Audience Preferences of News Stories on Social Media ‎

Authors

  • Ahmed Al-Rawi Concordia Univerity

Keywords:

Facebook, SNS, online news, social media, news dissemination, selective exposure‎

Abstract

This study aims at understanding the kind of news stories social media users mostly like and comment on by examining 10 Arabic language Facebook pages run by different news organizations that posted over 85,000 news stories, generating over 26.4 million likes and 1.9 million comments. The top 100 most commented on and liked news stories from each news organization are categorized into 22 news topics. The examination of 2,000 news stories shows that there are no significant differences between liking and commenting on Facebook news. Online users mostly prefer to read news topics on local order, politics, human interest, and international politics stories when it comes to liking stories. In relation to commenting on news stories, the results show that online users mostly prefer news topics on local and regional politics, local order, and human interest. 

Author Biography

Ahmed Al-Rawi, Concordia Univerity

Ahmed Al-Rawi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Studies of Concordia University in Canada and a research fellow at the Media and Communication Department of Erasmus University in the Netherlands. His research interests are in global communication, social media, and popular culture. He authored Media Practice in Iraq (2012) and Islam on YouTube (2017) and published many papers that appeared in journals like Information, Communication & Society, Journalism, Public Relations Review, International Communication Gazette, and International Journal of Communication.

 

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Published

2017-12-19

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2017): The Journal of Social Media in Society

Section

Articles