Abstract
News media are increasingly using Facebook as a platform for distribution and user interaction. This article focuses on how Dutch media use Facebook and how audiences participate. By using Facebook, media outsource part of their distribution to a third party platform, avoiding maintenance costs while also hoping for additional revenues because of the increased website traffic. Results indicate that offline and online presence of legacy media do not predict their footprint on Facebook. Media do not seem to have a clear strategy on using Facebook, which leads to an underperformance on the social media platform with low participation and minimal interaction. As users ‘like’ media and ‘share’ stories, ‘audience distribution’ would be a better term to describe these practices than ‘audience participation’.
Introduction
Social media network Facebook had 900 million active users in May 2012, which made it one of the most visited websites in the world. In almost every western country Facebook is the leading social network, serving a predominantly young audience that is hard to reach by traditional media, even with their online offerings. It is no surprise that media try to use the popular social network to their advantage, instead of or in addition to their own digital endeavours.
Using Facebook to interact with audiences could result in financial benefits because it would shift platform maintenance costs to Facebook and increase the number of visitors to their website when users interact with content. Online advertising revenues could increase because of the growing number of visitors. In addition, audience members may also become more active, visible and powerful in the news production process, as they can like (recommend), share (distribute) and comment on media content. Journalists could benefit from new angles, scoops, eyewitness accounts and pictures of newsworthy events.
Engaging online audiences has been attempted before. However, these attempts have not always been successful, while media professionals also voiced their concerns over audience participation as it could lower reporting standards and weaken the control media professionals have over content.
In this article we track how Dutch media use the relatively new feature of Facebook to engage readers, the options they offer to users, how often they actively use Facebook by posting articles, how readers engage with content and whether journalists enter into discussions with users.
Because Dutch media face declining audience shares and budget cuts, the high Internet penetration (more than 90% of the population in 2012) raises the possibility of finding new audiences and increasing revenues. The rapid introduction of Facebook features on Dutch media websites should be seen against this background.
Three phases of participation platforms
Nip (2006) distinguishes between citizen journalism and participatory journalism. Participatory journalism entails the provision of content by users in an environment or on a platform that is designed by professionals in a journalistic infrastructure, in contrast with citizen journalism where users operate on their own platforms.
When audience members use Facebook to interact with media content, they use a hybrid format because part of the interaction takes place on the media website or the Facebook page of a medium, while another part is only visible on the Facebook profile page of the individual user and is shared with his or her Facebook friends. Research and theory on this ‘hybrid’ format is not yet very developed.
Facebook is different from citizen journalism on personal platforms or independent news sites and audience participation on media websites that were predominantly focused on news and information. Facebook is a ‘social’ platform where people exchange personal – predominantly non-news – content; they share photos, gossip, chat, talk about parties, holidays, work experiences and other things that could be headed under ‘What are you doing?’ News media sites and blogs are ‘public’ places. Facebook is a place for friends, where news is no more than a byproduct.
The concept and the practice of citizen journalism and audience participation have frequently been the subject of research. At the beginning of this century, the utopian ‘school’ voiced high expectations about citizen journalism (Bowman and Willis, 2003; Gillmor, 2004; O’Reilly, 2005; see Reich, 2008). According to this ‘school’, traditional media could expect a genuine revolution as a result of technological possibilities that could lower the entrance barriers to journalism. Citizens could turn news into conversations which was interesting for other readers and could provide new views on topics for journalists. Other writers expected very little of amateurs, with Andrew Keen’s (2006) The Cult of the Amateur as the most prolific example.
