reputation, as brand awareness and
loyalty matter to the business of journalism (Chen and Pain 2021, p. 367). They employ a
range of tactics to maximise audience engagement with their Facebook news posts. These
include carefully selecting the post time in what may appear as a linear television schedul-
ing structure including a designated ‘prime time’ slot, choosing which news topics to post
about, and using message vividness and interactivity, by using pictures and/or videos,
using hyperlinks or tagging organisations or people (Guo and Sun 2020).
Journal. Media 2023,4934
Based on a qualitative study of four Norwegian news brands, Kalsnes and Larsson
(2018) inferred that ‘softer’ news topics are more prone to being shared on Facebook and
Twitter than ‘harder’ news articles. Traditional news values are a suitable starting point for
discussing and predicting which types of articles are being shared on platforms such as
Facebook, though not all to the same extent. Various studies, which have looked at news
content shared on Facebook from a host of countries, have shown that news presented
with an emotional, negative tone are more prone to being shared (or liked or commented
on) than news packaged more positively (examples include the works of Al-Rawi 2020;
Robertson et al. 2023;Salgado and Bobba 2019;Sturm Wilkerson et al. 2021;Trilling et al.
2017). This ties in with the later finding of Lamot (2021) that mainstream news brands
tend to ‘soften’ their news offering on Facebook as opposed to that of their own websites.
The different types of reactions attributed to posts (e.g., ‘Like’, ‘Love’, ‘Wow’, ‘Angry’,
. . .
)
have been linked to the tone or sentiment displayed in the post, as well as the salience
or prominence attributed by the individual to the given issue or topic. Both the ‘Love’
and ‘Angry’ likes are explicitly linked to sentiment, while salience could only be linked to
‘Angry’ (Eberl et al. 2020).
Ferrer-Conill et al. (2021) analysed over a million posts from 482 different Scandi-
navian news brands. They sought to find differences in audience engagement between
countries and type of media ownership, predominantly centred around commercial and
state-owned outlets. The authors’ analysis spawned two interesting findings contrary to
their hypotheses. First, the country with the lowest number of news posts, Denmark, had
by far the highest number of average engagements in all three distinguished types (liking,
sharing or commenting) per post, signifying that quality still trumps quantity. Second,
news posts from public service media outperformed those of their private competitors in
all three types of Facebook audience engagement. Their study is akin to the one at hand,
yet we wish to expand their methodological framework in several ways. We also take
into account the various like options as described earlier (Sturm Wilkerson et al. 2021)
and operationalise these to more specifically pinpoint alterations in audience engagement
with and attitudes towards news brands, including differences between mainstream and
alternative news outlets, which have been defined to “represent a proclaimed and/or (self-)
perceived corrective, opposing the overall tendency of public discourse emanating from
what is perceived as the dominant mainstream media in a given system” and are gaining
traction in media markets across the world (Holt et al. 2019, p. 862). According to the same
authors, alternative news media set themselves apart by different content types and styles,
and publishing routines and relationships with the societal system. Thereby, they too en-
gage in “system-preserving tendencies” to, as overtly non-conformist minorities, maintain
distance from their mainstream counterparts, including frequently criticising them and
using this critique as foundation for their reporting and/or very existence (ibid., p. 864).
Scholarship has indicated that alternative, ideological news sources thrive on Facebook
in terms of audience engagement, more so than posts of mainstream news outlets. Social
media platforms were found to contribute to amplifying non-mainstream voices and opin-
ions, notably politically conservative ones (Hiaeshutter-Rice and Weeks 2021;Larsson 2019).
We seek to further explore the mainstream/alternative news brand conundrum in our own
study of Belgian Facebook news brands’ posts and their degrees of audience engagement.
Due to the relative newness of the pandemic in terms of academic research, very few
studies have appeared studying its relationship with audience engagement on Facebook at
the time of submitting the paper at hand. We consider this as one of our main contributions
to the state of the art. Nonetheless, we highlight one example of preceding work relevant
to our study. In a non-peer-reviewed article, Oliveira et al. (2021) assessed 61,532 news
headlines as posted on Facebook by Portugal’s biggest mainstream news brand between
January and December 2020. The share of COVID-19-related posts fluctuated throughout
the year, as did the different types of likes attributed by audiences to posts. The ‘Angry’ and
‘Sad’ reactions were more predominant in the weeks where local authorities (re)instated
a state of emergency and lockdowns, whereas in general the ‘Angry’, ‘Sad’ and ‘Wow’
Journal. Media 2023,4935
likes increased along with the rise of pandemic-related Facebook news headlines. We use
these findings to hypothesise similar evolutions in our own data analysis by differentiating
four quarters that are each representative for a different period in how the pandemic was
dealt with and reported on. This will be further outlined in our methodology section.
