Different Frontiers of Social Media War in Indonesia Elections 2024
Bob
1. Website Features of the
Top 100 Circulation U.S.
Newspapers
Heather Heater, Anita Ford, Brad Beckwith, Jeremy
Lyons, Kris Miller and Bob Bergland
Missouri Western State University
2. Overview
In 2006, The Bivings Group conducted
a study of the websites of the Top 100
circulation newspapers in the U.S.
The goal of our study was
1) Update and compare their results
with 2012 data
2) Research the use of social media
and other new features among the
newspapers
3) Provide a baseline for future studies
3. Background Literature
First comprehensive studies of U.S.
dailies done in 1997
• Peng et. al study of website design
and features on 80 newspapers
• Kamerer and Bressers study of
national vs local news on websites
• Shultz: Content analysis of features of
100 newspaper websites, stratified by
size
4. Background Literature
Some other key studies:
Greer & Mensing’s 1997-2003 longitudinal
study
Huang et. al (survey, 2006)
Sparks, Young & Darnell 2006—100
Canada media websites
2006 Bivings Group—Top 100,
Russial’s 2008 survey of 210 newspapers
over 30,000 circulation
Bergland, et. al. 2008 analysis of 362 dailies
5. Methodology
• Chose content analysis over survey method
• Largely repeated methodology of Bivings
Group 2006 study, with 3 main differences
• 1) Used current list of Top 100 U.S. newspapers,
which has changed slightly since the list Bivings
used
• 2) Used a two-pass system to aid in reliability of
data
• 3) Expanded list of features from 14 to 36
Note: this paper only looks at MM/Interactivity;
A future paper will examine social
media/distribution
6. Methodology
Conducted pilot test of 10 sites to ensure
inter-rater reliability (94%)
First pass was conducted in mid-October
Second pass was conducted one week after
first pass, only adding features not seen
on first pass, since there would be no way
to verify that a feature wasn’t there before.
A total of 212 items were added in the
second pass in the 3,600-item dataset
(5.9%)
18. Conclusions
Interactivity has increased, with blogs and
comments after articles jumping the most
and reaching almost 100%
Also not surprisingly, self-produced video
has also almost reached the full saturation
point
Tied in with comments and a gradual move
toward paywalls, registration has also
increased significantly, nearly tripling
Advances in Content Management
Systems and the focus on the reader has
resulted in features like Most
Popular/Commented/Recommended to
also nearly triple
19. Future Research
Analyze more distribution and social
media features
Break down data by ownership, size
Follow-up survey/interviews to
explain how/why
Repeat study in 4-5 years