These online efforts of citizens were often expected to materialize on their own (blogging) platforms or alternative independent platforms. This is why Gillmor’s (2004) book We The Media was subtitled Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Also Bowman and Willis’s title We Media suggested a grassroots approach. Deuze et al. (2007) mention alternative grassroots media platforms like Indymedia, OhmyNews, NowPublic, On Line Opinion and Backfence. For legacy media this actually was a substantial threat, as it would move journalism and discussion about news away from traditional media and their online platforms. The reaction was to incorporate user participation by offering opportunities within the boundaries of the online version of the traditional media or launch separate platforms that were largely financed by legacy media like BBC Action Network, NOS Headlines, Opinio, Bluffton Today and Skoeps (Deuze et al., 2007). The concept of citizen journalism was gradually replaced by the term participatory journalism, which referred more to audience participation within professional journalistic environments (Nip, 2006; Singer et al., 2011).
Although some news media refused to engage in audience participation, most media did what was technologically possible in order to increase audience engagement (Bakker, 2010; Bergström, 2008; Jönsson and Örnebring, 2011; Singer et al., 2011; Thurman and Hermida, 2008). In this ‘second phase’ of citizen/participatory journalism, results were rather disappointing. The number of participants was low in most cases, while journalistic contributions were meagre and the costs for moderation and maintenance of the platform were higher than expected (Jönsson and Örnebring, 2011; Örnebring, 2008; Pantti and Bakker, 2009; Thurman, 2008).
Granting the audience the opportunity to comment anonymously on online content inadvertently led to high costs for moderation. Abusive comments, racism and personal attacks had to be removed while users had to be warned, blocked or banned (Dias Lima and Reis, 2012). Media ‘solved’ this problem by asking for registration, closing the opportunity to comment or restricting the number of articles that could be commented on, while moderation was outsourced or replaced by a ‘complain’ regime. Also active and non-anonymous participation can have unforeseen and unwanted consequences. The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant found an extreme-right citizen blogger and a politician who advocated paedophilia on its platform, causing embarrassment and criticism of the newspaper (Klaver, 2006). Also, because journalists did not profit from the blogs, de Volkskrant decided in 2011 to close the blogging platform altogether, which in turn resulted in protests from the thousands of bloggers involved.
Not only was the audience ‘blamed’, some scholars also found that part of the staff opposed participation (Paulussen and Ugille, 2008) or lacked the time to engage with participating audiences in full (Lee-Wright et al., 2012). Domingo et al. (2008) point out that audience participation within professional journalistic environments usually implies only the possibility for the audience to comment (see also Karlsson, 2011) and rank journalistic content.
Van Dijck argues that participation is an ‘ambiguous concept’ (2009: 45) because the existence of technological participation opportunities will not lead automatically to active participation, while the role of the technical interface is often underestimated. She also states that the assumed binary opposition between actives and inactives is questionable. According to Bakker (2012), Pantti and Bakker (2009) and Wardle and Williams (2008), the audience needs to be stimulated and invited by the media before they will provide (meaningful) contributions. This suggests that participation is not the mere result of offering opportunities but is also dependent on active ‘participation’ from the medium itself. This presents media with a dilemma as participation, conversation and stimulation take time and involve costs as well. This clearly undermines the cost-cutting opportunities that are expected from user participation.
In terms of successful citizen journalism and audience participation, the Holy Grail has not yet been found. Media struggle with the concept and the execution. Audience participation – if present – has not yet become a dialogue between media and the audience, but is generally limited to a one-way ride: audiences react to media-produced content and in most cases the road ends there (Bakker, 2010; Hermida et al., 2011; Karlsson, 2011; Singer et al., 2011; Thurman, 2008).
With the emergence of Facebook as a new platform, a third phase with a hybrid form of audience participation developed. User participation has moved from independent and personal media platforms through media controlled platforms, to the social network platform of a third party. Facebook enables audiences and media to interact in new ways, while it is also capable of distributing news so media can reach a wider audience. It potentially offers more participation at lower costs.
