“We Rewrote This Title”: How News Headlines Are Remediated on Facebook and How This Affects Engagement

Abstract

Social media have become a very important news platform, both for the presentation and consumption of news by social media users. News is therefore eagerly shared by news media on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in the hope of reaching as many news consumers as possible. In this highly competitive media landscape, news media aim to attract consumer attention to these news stories by incorporating the social media logic into their reporting. In this study, we focus specifically on the conversion and accompanying adaptations of news originating from online news sites to the Facebook page of a news medium, with a focus on the (re)formulation of the headline that functions as an important element in both online news articles and Facebook posts. Based on computational analysis, we compare the headlines of news items on the news outlet’s website to the headlines published on Facebook and link these with the user engagement metrics ( N = 10,579). The findings revealed that the routine of rewriting or adapting headlines on Facebook in contemporary journalism is rather common and that this rewriting is done with an eye toward injecting elements that better align with the social media logic, consequently magnifying its impact on engagement.

Adapting to Affordances and Audiences? A Cross-Platform, Multi-Modal Analysis of the Platformization of News on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter

“…Welbers and Opgenhaffen (2019) find that compared to respective articles, Facebook posts by newspapers more often include second person pronouns such as "you", a strategy combined with posing questions like: "What do you think?" (see similarly Haim et al 2021, but see Lamot, Kreutz, and Opgenhaffen 2022). Given the lack of studies beyond Facebook, we ask:…”

“…Related to news, important affordances 2 include, for example, algorithmic curation (i.e., audiences being able to receive tailored news via algorithmic curation), hypertextuality (i.e., audiences being able to directly access linked information), interactivity (i.e., audiences being able to actively engage with news), or visuality (i.e., audiences being able to consume news in image or video format) (for similar overviews, see Hermida and Mellado 2020;Kiesow, Zhou, and Guo 2021;K€ umpel 2022). These affordances inform specific logics (van Dijck and Poell 2013;Lamot, Kreutz, and Opgenhaffen 2022) through which platforms process and present communication. We call these platform logics, similar to "social media logic" (van Dijck and Poell 2013) or "network media logic(s)" (Klinger and Svensson 2015).…”

“…To date, evidence on whether news production aligns with platform logics instead of mass media logic is mixed at best (e.g., Haim et al 2021;Lamot 2022;Lamot, Kreutz, and Opgenhaffen 2022;Pak 2019;Wehden 2022;Welbers and Opgenhaffen 2019). One reason for inconsistent results is that studies include different news outlets and countries.…”

“…To secure engagement, journalists seemingly focus on publishing soft, emotional, or subjective news (Hågvar 2019;Lamot 2022;Lischka 2021;Welbers and Opgenhaffen 2019). As scholars have mostly researched platform logics on Facebook, it is, however, unclear whether this logic generalizes beyond the platform (see critically Lamot, Kreutz, and Opgenhaffen 2022).…”

“…Apart from systematically selecting stories, news outlets may adapt existing content for platforms. Drawing on previous research (especially Hågvar 2019;Haim et al 2021;Lamot, Kreutz, and Opgenhaffen 2022;Sehl, Cornia, and Nielsen 2021;Welbers and Opgenhaffen 2019), we focus on four adaptation processes: (1) excluding links to outlets' websites, (2) adding interactive features, (3) adding engaging language, and (4) adding personalization.…”