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Recommend, Tweet, Share
News Media and User-distributed
Content (UDC)
Mikko Villi
Janne Matikainen
Irina Khaldarova
firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi
University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research, Media and Communication Studies
15.8.2013 1

2. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto
• The challenging relations between social media and
the legacy news media
• Focus on the role of communication and sharing in
audience communities
• User-distributed content (UDC) as a conceptual
framework
• UDC refers to the process by which the mass media
converge with the online social networks through the
intentional use of social media features and
platforms in order to expand the number of content
delivery channels and maximize visibility online.
15.8.2013 2
Background

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Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi
Internal use of social media tools

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Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi
External use of social media
tools

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• RQ1 How social plugins are used on news media
websites (internal use of social media)?
• RQ2 How active is audience participation on social
media platforms used by the news media (external
use of social media)?
• RQ3 Does the activity of the news media in social
media (especially on Facebook and Twitter) impact
the activity of the audience?
15.8.2013 5
Research Questions

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• Data collected from the websites of 15 different news
media (six of them Nordic) and their Facebook
pages and Twitter accounts.
• The data consists of almost 50,000 news items,
collected during a four-month period, January-May
2012 (RQ1)
• The Facebook pages and Twitter accounts were
monitored for one month, March 2012 (RQ2 & RQ3)
• News items put through statistical observation in
order to reveal how and what of them were shared.
15.8.2013 6
Method and Data

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• Finland: Helsingin Sanomat (newspaper), MTV3
(commercial television), YLE (public service broadcasting
company)
• Germany: Die Zeit (newspaper)
• U.S.: The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times
and Huffington Post
• Sweden: Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen (all
newspapers)
• UK: The Guardian
• Russia: Argumenty i Fakty, Izvestia (both newspapers)
• Qatar: Al Jazeera.
15.8.2013 7
Selected news media

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• All but one of the selected 15 media websites used
plugins for both Facebook and Twitter
• During the data-gathering period 49,247 news items
were released
• Those news items were tweeted 315,989 times and
recommended 3,035,743 times on Facebook
• On average, there were 6.4 tweets per news item
and 61.4 FB recommendations per news item
15.8.2013 8
Main findings: internal use (RQ1)

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Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi
The ratio of tweets and
recommendations per news item

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• On Facebook, the different media had a high variety of
• likers (7,000 – 3,500,000)
• own posts (1 – 1,084)
• likes (0 – 166,870)
• comments (1 – 243,988)
• shares (0 – 240,728)
• The participation rate illustrates how much interaction
there was on the Facebook pages on average for each
liker. It is calculated by using the following formula: total
number of interactions (comments, likes, shares) divided
by the number of likers.
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Main findings: external use
(RQ2)

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Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi
Number of own posts on Facebook
pages vs. own Tweets on Twitter

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• The level of presence and activity of the news media
on Facebook and Twitter impacts positively the
participation rate of the audience.
• strong correlation between the amount of Facebook
posts and the participation rate (r=.58 p<.05) and the
number of tweets and followers (r=.66, p<.01)
15.8.2013 13
Main findings (RQ3)

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• The news media are more active on Twitter than on
Facebook, even though the audience is more active
on Facebook.
• Twitter suits well the conventions and preferences of
the mass media: a content flow to a rather
anonymous audience.
• Facebook might be better suited for the more
interpersonal and intimate relations in the audience
communities where the content is distributed.
15.8.2013 14
Conclusions

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• The degree to which media companies facilitate
social sharing might become an important factor in
the consumption of their content.
• As the news media have partly converged with social
networks they can take advantage of the connections
within the audience communities and gain by nurturing
them
• Practices related to UDC should be more strongly
incorporated into the management strategies in media
companies.
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Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi /
Esityksen nimi
Conclusions