Facebook provides users with a ‘light’ version of participation as it only requires one click in the case of liking a story. Commenting on liked, recommended or shared stories takes more effort. Compared to commenting on other online platforms, Facebook has two important advantages for users. First it is user-friendly, as it does not involve registering or typing in grabbled words to prove you’re not a robot and avoids waiting for moderation. Second, users can be sure that likes and comments are visible or published in a ‘safe ‘ environment as only a selected group of people (usually friends or ‘friends of friends’) can see the likes or comments. Even if users chose to show their likes or comments to ‘everyone’ they can be sure that they will not be confronted by anonymous reactions from other users.
For media, the main advantage of Facebook is that it offers an opportunity to interact with their audience. On the website the number of fans is shown as well as the number of people who ‘shared’ an item. Depending on how the medium formatted its Facebook options, also pictures of other friends who liked the item are shown. Also, anonymous ‘commentators’ are unable to comment, because the Facebook profile of the commentator is visible and Facebook does not allow anonymous accounts. Abusive comments will decrease while moderation costs are reduced (Hille and Bakker, 2011). A possible backdrop is the loss of control when news items are distributed via personal pages of Facebook users. Media are also not allowed to put their own advertising on their Facebook page – apart from designated (paid) advertising programmes. Boosting traffic through links to the media website is the only alternative.
In his analysis of news distribution by the audience, Hermida shows that editors are sometimes concerned about audience participation: ‘At this stage of the production, editors expressed concerns about balancing the perceived need to maintain control over the hierarchy and distribution of news, while at the same time allowing greater user agency’ (2011: 13). This clearly illustrates the dilemma of news media with engaging audiences. They can reach a wider audience employing Facebook, but at the same time journalists are afraid that the role of the audience in disseminating their news may spiral out of control. Journalists consider it their major task to determine what sort of news reaches the audience; a classic gatekeeper attitude still prevails in many cases. Outsourcing part of the distribution by letting users select what kind of articles they ‘like’ or ‘share’ and allowing users to comment on stories on their own Facebook pages may cause an uncomfortable feeling for journalists, who are used to control distribution and production.
The distribution stage is part of a theoretical model (see Table 1) of five stages in the news production process where the audience can participate (Domingo et al., 2008; Hermida et al., 2011; Singer et al., 2011). The stages are derived from ‘basic communication principles’ from access/observation at the first stage, until the last stages of distribution and interpretation information (Domingo et al., 2008: 328).
Stages of news production.
Based on Domingo et al. (2008) and Hermida et al. (2011).
In this hybrid system within Facebook, traditional journalists still control access to their sources (1) and maintain the role of gatekeeper (2), processor and editor (3) of journalistic content. Until this third stage, audiences are not involved in the news production process. This part of the process is still traditional journalism (Bowman and Willis, 2003; Gillmor, 2004; Nip, 2006; O’Reilly, 2005). The Dutch journalists interviewed by Pantti and Bakker (2009) clearly state that these first stages of the production process are key journalistic practices, which have to be guarded as well from amateur-interference.
In their view, the role audience members are increasingly taking on – or which is given to them – is that of a source, not of ‘collaborator’. This is because they do not have a say in key journalistic processes like news selection, fact checking and editing, which define the profession (Pantti and Bakker, 2009: 484–485).
Within the concept of ‘genuine’ citizen journalism, audiences would also get involved in these stages of the news production process. By using Facebook, however, audiences mainly participate in distribution (4) by sharing the content from the news sites and Facebook pages. Finally, the audience is also allowed to comment and discuss (5) news stories on the Facebook page of the news site and their personal Facebook page.
Social media and news
Europe accounted for over 230 million Facebook users in April 2012, almost a third of Facebook users worldwide. In the same month, over 6 million Dutch Internet users – almost 40% of the population – had a Facebook account and that number is still growing. American and Canadian research (Hermida et al., 2011; Purcell et al., 2010) shows that an increasing number of news consumers in these countries are using Facebook. It is therefore not surprising that in the battle for the news consumer, media are increasingly turning towards this option to reach audiences and reinforce their interaction with the public.
