Autoren:	Steiner, Miriam
Titel:	Soft presentation of hard news? : A content analysis of political facebook posts
Online-Publikationsdatum:	1-Okt-2020
Erscheinungsdatum:	2020
Sprache des Dokuments:	Englisch
Zusammenfassung/Abstract:	The current media environment is primarily characterised by a large amount of information and, in contrast, rather fragmented audience attention. This is especially true for social media, particularly Facebook, which have become important news sources for many people. Journalists cannot help but publish content on Facebook if they want to reach the part of their audience that mainly—or even only—consumes news there. On Facebook, journalists are at the mercy of the algorithm that determines the visibility of their content. Because user engagement is a crucial factor in the algorithm, concerns have been raised that journalists are abandoning their normative quality standards to make the news as attractive as possible to the audience—at the expense of media performance. A softened presentation of the news, particularly in Facebook posts, may help achieve this aim, but research on this subject is lacking. The present study analyses this practice of softening the news in four German media outlets’ (BILD, FAZ, Der Spiegel, Tagesschau) political Facebook posts. The results show that the overall level of news softening is low to medium. Furthermore, comparing them to website teasers reveals that news softening is only slightly higher on Facebook (mainly BILD and Der Spiegel), and that there are no converging trends between quality or public service media and tabloid media. Exaggerated fears about news softening are therefore unnecessary. Continued analysis of news softening, as well as ongoing adaption of the concept according to dynamic developments, is nevertheless important.
DDC-Sachgruppe:	300 Sozialwissenschaften 300 Social sciences
Veröffentlichende Institution:	Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Organisationseinheit:	FB 02 Sozialwiss., Medien u. Sport
Veröffentlichungsort:	Mainz
ROR:	https://ror.org/023b0x485
DOI:	http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-5168
Version:	Published version
Publikationstyp:	Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Nutzungsrechte:	CC BY
Informationen zu den Nutzungsrechten:	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Zeitschrift:	Media and communication 8 3
Seitenzahl oder Artikelnummer:	244 257
Verlag:	Cogitatio
Verlagsort:	Lisbon
Erscheinungsdatum:	2020
ISSN:	2183-2439
URL der Originalveröffentlichung:	http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i3.3152
DOI der Originalveröffentlichung:	10.17645/mac.v8i3.3152
Enthalten in den Sammlungen:	JGU-Publikationen