In this study, we distinguish the three forms of Facebook engagement (different types of
reactions, shares and comments) from each other as they already represent different aspects
of engagement. A like reaction, for example, is given the quickest, since it requires less
commitment and less involvement compared to a comment or a share (e.g., Kim and Yang
2017). Reactions can be seen as “one-click communication” while posting a comment is
an example of “composed communication” (Burke and Kraut 2016), which requires more
effort. A share differs from the other two types of engagement in that the post ends up
on your own timeline and is also visible to your network, shaping your own profile and
identity (Kim and Yang 2017).
In summary, the literature review finds that the relationship between news brands
and audience engagements has changed profoundly due to digitisation and social media
platforms, and this was only exacerbated following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, scholarship has argued that said platforms, with a predominant focus on
Facebook, amplify both soft and negative news as well as conservative opinions. As we seek
to gauge how news related to the pandemic was engaged with compared with other news
and to what extent there are clear differences between Facebook posts from mainstream
and so-called alternative news outlets, this leads us to the following two research questions:
1.
What is the difference in the number of (different types of) likes, shares and comments
between Facebook posts about COVID-19 versus other topics?
2.
What is the difference in the number of (different types of) likes, shares and comments
between Facebook posts of mainstream versus alternative news outlets?
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. The Flemish Media Market
Belgium has been classified in the democratic corporatist media system as well as
the Western (liberal)-type (Brüggemann et al. 2014;Hallin and Mancini 2004). Like many
Western and Northern European countries, it is marked by a tradition of quality journalism,
a strong public service broadcaster and recent waves of increased media market consolida-
tion. Belgium is also a multilingual country with various political layers and governments
at the axes of sociocultural and linguistic barriers. Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking and
affluent northern region of just under seven million inhabitants, boasts its own government
with distinct media regulatory powers as well as its own media market and public service
broadcaster (Picone and Donders 2020). Like in several other media markets, alternative
news outlets have emerged in the last few years (Buyens and Van Aelst 2021). As shared
ownership and consumption is low across the various Belgian media markets, we solely
focus on Dutch-speaking news brands intended to inform Flemish citizens. We collected
data from the 17 biggest Flemish news titles, consisting of 8 traditional daily newspaper
and magazine titles, 1 private and 1 public television news broadcaster and 7 online-only
or so-called alternative news titles, of which 3 are distinctly left-wing oriented and 2 are
skewed to the right-wing. The news titles were selected due to their dominance in the Flem-
ish media landscape in terms of circulation figures, viewer ratings, website visitor numbers
and social media traffic following prior analyses carried out by the authors (Hendrickx
et al. 2023).
3.2. Assembling Our Data Set
We used Crowdtangle for data collection, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks interac-
tions on public content from Facebook pages and groups and has been used by publishers,
content creators, and fact-checkers, and also more and more by academics who use the
tool to access Facebook data of, for example, news pages, including the number of likes,
shares and comments a news post generated. There are some drawbacks to the tool, such
Journal. Media 2023,4936
as the fact that it is owned by Facebook itself and forms a kind of black box that barely
gives us as researchers insight into how accurate the retrieved data is, but nonetheless,
Crowdtangle is considered a useful tool for conducting academic research on Facebook.
We collected Facebook data from a series of legacy and alternative Flemish news outlets
between 1 March 2020, which is seen as the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in
Belgium, and 1 March 2021, when the vaccination campaign had begun, thus covering the
whole first year of the pandemic. Specifically, we used this tool to collect all Facebook posts
from the 17 most well-known news media in Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium)
for one year (see Table 1for list of brands) and the number of interactions (i.e., the likes,
shares and comments) these news posts generated.
Table 1. News brands and classification.
News Brand Classification
Apache Alternative, left-wing
Business AM Alternative, right-wing
De Morgen Mainstream, newspaper
De Standaard Mainstream, newspaper
De Tijd Mainstream, newspaper
De Wereld Morgen Alternative, left-wing
Doorbraak Alternative, right-wing
Gazet van Antwerpen Mainstream, newspaper
Het Belang van Limburg Mainstream, newspaper
Het Laatste Nieuws Mainstream, newspaper
Het Nieuwsblad Mainstream, newspaper
Knack Mainstream, magazine
MO* Alternative, left-wing
Newsmonkey Alternative, right-wing
PAL NWS Alternative, right-wing
VRT Mainstream, public television and radio
VTM Mainstream, private television and radio
We distinguished the Facebook posts of news outlets dealing with and not dealing with COVID-19 using an
automated dictionary approach with a self-created topic list (see Table 2for the full list).