According to research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 51% of American social network users receive and send news through their own social networks. In addition, 23% of the respondents said that they receive news from news organizations or individual journalists they follow on social networking sites. People share and read news on Facebook mainly because they like to talk to others about what is happening in the world (Purcell et al., 2010). Half of these news consumers indicate that when something important in the world takes place, they assume that their social media network will inform them about these events. In Canada, 20% of the respondents receive news from organizations and/or individual journalists and 40% receive news on social media (Hermida et al., 2011). Newman investigated the distribution of news by mainstream media through social media in the UK and concluded that ‘Facebook is far and away the most important network for referring traffic’ to news sites (2011: 6).
So far, little research has been done on the impact of social media on news consumption in Europe. We have little knowledge on how news media in Europe use social media networks such as Facebook to engage audience members. In this article we ask how news media incorporate Facebook in their news production and distribution process and how audiences actually use this platform.
Method
For this study, we made an inventory of 64 Dutch media to analyse how and to what extent they use Facebook to engage the audience. These 64 news media represent an important part of Dutch news media on the Internet. They include all Dutch national and regional daily newspapers, news magazines, most of the national news (public television) programmes, broadcasters, regional broadcasters and the most important independent news site in 2011.
We made an inventory on whether or not these 64 news media use Facebook buttons on their website to invite users to like, share or comment, and asked whether these efforts were successful. We also examined the presence of these media on Facebook and the range of their activities.
We subsequently investigated 10 of these 64 news media in more detail in order to examine their specific activities on Facebook and how audiences interact with media content on this platform. We studied this through quantitative and qualitative research between November 2011 and May 2012. We selected these 10 media first because of budget considerations. Gathering data with AllFacebookstats.com is costly and a wider range of news media was above our research budget. Due to the qualitative nature of this research, more data would not necessarily lead to a better understanding of successes and failures in the way news media use Facebook. We wanted to compare equivalent news media that either performed well in terms of the number of activities on Facebook or performed rather poorly. This is why we selected media from all five (national, regional, press, broadcast and online) categories. Including more media was therefore not really necessary.
When it comes to Facebook ‘activities’, we differentiate between three possible levels: I. the news website of a particular news medium; II. the Facebook page of this medium, often referred to as the ‘fan-page’; and III. the Facebook profile page of the individual user. News media can put a Facebook ‘like-button’ on their own homepage (I). If Facebook users click on this button, they become fans (a) of the news medium on Facebook (II). Consequently, every time the news medium publishes an update on its Facebook page (II), the audience can react to the update by sharing or liking it (b). The update also appears on the Facebook profile page of the fans (III). In that way, content can be distributed further – resulting in visits to the home page of the medium – and discussed by users (Figure 1).
Facebook possibilities for news media and users.
The first dataset was collected by analysing 64 news media in November 2011. The objective was to determine which Facebook options they use on their own website, whether they were present on Facebook with a ‘fan page’ and if so, how many ‘friends’ they had on Facebook.
In the second stage of the analysis we selected 10 media from the first inventory for a more detailed case study. We have examined the online and offline footprint of these media, the fan development on Facebook, the frequency of posting on Facebook, and interaction measures of fans such as the average number of comments and likes. For the content analysis, we focused on what kind of content news media post, how they address users and how users react. Although we selected media from different categories (national, regional, online, broadcast, print), the results are obviously not representative for whole population of 64 news media.
