Paper by Axel Bruns, Michelle Riedlinger, and Jean Burgess presented at the ANZCA 2021 conference, 8 July 2021.

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The Conversation, Ten Years On:
Patterns of Engagement with
The Conversation Australia and Canada
Axel Bruns, Michelle Riedlinger, Jean Burgess
a.bruns / michelle.riedlinger / je.burgess @ qut.edu.au
QUT Digital Media Research Centre /
Global Journalism Innovation Lab

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The Conversation
• Key elements:
• Content selection through crowdsourcing:
• Scholars propose new articles, and submit raw drafts
• Text development by journalistic editors, for approval by scholars
• Journalism-as-a-service:
• Scientific research, professional editing by journalists
• Publication on centralised, well-established platform
• Designed for shareability:
• Consistent use of Creative Commons licences
• Links to content shared via social media
• A ten-year success story:
• The Conversation Australia launched 2011
• Country / regional editions in UK, US, Africa, France, Indonesia, Canada, Spain + TC Global
• The Conversation Canada launched 2017

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Data
• Facebook posting data from CrowdTangle:
• Posts from public Australian / Canadian pages (i.e. majority of admins located in AUS/CAN)
• Posted between 1 Jan. and 31 Dec. 2020
• Containing a link to one of 41 Australian / 71 Canadian news domains
• Limitations:
• Public pages only (no groups or profiles)
• Admin location ≈ country focus (e.g. Conversation Africa page administered from Australia)
• CrowdTangle coverage for pages with small followings is incomplete / inconsistent

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Analysis
• Network analysis:
• Link-sharing network:
• Bipartite network: page ↔ domain
• Structure expected to show which domains are commonly shared by the same pages
• Projected down to monopartite network: domain ↔ domain
• Positioning of The Conversation in this network?
• Facebook on-sharing network:
• Public Facebook pages sharing other pages’/groups’ posts that contain AUS/CAN news links
• Monopartite network: page ↔ page(/group)
• Structure expected to show common interests, beliefs, politics
• Most prolific sharers of The Conversation links in this network?

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1.4m posts in 2020
410k distinct Australian news links shared
271k Facebook posts on-shared
Australia

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Australian Facebook pages
sharing links to Australian news
Link-Sharing Network

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Page-Domain Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / Australian news domains
Size: indegree
Colour: outdegree
Links posted by Australian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Domain Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / Australian news domains
Size: indegree
Colour: most shared news domain per page
Links posted by Australian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Domain Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / domains
Size: indegree
Colour: number of The Conversation links shared per page
Links posted by Australian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Domain-Domain Network (Australia)
Nodes: domains
Size: degree
Edges: five other domains that were most frequently shared by pages that shared the source domain
Links posted by Australian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Australian Facebook pages sharing
other Facebook pages’ posts
(that contain links to Australian news)
On-Sharing Network

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Page-Page Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: degree
Posts shared by Australian pages that contained links to Australian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Qld
Victoria
Conservatives
SA
WA
Indigenous
Progressives
National /
NSW
Me Too Greens
Tasmania
Education
SBS
NRL
Page-Page Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: degree
Posts shared by Australian pages that contained links to Australian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Page Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: most shared news domain per page
Posts shared by Australian pages that contained links to Australian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Page Network
(Australia)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: number of The Conversation links shared per page
Posts shared by Australian pages that contained links to Australian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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1.5m posts
599k distinct Canadian news links shared
83k Facebook posts on-shared
Canada

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Canadian Facebook pages
sharing links to Canadian news
Link-Sharing Network

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Page-Domain Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / Canadian news domains
Size: indegree
Colour: outdegree
Links posted by Canadian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Domain Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / Canadian news domains
Size: indegree
Colour: most shared news domain per page
Links posted by Canadian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Domain Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / domains
Size: indegree
Colour: number of The Conversation links shared per page
Links posted by Canadian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Nodes: domains
Size: degree
Edges: five other domains that were most frequently shared by pages that shared the source domain
Links posted by Canadian pages, Jan. to Dec. 2020
Domain-Domain Network (Canada)

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Canadian Facebook pages sharing
other Facebook pages’ posts
(that contain links to Canadian news)
On-Sharing Network

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Page-Page Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: degree
Posts shared by Canadian pages that contained links to Canadian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Quebec
Conservatives
Taiwan /
Hong Kong
Halifax
Global
News
CTV
City News
Left
Indigenous
Saskatoon
NDP
Idle No
More
Page-Page Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: degree
Posts shared by Canadian pages that contained links to Canadian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Page Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: most shared news domain per page
Posts shared by Canadian pages that contained links to Canadian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Page-Page Network
(Canada)
Nodes: pages / groups
Size: degree
Colour: number of The Conversation links shared per page
Posts shared by Canadian pages that contained links to Canadian news sites, Jan. to Dec. 2020

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Summary

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Assessing The Conversation’s Positioning
• Australia:
• General tendencies towards polarisation (ABC News / Guardian / SMH / Age vs. News Corp.)
• TV news outlets as intermediaries (7 News, 9 News)
• 7 News most linked to (often by 7 News pages), but ABC News most shared domain for most pages
• The Conversation fairly widely shared, but mostly in centrist / centre-left contexts
• Some visibility in conservative on-sharing networks, but often for criticism
• Canada:
• Largely centred around Global News, CBC, CTV, plus regional networks (e.g. Black Press Group papers)
• Global News and CTV most linked to, but CBC most shared domain for most pages
• Unexplained drop in Global News sharing since mid-2020
• The Conversation not yet strongly established (but some sharing at the centre)
• Visibility in on-sharing networks mainly in left-wing and Indigenous activism clusters

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Limitations and Outlook
• Limitations:
• Australian / Canadian public Facebook pages only (assessed by admin locations)
• no location categorisation of public groups, no data on non-public groups
• no data on public or non-public profile activity
• domain-level analysis only
• not counting Conversation content republished in other outlets
• Outlook:
• theme- and article-level analysis: which topics are prominent in which network contexts
• longitudinal analysis: changes over time (e.g. pre- / post-COVID)
• cross-platform analysis: comparisons with Twitter etc.

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This research is funded by the ARC project LP160100205 Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly
Contributions’ Impact on Public Debate and the SSHRC project Global Journalism Innovation Lab.
It is also supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-
Making and Society.
Facebook data are provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.
Acknowledgments