To assemble this topic list, we browsed articles and made a list of all frequently used
or specific COVID-19 words used by journalists. After considering which words would be
used regularly and mostly in COVID-19-related news coverage, we ended up with a list
of 31 keywords. Using a dictionary-based approach, Facebook messages containing any
of these words were retained. Both keywords and the message text, article title and first
sentences of the article visible in the Facebook post, were transformed to lowercase to avoid
mismatches due to capital letters. The biggest drawback of the approach we used is that
we inevitably selected Facebook posts that were not really about COVID-19 (false positives)
and missed Facebook posts that were about COVID-19 (false negatives) but do not mention
any of the words in our list. After the automated topic coding was completed, we took a
random sample of 100 Facebook posts and manually coded them. In 86% of the posts the
topic coding was accurate
1
, which is rather high for topic coding. This high accuracy can
be perhaps explained by the fact that the COVID-19 crisis introduced, on the one hand,
a completely new vocabulary of medical-related words and, on the other hand, many
existing words such as ‘pandemic’ and ‘distance’, which were almost exclusively used in
relation to COVID-19. A potential limitation of our approach that should be mentioned
is that we only looked at the Facebook caption and title of the article when classifying
articles as COVID-19-related or not. Although this might increase the risk of missing
COVID-19-related articles, this decision was made because we believe that many people
make a comment based on the title or Facebook caption without reading the article first. By
only looking at the caption and article title, we believe that we mimic most closely the way
that people read and react to Facebook posts.
Journal. Media 2023,4937
To better pinpoint changes over time, as the pandemic gradually lost its novelty and
became a fixture in everyone’s lives, we divided our findings over four smaller periods
of three months each. These roughly overlap with the pandemic’s dominance in public
life and debate from a Belgian perspective, although we find that it is also applicable
and appropriate for international affairs, though still predominantly Western-oriented
research. March to May 2020 marked the period of the harshest lockdowns and restrictions,
with eases and relaxations between June and August. Between September and November,
infections and restrictions alike rose again. December to February 2021, finally, saw a
continuation of most restrictions, including the holiday period and the advent of countries’
vaccination drives.
Table 2.
Keywords in Dutch and translated to English. Note that the terms overlegcomitéand
veiligheidsraad are both used interchangeably for the meetings of various Belgian governments to
decide on relaxing or tightening existing COVID-19 measures.
News Brand Classification
1.5 m 1.5 m
Afstand distance
Besmettingen infections
bubbel bubble
corona -
coronapandemie COVID-19 pandemic
coronavirus -
COVID -
COVID-19 -
ICU -
intensive zorg intensive care
intentieve zorgen intensive care
lockdown -
maatregelen measures
mondkapje face mask
mondmasker face mask
opnames hospitalisations
Overlegcomitéconciliation committee
overlijdens deaths
pandemie pandemic
SARS -
vaccin vaccine
vaccinatie vaccination
variant -
Veiligheidsraad safety council
versoepelingen relaxations
verstrengingen hardening, escalations
virologen virologists
viroloog virologist
virus -
ziekenhuisopnames hospitalisations
4. Results
4.1. Descriptive Findings
Looking at the macro level of our dataset, we collected a total of 140,359 Facebook
posts of 17 Belgian (Flemish) news brands published between 1 March 2020 and 2021.
Exactly 50,350 of those, or 35.87% of our total number, were found to be related to COVID-
19. This means that the pandemic, perhaps unexpectedly, did not completely dominate the
Facebook news cycle. Before answering our research questions, we delve deeper into the
data and denote differences at the level of the outlet (mainstream versus alternative outlets)
and those of periods throughout the year of study.
Journal. Media 2023,4938
Unsurprisingly and in line with previous research (e.g., Hiaeshutter-Rice and Weeks
2021), a lower share of pandemic-related reporting was found for alternative outlets (29.65%)
compared to mainstream outlets (37.14%). When we zoom further in on the individual
outlets, two alternative right-wing news outlets (PAL NWS, 21.4%; Doorbraak, 21.2%)
posted, by quite a bit, the lowest share of COVID-19-related Facebook posts. The high-
est shares were found at the public service broadcaster (VRT, 40.7%), private television
broadcaster VTM (also 40.7%), a left-wing alternative outlet (De Wereld Morgen, 41.0%),
quality newspaper De Morgen (40.3%) and the business-oriented quality newspaper De Tijd
(40.4%). Overall, most mainstream outlets posted a comparable share of pandemic-related
news, while there are larger discrepancies between alternative outlets (especially between
right-wing and left-wing).