For the analysis of these 10 Facebook pages throughout the month of December 2011, we used AllFacebookstats, an online analysis tool which allows you to gather data of public Facebook pages to benchmark the activities and results of performance and interaction of these pages. AllFacebookstats provides detailed information that would be very labour-intensive to gather without using this tool. The disadvantage is that we had less control over the methodical process of data collection used by AllFacebookstats as opposed to collecting this amount of data by hand. This case study concerns the following news media:
Algemeen Dagblad (AD) – print (regional daily)
De Volkskrant – print (national daily)
Trouw – print (national daily)
nrc.next – print (national daily)
De Groene Amsterdammer – print (weekly)
NU.nl – online only
Hart van Nederland – broadcast (commercial)
VPRO Tegenlicht – broadcast (public)
RTV Rijnmond – broadcast (regional)
EenVandaag – broadcast (national)
Results
The online world of Facebook is no mirror of the offline media situation. Even the online presence in terms of visitors to media websites seems to have no clear relation to the number of friends on Facebook. The best-read newspaper in the Netherlands – De Telegraaf – with more than 2 million daily readers and more than 3.5 million monthly visitors on the website, has 15,000 friends on Facebook. The second Dutch newspaper, AD, has 1.5 million daily readers and 2.5 million website visitors, but on Facebook it is four times as large as De Telegraaf. The most popular (public) broadcast news programme, NOS, attracts more than a million viewers every day and is among the best-viewed online news portals in the Netherlands; but it has only 1500 Facebook friends.
When looking at absolute numbers, only 14 media had more than 2000 friends at the end of 2011 (Table 2). From the remaining 50 media, 42 had fewer than 1000 friends while 18 had fewer than 100 friends (including four media who had no friends at all). Among the media with very few or no friends at all are many local newspapers, regional broadcasters, TV programmes and magazines with more than 100,000 daily readers or viewers and with websites that attract 100,000 to half a million unique visitors per month.
News media with more than 2000 Facebook fans.
NOM Print Monitor 2011-I / 2011-II.
STIR 2011.
STIR, unique monthly visitors, April 2012.
SKO, October 2011.
VPRO Tegenlicht.
Intomarkt CKO December 2011/.
Google Analytics.
What opportunities do audience members get to share, recommend or like the content from news media from their news sites? And do media have their own Facebook page?
Six media do have some Facebook features on their website but have not made the effort to set up a Facebook page themselves. Although the remaining media do have a Facebook page, they don’t always make it easy for users to become friends as only 39 of the 64 news media examined have a follow button on their news site. By clicking on a follow button, users become ‘fans’ of the medium on Facebook and receive updates on their personal Facebook page. A third (22) of the media use a ‘recommend’ button, 38 a ‘share’ button and 42 media have a ‘like’ button (Figure 2). The like and recommend button more or less have the same function, but the recommend button is sometimes preferred by news media as audience members would rather not ‘like’ negative news.
The presence of Facebook buttons and availability of a Facebook page (N = 64).
Participation and promotion
To investigate how news media and audience members actually use Facebook, we conducted a case study on 10 news media. Two of these media, nrc.next and VPRO Tegenlicht, have been active since the introduction of the Dutch version of Facebook in 2008. De Groene Amsterdammer, de Volkskrant, AD, NU.nl, Hart van Nederland and RTV Rijnmond joined Facebook in 2009. EenVandaag and Trouw launched Facebook pages in 2010.
National newspaper AD has the highest number of fans (51,000) while Trouw has only 238 fans. The number of AD fans increased in December 2011 by 33%, the highest growth of the 10 selected media. The fan base of NU.nl (NU) – with the second largest number of fans – increased by 27%, suggesting that when you are big, you have the opportunity to grow faster than others. Also Hart van Nederland (HvN) shows substantial growth. Exceptions to this ‘rule’ are the TV news programme EenVandaag (1V) with 14% growth and the national paper nrc.next with a mere 1% growth (Table 3), indicating the number of fans is not the only explanation of further growth.
Number of fans and fan growth.
Hart van Nederland is the most active medium when it comes to updating their Facebook page as it posted 355 updates in December 2011 (Table 4). The second most active medium is de Volkskrant with 197 posts. AD contributed 93 posts; Trouw only eight. There seems to be some relation between growth and the number of updates on the Facebook page. Table 3, however, shows that there is no straightforward relation between the number of posts and the average number of likes and comments. AD fans show a high level of interaction with an average of 129 comments and 225 likes per post. Also the users of NU.nl interact above average. Hart van Nederland (355 posts in one month) shows a relatively low average of 31 comments per post and 28 likes. As comments often also receive ‘likes’ (not included in the table), the total number of ‘likes’ is even higher.
