Abstract

What explains news sharing in polarized social media environments? Will polarization of the audiences further polarize news organizations? In this article, we connect existing theories of news sharing and gatekeeping to describe the conditions under which social media polarization will increase polarization among news organizations. Our results show that a polarized readership will further polarize news organizations. However, polarization will be larger for organizations with lower reputations. To test our theory, we introduce readers to a statistical design that estimates news sharing behaviour from observational social media data. The model allows researchers to study the relationship between news sharing behaviour and gatekeeping in political communication.

摘要

是什么解释了两极分化的社交媒体环境中的新闻共享？观众的两极分化会进一步使新闻机构两极化吗？在本文中，我们将现有的新闻共享和关守理论联系起来，以描述社交媒体两极分化将加剧新闻组织之间两极分化的条件。我们的结果表明，两极化的读者将进一步使新闻机构两极化。但是，对于声誉较低的组织，两极分化会更大。为了检验我们的理论，我们向读者介绍了一种统计设计，该统计设计根据观察性社交媒体数据估算新闻共享行为。该模型使研究人员能够研究新闻传播行为与政治传播中守门之间的关系。