We divided our studied period into four three-month-periods and after comparing
our data in the different periods, it becomes apparent that the first period of analysis
(March–May 2020) had the highest share of COVID-related Facebook news posts (49.68%),
with lower shares in the next two periods (30.66 and 29.82%, respectively). The fourth
period, December 2020 to March 2021, saw an uptick of 33.43%, explained by the launch of
the vaccination campaign and continued closures of shops, bars, and restaurants. Initially,
Facebook posts about the pandemic took up nearly half of the total posted articles. After the
first few months, this share already dropped significantly and stabilized around 30%. For all
four periods, mainstream news outlets again outperformed alternative titles percentagewise.
In the first period, alternative outlets devoted 45.82% of their posts to COVID-19-related
news, which is quite close to the percentage of mainstream outlets (50.49). After the first
period, alternative news outlets allocated, respectively, 25.31, 22.27 and 27.53% of their post
to COVID-19 related articles, while this percentage remained higher for mainstream outlets
(31.71, 31.45, 43.78%).
4.2. COVID-19-Related News and Other News
This section answers our first research question. It discusses total interactions and
reactions to Facebook posts on COVID-19 and other news topics, respectively.
4.2.1. Interactions
Across the 140,359 Facebook posts, we counted a grand total of 69,115,166 interactions.
For the 50,350 pandemic-related posts specifically, the total amounted to 26,755,740 (or
38.71%). Keeping in mind that 35.87% of all posts were COVID-19-related, audiences
overall engaged slightly more with COVID-19-related news than with other types of news.
Table 3zooms closer in on the different forms of interaction: likes (total of all like options),
shares and comments. COVID-19-related Facebook posts (58.72%) were compared to other
less-liked news (65.56%). We did, however, see that COVID-19 news was, in comparison to
other news, shared (respectively 7.44% and 5.74%) and commented on (respectively 33.85%
and 28.70%) more often.
Table 3. Different forms of interaction for COVID- vs. non-COVID-related news.
COVID-19 News
(N = 50,350)
Other News
(N = 90,008)
Total
(N = 140,358)
Likes 16,777,237 (58.72%) 29,665,112 (65.56%) 46,442,349
Shares 2,125,185 (7.44%) 2,596,790 (5.74%) 4,721,975
Comments 9,671,624 (33.85%) 12,988,567 (28.70%) 22,660,191
Additionally, when divided per quarter, our results revealed that the numbers of
likes and shares of COVID-19 news posts gradually declined throughout the four periods,
while comments progressively increased in volume (see Figure 2). We did not assess the
content of Facebook users’ comments and are, hence, unable to make finite judgments
on what explains the rise in commenting as a means of exerting audience agency. Our
conjecture is that rather than liking or sharing posts, citizens progressively adopted their
Journal. Media 2023,4939
online agency and became more articulate and empowered to voice their personal opinions
about unpopular measures such as lockdowns, the cancellation of events and concerts and
the closures of schools and shops. During the fourth period, the rollout of the vaccination
campaign began, which was a hot topic in public debate, which may also explain the
increase in the number of comments.
Journal. Media 2023, 4, FOR PEER REVIEW 9
Table 3. Different forms of interaction for COVID- vs. non-COVID-related news.
COVID-19 News
(N = 50,350)
Other News
(N = 90,008)
Total
(N = 140,358)
Likes 16,777,237 (58.72%) 29,665,112 (65.56%) 46,442,349
Shares 2,125,185 (7.44%) 2,596,790 (5.74%) 4,721,975
Comments 9,671,624 (33.85%) 12,988,567 (28.70%) 22,660,191
Additionally, when divided per quarter, our results revealed that the numbers of
likes and shares of COVID-19 news posts gradually declined throughout the four periods,
while comments progressively increased in volume (see Figure 2). We did not assess the
content of Facebook users’ comments and are, hence, unable to make finite judgments on
what explains the rise in commenting as a means of exerting audience agency. Our con-
jecture is that rather than liking or sharing posts, citizens progressively adopted their
online agency and became more articulate and empowered to voice their personal opin-
ions about unpopular measures such as lockdowns, the cancellation of events and con-
certs and the closures of schools and shops. During the fourth period, the rollout of the
vaccination campaign began, which was a hot topic in public debate, which may also ex-
plain the increase in the number of comments.
Figure 2. Mean of comments, shares, and likes on COVID-19-related Facebook news posts per pe-
riod.