News media contributions and interactions.
Figure 3 shows how much the news medium is ‘talked about’ on Facebook. This measurement is an aggregation on AllFacebookstats of all likes, comments, recommendations, shares and mentions on Facebook. In other words, it measures all activities of users around items placed on Facebook by a medium, including activities on personal pages of users.
Figure 3 shows that items from AD and NU.nl are shared and mentioned much more than items from other media. At the end of December 2011 more than 9000 (9k) Facebook users shared AD stories on Facebook and there were almost 5000 mentions of NU.nl. Facebook activity around items from these two media also sharply increased during that month – this is in contrast to what happened around items from other media like de Volkskrant and Hart van Nederland, which were ‘talked about’ by only 1000 users. Activity around AD items fell because the newspaper did not publish during Christmas. Nrc.next is fifth with 500 mentions. News items from VPRO Tegenlicht, Trouw, EenVandaag and RTV Rijnmond resulted in very little interaction on Facebook during the period we investigated.
‘Talking about’ the news medium on Facebook.
Apart from how much media are posting, we also examined what kind of content they were posting on Facebook. Broadcast programmes VPRO Tegenlicht, EenVandaag and RTV Rijnmond post more videos (12–28% of total number of updates) on their page. Trouw posts only (automatic) status updates. Other news media mainly post links to content on their website. VPRO Tegenlicht, RTV Rijnmond and De Groene Amsterdammer also post some pictures, although never more than 5% of the total number of their updates.
To determine what happens on the Facebook pages of the 10 news media, we also conducted a qualitative content analysis, focusing on what is posted, how media address users and how users react. Results show that there are different approaches towards posting updates. The main difference is whether media use Facebook to promote content on their website or actively try to engage readers in conversation and content production. The first category consists of links to stories (AD), short summaries (AD, Volkskrant, NU.nl, Groene Amsterdammer), announcements of upcoming broadcasts (VPRO Tegenlicht, EenVandaag) or new issues (Groene Amsterdammer). VPRO Tegenlicht posts ‘behind-the-scenes’ pictures of the camera crew at work (Figure 4, right). In some cases these updates are automated. Nrc.next uses the Facebook application Networkblogs.com, which transfers the content from their website directly to Facebook without them having to add context, a Facebook title or question (Figure 4, left).
Automatic update (left); Behind the scenes (right).
On the other hand, media also actively try to engage users. Volkskrant and AD sometimes use a ‘light’ version of engagement by preceding the post with a headline ending with a question mark, inviting users to comment. NU.nl and Groene Amsterdammer use their Facebook page in some cases to call for potential interviewees; RTV Rijnmond invites users who want to participate in a discussion programme. Hart van Nederland and EenVandaag use polls on their website where commentators can vote on different arguments or opinions on current affairs. Additionally they use Facebook to invite users to send in content or ask for people to appear on a particular show.
In return, users indeed react to posts on Facebook. EenVandaag was made aware of errors in their broadcasts while VPRO Tegenlicht received compliments. RTV Rijnmond was provided with pictures and tips from events in the Rotterdam region. Further interaction from the news media, however, is virtually non-existent after their Facebook fans make the effort to post content. RTV Rijnmond and Hart van Nederland are the only two news media that respond to commentators and/or fans on their Facebook site. For other media, interaction is more a one-sided affair.
