Artikel

Exploring Engagement With EU News on Facebook: The Influence of Content Characteristics

The EU is diagnosed with a participation deficit, rooted in a lack of public communication. While news media are the primary source of information about EU politics, social media have become an important channel for political information. Importantly, social media platforms offer unique opportunities for citizens to engage with information about the EU. Such engagement is under‐researched despite users' responses offering valuable information about the potential effects of EU news on public engagement. Therefore, we systematically analyze social media users' engagement with news about the EU. Drawing on the concepts of news values and shareworthiness, we investigate the proximity, conflictuality, negativity, and emotionality of EU news content posted on mainstream media Facebook accounts to explain the variation in reactions, shares, and number of comments. Using semi‐supervised machine learning, we analyze articles from the largest newspapers in Austria for the period 2015-2019, along with Facebook users' reactions to them. Results resonate only partly with prior literature, with negativity of EU news leading to more reactions and shares but fewer comments; emotionality, to fewer reactions and shares but more comments; and conflict mainly decreasing user engagement. Concerning proximity, a national angle leads to distinctly more engagement, whereas news about other EU member states and the EU as such do mostly not. Our study contributes to the discussion on how citizens engage with information on the EU and how to promote informed debate on social media through elites' communication.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Journal: Politics and Governance ; ISSN: 2183-2463 ; Volume: 10 ; Year: 2022 ; Issue: 1 ; Pages: 121-132 ; Lisbon: Cogitatio

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Thema
automated content analysis
computational methods
European Union
Facebook
news
social media
user engagement

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Heidenreich, Tobias
Eisele, Olga
Watanabe, Kohei
Boomgaarden, Hajo G.
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Cogitatio
(wo)
Lisbon
(wann)
2022

DOI
doi:10.17645/pag.v10i1.4775
Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Artikel

Beteiligte

  • Heidenreich, Tobias
  • Eisele, Olga
  • Watanabe, Kohei
  • Boomgaarden, Hajo G.
  • Cogitatio

Entstanden

  • 2022

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