دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی راه های به اشتراک گذاری اخبار: درک چهارچوب موضوع و احتمال اشتراک گذاری - الزویر 2019

Abstract

Online news sharing has become an important process through which contemporary citizens experience news. Sharing is not only a behavioral outcome of news consumption but also an essential form of political engagement that reshapes the online information environment. This study offers empirical evidence regarding important article perceptions that drive online news sharing. Specifically, we examine how issue frame perceptions shape user-directed dissemination of news information. Using an online survey that exposes respondents to multiple news articles on a given public issue, this study found that perceptions of issue frame believability, bias, importance and influence significantly affected audience intention to share a news article. However, perceiving an issue frame to be believable alone is not sufficient for readers to forward that article. Moreover, these frame perceptions are formed through the lens of one’s political ideology. The relationship between issue frame perceptions and the likelihood of sharing is more pronounced for value-based frames and among partisans. Implications for online political participation and news exposure are discussed.

Discussion

Social media have become one of the primary platforms for news consumption, contributing to the flow of information essential for subsequent political discussion and policy debates. However, there has been increasing concern over social media’s role in reducing exposure to ideologically cross-cutting information and opinions. Sunstein (2001), for example, contended that the diversity of public discourse on the Internet has been largely limited due to people’s tendency to self-select into ideological enclaves in which only similar viewpoints get to be heard. This study extends the discussion on online information flow by considering how user actions might change and reshape the current information environment. Specifically, we examine pathways to news sharing in the digital age, providing a micro-level explanatory mechanism underlying people’s decision to share a news article. We argue that news sharing constitutes a “soft” form of political participation that has implications for the collective construction of social reality. Compared to other hard forms of political participation such as voting, news sharing has real political consequences by shaping user-directed information flow and thus affecting the quality of information available to the public. This is especially relevant in a society where falsehoods travel faster than truth (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018) and disinformation campaigns are prevalent (Prier, 2017).