4.2.2. Reactions
Since 2016, the traditional ‘like’ button was compounded with other reactions to give
Facebook users the opportunity to provide more specific emotive feedback. Users can still
‘like’ posts but can also express that they have positive (‘Love’, ‘Care’, ‘Haha’, ‘Wow’) or
negative (‘Sad’, ‘Angry’) feelings towards certain posts. Table 4 displays the different re-
action options for COVID-19 and other news. The traditional ‘like’ option was still by far
the most used reaction and made up almost half of all the reactions on both COVID-19
(46.87%) and other news (45.46%). Surprisingly, the ‘Love’ and ‘Care’ button were the
options that were less used for COVID-19 news, which went against our own assumption
that pandemic-related reporting would lead to ‘harder’ reactions. Although the ‘Care’ but-
ton was also less used on other news, the button was especially introduced in April 2020
to accommodate a sense of online connectedness, but was also not used more for COVID-
19 posts. ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ were used slightly more often for COVID-19 news, while ‘An-
gry’ was slightly used more for other news. The ‘Haha’ button was used more often for
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4
Average number per period
Shares Likes Comments
Figure 2.
Mean of comments, shares, and likes on COVID-19-related Facebook news posts per period.
4.2.2. Reactions
Since 2016, the traditional ‘like’ button was compounded with other reactions to give
Facebook users the opportunity to provide more specific emotive feedback. Users can
still ‘like’ posts but can also express that they have positive (‘Love’, ‘Care’, ‘Haha’, ‘Wow’)
or negative (‘Sad’, ‘Angry’) feelings towards certain posts. Table 4displays the different
reaction options for COVID-19 and other news. The traditional ‘like’ option was still by
far the most used reaction and made up almost half of all the reactions on both COVID-19
(46.87%) and other news (45.46%). Surprisingly, the ‘Love’ and ‘Care’ button were the
options that were less used for COVID-19 news, which went against our own assumption
that pandemic-related reporting would lead to ‘harder’ reactions. Although the ‘Care’
button was also less used on other news, the button was especially introduced in April
2020 to accommodate a sense of online connectedness, but was also not used more for
COVID-19 posts. ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ were used slightly more often for COVID-19 news, while
‘Angry’ was slightly used more for other news. The ‘Haha’ button was used more often for
COVID-19 news than for other news. This is a bit puzzling considering that intuitively we
would not consider COVID-19 news very humorous or funny.
Table 4. Reactions to Facebook news posts.
COVID-19 News Other News Total
Like 7,863,417 (46.87%) 13,487,028 (45.46%) 21,350,445
Love 1,270,007 (7.57%) 2,942,502 (9.92%) 4,212,509
Wow 1,206,053 (7.19%) 1,902,662 (6.41%) 3,108,715
Haha 1,840,187 (10.97%) 2,749,473 (9.27%) 4,589,660
Sad 2,202,706 (13.13%) 3,316,069 (11.18%) 5,518,775
Angry 1,927,734 (11.49%) 3,635,140 (12.25%) 5,562,874
Care 467,133 (2.78%) 1,632,238 (5.50%) 2,099,371
When further zooming in on news posts discussing COVID-19 and differentiating our
dataset per quarter, a few intriguing tendencies surface, as schematised in Figure 3. The
Journal. Media 2023,4940
average use of ‘Love’, ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ reactions moderately declined throughout our four
three-month periods. The ‘Care’ option shows an initial increasing trend in period one,
two and three but in the last studied period, the use went down again. A similar trend can
be seen for the ‘Angry’ button, which gained quite some relevance among Facebook users
engaging with Flemish pandemic-related news, but in period four the average use slightly
drops. The most interesting trend is the ‘Haha’ option, which shows a steep incline in our
studied period. While already frequently used in the first 6 months, the ‘Haha’ option in
the fourth period emerged as the most often-used reaction. The general ‘Like’ option is not
included in the figure below as it scores considerably higher than the other options. Here
too, though, a general decline in the average number of likes per post becomes apparent
throughout our four periods, with a drop from 160 to 120—still twice as much as the second
most popular reaction type in the fourth and final period, which was the ‘Haha’ reaction.
Journal. Media 2023, 4, FOR PEER REVIEW 10
COVID-19 news than for other news. This is a bit puzzling considering that intuitively we
would not consider COVID-19 news very humorous or funny.
Table 4. Reactions to Facebook news posts.
COVID-19 News Other News Total
Like 7,863,417 (46.87%) 13,487,028 (45.46%) 21,350,445
Love 1,270,007 (7.57%) 2,942,502 (9.92%) 4,212,509
Wow 1,206,053 (7.19%) 1,902,662 (6.41%) 3,108,715
Haha 1,840,187 (10.97%) 2,749,473 (9.27%) 4,589,660
Sad 2,202,706 (13.13%) 3,316,069 (11.18%) 5,518,775
Angry 1,927,734 (11.49%) 3,635,140 (12.25%) 5,562,874
Care 467,133 (2.78%) 1,632,238 (5.50%) 2,099,371
When further zooming in on news posts discussing COVID-19 and differentiating
our dataset per quarter, a few intriguing tendencies surface, as schematised in Figure 3.
