ECREA16-Abstract

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Friday, November 11

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A Matter of Controversy and Power? How News Factors and Secondary Factors Predict the Number of Base and Reply Comments Users

Post on Facebook News Sites

M. Ziegele

, O. Quiring

University of Mainz, Departement of Communication, Mainz, Germany

With more and more news organizations becoming active on social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook, there are new possibilities for citizens to publicly

engage with news in a more ‘social’ environment. Research has already begun to explore the characteristics of news stories that stimulate comments on

other platforms, yet the results are not comprehensive. Based on news value theory (Galtung & Ruge, 1965), our present study therefore employs a quan‑

titative content analysis to investigate the importance of the different factors identified so far. News value theory was thought of as universal theory

of message perception and processing (Eilders, 2006). Its central claim is that both journalists and recipients perceive news stories as worth publishing/

reading when they contain certain news factors (e.g., controversy, impact). Moreover, it has been argued that news factors affect users’perceived need to

comment on news stories because they increase the users’ cognitive and affective involvement (Weber, 2014). Additionally, it has been assumed that so-

called secondary factors resulting from the journalistic editing of news stories (e.g., adding opinions, context etc.) affect the way users discuss the news.Yet,

these effects have not been tested in a SNS environment. Therefore, we conducted an analysis of nine Facebook news sites over a three-months-period to

answer the questions a) which news factors and secondary factors explain the number of‘base comments’(direct commenting of a news item) and b) which

news factors and secondary factors explain the number of interactive ‘reply comments’(comments responding to other comments). 665 randomly selected

articles were coded for 24 news factors and 14 secondary factors. Krippendorff’s α scores exceeded .70 for 32 factors and were not lower than .60 for the rest.

These factors (exogenous variables) were related to the number of (base/reply) comments (endogenous variables) using generalized linear models with

negative-binomial link. The different news sites were included as controls to ensure validity of the results. The results show that news articles on Facebook

receive more base comments when they describe an ongoing or latent controversy, when persons violate or threaten social norms/values, when the event

occurs close to or in the users’ home country (proximity), when the actions of influential persons/institutions are described (power), and when the news

stories report oddities. Moreover, news stories about concrete actions and decisions (facticity) are more commented on while a high uncertainty regarding

the causes and consequences of the event reduces comment numbers. Regarding secondary factors, journalistic prompts at users to voice their opinions

and emotions in headlines/teasers both increase the number of base comments while positive journalistic appraisals decrease them. The number of reply

comments per news story strongly correlates with the number of base comments. Beyond that, the factors controversy, obtrusiveness (issues most users

have personal experience with), power, and duration (events without a determined beginning and ending) further explain the number of reply comments.

The results will be discussed along with a currently ongoing analysis of how news factors and secondary factors correlate with specific contents of comments

(incivility, additional information etc.).