Partisan selective engagement: Evidence from Facebook

Date: 2020-09-01

Creator: Marcel Garz, Jil Sörensen, Daniel F. Stone

Access: Open access

This study investigates the effects of variation in “congeniality” of news on Facebook user engagement (likes, shares, and comments). We compile an original data set of Facebook posts by 84 German news outlets on politicians that were investigated for criminal offenses from January 2012 to June 2017. We also construct an index of each outlet's media slant by comparing the language of the outlet with that of the main political parties, which allows us to measure the congeniality of the posts. We find that user engagement with congenial posts is higher than with uncongenial ones, especially in terms of likes. The within-outlet, within-topic design allows us to infer that the greater engagement with congenial news is likely driven by psychological and social factors, rather than a desire for accurate or otherwise instrumental information.

The supply of media slant across outlets and demand for slant within outlets: Evidence from US presidential campaign news

Date: 2020-06-01

Creator: Marcel Garz, Gaurav Sood, Daniel F. Stone, Justin Wallace

Access: Open access

We conduct across-outlet and within-outlet (and within-topic) analyses of “congenially” slanted news. We study “horse race” news (news on candidates' chances in an upcoming election) from six major online outlets for the 2012 and 2016 US presidential campaigns. We find robust evidence that horse race headlines were slanted congenially with respect to the preferences of the outlets' typical readers. However, evidence of congenial slant in the timing and frequency of horse race stories is weaker. We also find limited evidence of greater within-outlet demand for headlines most congenial to outlets' typical readers, and somewhat stronger evidence of greater demand for relatively uncongenial headlines. We discuss how various aspects of our results are consistent with each of the major mechanisms driving slant studied in the theoretical literature, and may help explain when each mechanism is more likely to come into play. In particular, readers may be more likely to click on uncongenial headlines due to inferring that these stories are particularly informative when they stand in contrast to an outlet's typically congenial slant.