The average use of ‘Love’, ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ reactions moderately declined throughout our
four three-month periods. The ‘Care’ option shows an initial increasing trend in period
one, two and three but in the last studied period, the use went down again. A similar trend
can be seen for the ‘Angry’ button, which gained quite some relevance among Facebook
users engaging with Flemish pandemic-related news, but in period four the average use
slightly drops. The most interesting trend is the ‘Haha’ option, which shows a steep incline
in our studied period. While already frequently used in the first 6 months, the ‘Haha’
option in the fourth period emerged as the most often-used reaction. The general ‘Like’
option is not included in the figure below as it scores considerably higher than the other
options. Here too, though, a general decline in the average number of likes per post be-
comes apparent throughout our four periods, with a drop from 160 to 120—still twice as
much as the second most popular reaction type in the fourth and final period, which was
the ‘Haha’ reaction.
Figure 3. Mean of reactions on Facebook posts (mean per period).
4.3. Mainstream and Alternative News Outlets
Our second research question focuses on the difference in audience engagement be-
tween mainstream and alternative news outlets’ Facebook posts. Comparing the likes,
shares and comments of COVID-19 related post for alternative and mainstream media
outlets separately, we see that posts of alternative media outlets are slightly more liked
(61.22%) and shared (9.93%) than posts of mainstream media (58.66% and 7.38%,
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4
Average number per period
Love Wow Haha Sad Angry Care
Figure 3. Mean of reactions on Facebook posts (mean per period).
4.3. Mainstream and Alternative News Outlets
Our second research question focuses on the difference in audience engagement be-
tween mainstream and alternative news outlets’ Facebook posts. Comparing the likes,
shares and comments of COVID-19 related post for alternative and mainstream media
outlets separately, we see that posts of alternative media outlets are slightly more liked
(61.22%) and shared (9.93%) than posts of mainstream media (58.66% and 7.38%, respec-
tively). The percentage of comments is slightly higher for mainstream media (33.96%)
compared to alternative media Facebook posts (28.85%).
When we compare the use of the different like options between alternative and main-
stream media outlet posts about the pandemic, we see some interesting differences. On
the one hand, the ‘Angry’ reaction was used far more for alternative media posts (23.82%)
than for mainstream media posts (11.21%). The same was true for the ‘Haha’ reaction
(alternative: 19.49%, mainstream: 10.77%). The ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ reaction were, on the other
hand, used more for mainstream media posts (7.27% and 13.33%, respectively) compared to
alternative media outlets (3.79% and 4.57%). Within the different alternative media outlets,
there was a clear distinction between left-wing and right-wing outlets when it came to
the ‘Haha’ reaction. The ‘Haha’ reaction saw only very limited use for Facebook posts
of left-wing outlets (Apache: 7.94%, De Wereld Morgen: 1.27% and MO*: 0.50%), while
right-wing outlets generated this reaction more (Doorbraak: 14.20%, Business AM: 13.06%,
PAL NWS: 20.66% and Newsmonkey: 10.98%). For the ‘Angry’ reaction, the dichotomy
between left-wing and right-wing alternative outlets was less clear. Although the share of
Angry reactions was high for PALNWS (36.10%) and Doorbraak (20.54%), the left-wing
Journal. Media 2023,4941
alternative outlet Apache (17.17%) also generated quite a lot of ‘Angry’ reactions. The other
left-wing outlets (De Wereld Morgen: 10.51% and MO*: 8.43%) and the right-wing outlet
Newsmonkey (4.42%) had a much smaller share of ‘Angry’ reactions.
In the next step, we performed a negative binomial regression to estimate how the
different variables (news outlet and news topic) affected audience engagement (combina-
tion of shares, like options and comments). To achieve this, we recoded news outlets into a
dichotomous variable for mainstream and alternative outlets, with alternative news outlets
as the reference category. To account for the differences in reach between the different
outlets, we included the number of followers of the Facebook page of the outlet when
they posted the news article as the control variable. We also included the period (again
differentiating between the four consecutive quarters in our year of study) to see if the
beginning of the pandemic affected audience engagement differently. In a second model,
we also included an interaction between the news outlet and news topic to assess if news
related to COVID-19 had a different effect on user engagement for alternative news outlets
compared to their mainstream counterparts. The output of the negative binomial regression
is presented in Table 5below.
Table 5. Negative binomial regression with audience engagement as dependent variable.
