Users, content and platforms: A multidimensional approach to the research of news sharing

Abstract

The sharing of news on the internet and social media has been a growing area of research for scholars. As early as 2011, the Pew Research Center in the U.S. suggested that “if searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next” (Olmstead, Mitchell & Rosenstiel, 2011, p. 10). Just a few years later, a review of the literature identified 461 peer-reviewed articles on the topic from 2004 to 2014 (Kümpel, Karnowski & Keyling, 2015). No doubt that number has risen since then, particularly given concerns about the circulation of mis and dis-information on social media. It is important to note that the sharing of news is a 21st century online phenomenon. Through the ages, people have found ways to disseminate, discuss and dissect the news, from adding their own commentary to the blank pages of eighteenth-century newspapers in England (Singer et al., 2011) to meeting in parks in Paris to hear about the latest scandals at the court of Louis XV (Hermida, 2014).