ANOVA Parametric test: Biostatics and Research Methodology
Viral news: How to predict news sharing based on article characteristics
1. Viral news: How to predict news sharing based
on article characteristics
Damian Trilling, Petro Tolochko, & Bj¨orn Burscher
d.c.trilling@uva.nl
@damian0604
www.damiantrilling.net
Afdeling Communicatiewetenschap
Universiteit van Amsterdam
WAPOR, Buenos Aires, 16–19 June 2015
2. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
We all know it
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
3. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
We all know it
How are news shared (electronically)?
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
4. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
We all know it
How are news shared (electronically)?
• via widgets
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
5. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
We all know it
How are news shared (electronically)?
• via widgets
• through copy-pasting
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
6. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
Old theories for new questions?
News value theory
• ¨Ostgaard (1965) and Galtung & Ruge (1965) suggested that
some empirically determinable news factors determine the
news value of some information.
• How many and which factors ⇒ subject to debates
• Eilders (2006) argues that these factors do not only guide
journalists’ news selection, but also the selection of news by
the audience.
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
7. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
Old theories for new questions?
News sharing and news values
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
8. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
Old theories for new questions?
News sharing and news values
• All this suggest that a user’s decision whether to share an
article is guided by these news factors as well.
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
9. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
Old theories for new questions?
News sharing and news values
• All this suggest that a user’s decision whether to share an
article is guided by these news factors as well.
• Weber (2014) shows that at least some news factors can be
used to predict how the audience comments on a news article
(see also Ziegele, 2014).
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
10. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
What is it?
Integrating an indentity-construction perspective
Online identities
• Sharing reflects on the individual’s identity and is actively
used for this purpose
• “virtual home, like a real one, [that] is furnished with objects
you buy, build, or receive as gifts.” (Turkle, 1995, p. 259).
These objects can be all types of ressources, especially links to
other sites.
• Identities as something people are constructing continuously,
as an ongoing “project of the self” (Giddens, 1991).
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
11. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Data
The data
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
12. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Data
The data
Article data
• January 2014—August 2014
• Automated query of RSS feeds 1x/hour and append to dataset
• Also: Full webpage downloaded immediately
• Later: Parsing the downloaded pages (Python) to extract
relevant information
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
13. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Data
The data
Article data
• January 2014—August 2014
• Automated query of RSS feeds 1x/hour and append to dataset
• Also: Full webpage downloaded immediately
• Later: Parsing the downloaded pages (Python) to extract
relevant information
Sharing data
• (at least) 1 month time lag
• Query Facebook, Twitter, Google APIs (Python) with URLs
from RSS-dataset
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
14. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Data
Descriptives
Table: Sample description
News site Description N
ad.nl popular newspaper 45 525
nrc.nl quality newspaper 6 267
nu.nl online-only news site 5 721
parool.nl Amsterdam newspaper 24 370
trouw.nl quality newspaper 19 299
volkskrant.nl quality newspaper 31 500
Total N = 132, 682.
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
16. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Analysis
Analysis
Automated coding
• sentiment analysis
• supervised machine learning (based on earlier work by Bj¨orn)
• word counts (e.g., number of deaths)
• parsing (via XPATH) of relevant sections of the page (e.g.,
author)
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
17. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
Analysis
Analysis
Automated coding
• sentiment analysis
• supervised machine learning (based on earlier work by Bj¨orn)
• word counts (e.g., number of deaths)
• parsing (via XPATH) of relevant sections of the page (e.g.,
author)
Models
• negative binonomial regression
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
18. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
General impressions
Results
General impressions
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
19. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
General impressions
General impressions
(See also descriptives in the methods section)
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
20. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
General impressions
General impressions
Twitter
• Most articles <100 shares; but some >4,000
• No shares: 10%
• But: 73% receive ≤ 10 shares
(See also descriptives in the methods section)
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
21. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
General impressions
General impressions
Twitter
• Most articles <100 shares; but some >4,000
• No shares: 10%
• But: 73% receive ≤ 10 shares
Facebook
• Similar, but more spread:
• No shares: 30%
• Three top articles: 48.689, 53,844 and 79,975 interactions
(See also descriptives in the methods section)
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
22. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The models
Results
The model
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
24. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Results
The hypotheses and research questions
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
25. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Distance
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
26. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Distance
• H1a (supp.): Domestic issues ⇒ 129% of the expected shares
for other issues on Twitter, and even 184% on Facebook.
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
27. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Distance
• H1a (supp.): Domestic issues ⇒ 129% of the expected shares
for other issues on Twitter, and even 184% on Facebook.
• H1b (supp.): Closer geographical distance ⇒ more shares
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
28. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Distance
• H1a (supp.): Domestic issues ⇒ 129% of the expected shares
for other issues on Twitter, and even 184% on Facebook.
• H1b (supp.): Closer geographical distance ⇒ more shares
• H1c (supp.): Stories about non-Western countries ⇒ 96% of
the shares of articles without a clear location, compared to
140% which Western countries receive on Twitter (Facebook:
111% vs. 167%).
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
29. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Tone
(rationale H2: news values; rationale H5: identity construction
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
30. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Tone
• H2 (supp.): 1-point increase on 5-point negativity scale⇒
2.6% increase of Twitter shares (Facebook: 7.9%)
(rationale H2: news values; rationale H5: identity construction
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
31. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Tone
• H2 (supp.): 1-point increase on 5-point negativity scale⇒
2.6% increase of Twitter shares (Facebook: 7.9%)
• H5 (supp.): 1-point increase on positivity scale ⇒ 4.3%
increase on Twitter (Facebook: 16.4%)
(rationale H2: news values; rationale H5: identity construction
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
32. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Conflict
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
33. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Conflict
• H3 (supp.): Conflict angle present ⇒ 111% of the shares
(Facebook 109%).
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
34. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Human interest
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
35. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Human interest
• H4 (only supported for Facebook): human-interest articles ⇒
interacations up by a third
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
36. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Exclusiveness
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
37. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Exclusiveness
• H6 (supp.): News-agency articles ⇒ only 67% of the Twitter
shares of own articles; even sharper decline on Facebook (to
28%).
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
38. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Exclusiveness
• H6 (supp.): News-agency articles ⇒ only 67% of the Twitter
shares of own articles; even sharper decline on Facebook (to
28%).
• H7 (supp. on Twitter): more frequently the specific topic of
an article is covered in the news in general ⇒ less shares.
Opposite effect on Facebook
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
39. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
The hypotheses and research questions
Conclusions
• Sharing is predictable
• Both news values and identity construction play a role
• Need for up-to-date theory incorporating different
perspectives:
1 user as person (identity construction, personal motivations)
2 user as gatekeeper/someone in a journalist’s role
3 “produsage”
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher
40. Towards a theory of news sharing? Methods Results Questions?
d.c.trilling@uva.nl
@damian0604
www.damiantrilling.net
Viral News Trilling, Tolochko, & Burscher