Model 1 Model 2 (Interaction)
Incidence Rate Ratios Conf. Int. (95%) Incidence Rate Ratios Conf. Int. (95%)
News topic (Non-COVID-19 = 0)
1.07 *** [1.05–1.08] 0.67 *** [0.64–0.70]
News outlet (Alternative = 0) 1.09 *** [1.06–1.11] 0.94 *** [0.92–0.97]
Period 2 0.87 *** [0.85–0.89] 0.87 *** [0.85–0.89]
Period 3 1.05 *** [1.03–1.08] 1.05 *** [1.03–1.08]
Period 4 0.99 [0.97–1.01] 1.00 [0.98–1.02]
Followers 1.00 *** [1.00–1.00] 1.00 *** [1.00–1.00]
News topic*News outlet 1.72. *** [1.64–1.79]
Intercept 101.49 *** [99.06–103.99] 113.67 *** [110.70–116.74]
R squared Nagelkerke 0.431 0.435
N 140,356 140,356
*** p< 0.001.
In our first model we found a significant difference between engagement of COVID-
19-related and non-COVID-19-related news on Facebook, where pandemic related news
generated more interaction than non-COVID-19-related news. While other variables re-
mained constant in the model, COVID-19 news, compared to non-COVID-19 news, was
expected to have a rate 1.07 times greater for news engagement. The period variable was
also found to have a significant impact on engagement, except for period 4. We can see
that overall, period 1 had more interactions than period 2 but less than period 3. This is
in line with what we saw in the data presented above. As 2020 progressed, 2021 loomed
and the pandemic remained endemic, or recurrent; there was also more user activity. In
the descriptive analysis, we already found that the nature of the interaction changed. The
number of shares declined, while the number of comments increased over our studied
period. Comments remained similar throughout the year.
When looking at RQ2, or the distinction between alternative and mainstream media
outlets, we see that overall, the latter generated more audience interaction than the former.
Mainstream media are expected to have a rate 1.09 times greater for news engagement
compared to alternative media outlets.
When we zoom further in on the difference in engagement between news topics
and news posts, we find a significant difference. In Figure 4, the interaction is plotted to
make interpretation more straightforward. Here, we see that the audience engagement for
non-COVID news was similar for the alternative and mainstream media Facebook posts.
This is not the case for COVID-related news. Here, we found a difference between the
Journal. Media 2023,4942
alternative and mainstream media posts, where COVID-related news generated more user
engagement for Facebook posts by mainstream media outlets.
Journal. Media 2023, 4, FOR PEER REVIEW 12
generated more interaction than non-COVID-19-related news. While other variables re-
mained constant in the model, COVID-19 news, compared to non-COVID-19 news, was
expected to have a rate 1.07 times greater for news engagement. The period variable was
also found to have a significant impact on engagement, except for period 4. We can see
that overall, period 1 had more interactions than period 2 but less than period 3. This is in
line with what we saw in the data presented above. As 2020 progressed, 2021 loomed and
the pandemic remained endemic, or recurrent; there was also more user activity. In the
descriptive analysis, we already found that the nature of the interaction changed. The
number of shares declined, while the number of comments increased over our studied
period. Comments remained similar throughout the year.
When looking at RQ2, or the distinction between alternative and mainstream media
outlets, we see that overall, the latter generated more audience interaction than the former.
Mainstream media are expected to have a rate 1.09 times greater for news engagement
compared to alternative media outlets.
When we zoom further in on the difference in engagement between news topics and
news posts, we find a significant difference. In Figure 4, the interaction is plotted to make
interpretation more straightforward. Here, we see that the audience engagement for non-
COVID news was similar for the alternative and mainstream media Facebook posts. This
is not the case for COVID-related news. Here, we found a difference between the alterna-
tive and mainstream media posts, where COVID-related news generated more user en-
gagement for Facebook posts by mainstream media outlets.
Figure 4. Predicted value of the interaction.
5. Discussion and Conclusions
In this paper, we collected 140,359 Facebook posts by 17 different mainstream and
alternative news outlets from Flanders (Belgium), all published between 1 March 2020
and 2021. We assessed the Facebook posts for their various interactions and sought to find
out if we were able to denote differences along the lines of various media brands and of
news coverage that was and was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which we con-
sider as the paper’s most useful and novel contribution to existing scholarship. With
35.87% of our dataset constituting pandemic-related news posts, we found that COVID-
19 only moderately dominated the news cycle to the extent one could have suggested, at
least on Facebook. We were unable to confirm that this corresponded completely with the
actual online news offer of published articles by news outlets’ websites for our vast sam-
ple, particularly as recent scholarship also applicable to the Flemish media market sig-
nalled instances of so-called ‘softening’ processes of news content on Facebook versus
what is published at news outlets’ websites as online news articles (Lamot 2021). Overall,
we found that Facebook users engaged more with posts related to the pandemic (RQ1).
Figure 4. Predicted value of the interaction.
5. Discussion and Conclusions
In this paper, we collected 140,359 Facebook posts by 17 different mainstream and
alternative news outlets from Flanders (Belgium), all published between 1 March 2020
and 2021. We assessed the Facebook posts for their various interactions and sought to
find out if we were able to denote differences along the lines of various media brands and
of news coverage that was and was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which we
consider as the paper’s most useful and novel contribution to existing scholarship. With
35.87% of our dataset constituting pandemic-related news posts, we found that COVID-19
only moderately dominated the news cycle to the extent one could have suggested, at
least on Facebook. We were unable to confirm that this corresponded completely with
the actual online news offer of published articles by news outlets’ websites for our vast
sample, particularly as recent scholarship also applicable to the Flemish media market
signalled instances of so-called ‘softening’ processes of news content on Facebook versus
what is published at news outlets’ websites as online news articles (Lamot 2021). Overall,
we found that Facebook users engaged more with posts related to the pandemic (RQ1).
Although COVID-19-related posts were liked slightly less, they generated more shares
and comments compared to other news. Looking at reactions, we also found differences
in user engagement. The ‘Wow’ and ‘Sad’ reaction was, not surprisingly, used more for
COVID-19-related posts. Remarkably, however, the “Haha” response was also used more
with COVID-19 news. When zooming in further, we found that this is mostly explained
by the fact that the ‘Haha’ response was used a lot with posts from right-wing alternative
media outlets.
The fact that posts about the pandemic generated more interaction is in line with
previous studies of engagement towards COVID-19 news. Important here is that pandemic-
related posts were not just about hard news but also often used a human interest/soft news
angle, where social media editors could pull out all the stops to provoke interaction, for
example through status updates and headline changes. This gives us a double effect that
boosts engagement: the hype of the topic plus in addition social media rhetoric.
Regarding the difference between types of news media, the analyses show that in
terms of COVID-19-related news, mainstream accounts elicited more engagement than
alternative accounts (RQ2). This could be explained by the tendency of people to turn to
the better-known, mainstream media in their search for information and news during times
of crisis. According to Media Systems Dependency Theory, mass media are seen as best to
fulfil information needs, especially in times of uncertainty. It is, therefore, not surprising
that traditional media brands such as TV stations and elite newspapers played a crucial role
Journal. Media 2023,4943
as news sources during the pandemic and experienced an increase in user numbers as public
service media in many Western nations tend to be considered as the most trustworthy sources
of information in times of crisis (Ali et al. 2020;Van Aelst et al. 2021).
In the descriptive analysis, we found several things to be more outspoken and extreme
in the first quarter of our time frame, meaning March to May 2020. This period of course
overlapped with the, thus, far-harshest period of the pandemic in Belgium and various
other (Western) nations, with strict lockdowns and other restrictions. As previously shown
by studies, the pandemic was new and unexpected to many, and this was of course also
reflected in the production (Libert et al. 2021), diffusion and consumption of news content
(Hendrickx 2021;Mellado et al. 2021). Interestingly, some forms of engagement were higher
in the first period (shares), while other forms (liking and commenting) increased in the later
periods. We gauge that the mainly similar trends in dealing with the pandemic, from a
government and societal perspective, as well as the similarity of the Flemish media market
with others in terms of mainstream and alternative news outlets represented, together
enhance the transferability of our analyses’ findings, at least to other Western markets
and nations.
A shortcoming to this paper is that our results are to a large extent descriptive, as we
can only contextualise the findings of this paper to the extent of other relevant scholarship
and wider political and societal trends. It was not possible for us to properly explain how
and why citizens use their agency on a daily basis to choose if, when and how to engage
with news outlets’ Facebook posts, which form just a fraction of the countless decisions
they make on a daily basis to exert agency and (not) contribute to audience engagement
(Picone et al. 2019). With audience engagement and user metrics only gaining relevance
within journalism practice and studies alike, future research can pay more attention to the
how and why questions of individual citizens and audiences engaging with online news
via social media in their daily lives.
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization, J.H., A.V.R. and M.O.; methodology, A.V.R. and M.O.;
software, A.V.R. and M.O.; validation, J.H., A.V.R. and M.O.; formal analysis, A.V.R. and M.O.; inves-
tigation, J.H., A.V.R. and M.O.; resources, A.V.R. and M.O.; data curation, A.V.R.;
writing—original
draft preparation, J.H.; writing—review and editing, J.H., A.V.R. and M.O.; visualization, J.H., A.V.R.
and M.O.; supervision, J.H.; project administration, J.H., A.V.R. and M.O. All authors have read and
agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Data are unavailable due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Notes
1
The manual coding of these 100 articles was carried out by one of the authors. Prior to coding, training sessions were first
organised between the author and an external person. It was only after achieving a reliability (Krippendorff’s alpha = 0.91) that
was sufficiently high, that the batch of 100 articles was coded.
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