The high level of activity on the Facebook sites of AD (129 comments per post on average), NU.nl (92 comments per post), de Volkskrant and Hart van Nederland (each 31 comments per post) could be explained by the nature of user comments. The comments on the AD site consist mainly of one-liners, in some cases combined with abusive language. As there is no moderation, these comments are not removed. The level of abuse – mostly three-letter words, the Dutch equivalent for the English four-letter words – however, is low compared to what can be seen on websites that allow anonymous comments; there is for instance no overt racism. Noteworthy is that commentators often have a discussion with each other, without commenting on the original item posted by AD. A high number of comments therefore does not automatically imply a high number of commentators. As commentators are notified when somebody else has commented on the same story or ‘likes’ their comment, they often return to the discussion platform and post another comment. The same pattern (one-liners, some abusive language and discussion between users) can be observed at NU.nl and Hart van Nederland.
The comments on the website of de Volkskrant contain less abusive language. According to the social media editor (personal communication) this could be related to the sort of readers (higher education and higher income groups) the paper has. De Groene Amsterdammer, EenVandaag, nrc.next, VPRO Tegenlicht, RTV Rijnmond and Trouw experience fewer comments and less audience interaction; the one-liners they receive do not seem to contribute to any sort of discussion.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to determine how news media use Facebook and how their audiences use this platform. We also analysed what Facebook options they offer to users, how often they actively use Facebook themselves by posting articles, how readers engage with content and whether or not journalists enter into discussions with users who make comments.
The large majority of the Dutch news media we researched are using Facebook for content distribution and audience participation. News media use the ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons on their news website. Almost every medium also had a Facebook fan page. But the similarities end there. There are substantial differences in how basic Facebook features are used, even when media from the same publisher are compared, suggesting that there is no clear (company) strategy on using Facebook. Some media do have some features but do not seem to use them, another group hardly publishes updates, while some media use automated updating – in all of these cases there does not seem to be an active strategy in using Facebook. Also the fact that only two media (Hart van Nederland and RTV Rijnmond) take the effort to respond to the audience after they have made a comment and only a few media ask for interaction, suggests a rather passive strategy.
History seems to repeat itself. In the second phase of participation, media often introduced platforms without being active themselves on these new platforms, hoping that new opportunities would automatically lead to audience activities. On Facebook a similar strategy – or lack of strategy – is visible. These results fit perfectly within the theoretical framework that has been embedded. Audience participation is more than offering opportunities to participate but depends on active participation from the media (Bakker, 2010; Pantti and Bakker, 2009; Van Dijck, 2009; Wardle and Williams, 2008). Active participation is time consuming and therefore expensive. The platform was installed – at low cost compared to the custom-built platforms that are part of the media websites themselves – and after that more or less abandoned except for regular updates. It explains why levels of interaction and website traffic that were reported from the USA and Canada have not materialized. In absolute numbers, these Dutch media have very few friends, in particular when compared to their offline presence and the popularity of their websites.
At the same time, all media do show growth in terms of Facebook friends. Lack of activity, however, leads in most cases to a relatively small increase in the number of friends and to a low number of likes and comments. Trouw for instance posted only eight updates in one month, had the lowest interaction of the 10 media under research and showed an increase of 6% in the number of friends – well below average. Nrc.next has a relatively high number of friends but uses Facebook mainly to promote content without asking for response or providing feedback. Growth is below average, while the number of comments is also low compared to other media.
There are also exceptions. The national newspaper AD is rather successful on Facebook. With relatively little input it not only reaches a large audience but is also successful in terms of interactions (likes and comments). Also NU.nl and Hart van Nederland have a substantial footprint on Facebook and show growth at the same time.
What we see happening on the Facebook pages of the Dutch media is – with some exceptions – very far removed from the ideals of grassroots participation and citizen journalism. It is even questionable whether the activities can be called ‘participation’ in the true sense of the word. Facebook is used as a distribution channel by most media – and not even very successfully – and functions as a platform for quick (and sometimes rude) opinion exchange for users. Contribution to reporting or the interpretation of news is virtually non-existent; on-topic discussions with journalists participating are absent. In some cases where media have a substantial following, increased website traffic (and consequently more revenues), however, could be a result of the Facebook presence of the medium.
Promotion and distribution of content seems more important than interaction and conversation. When we look back at the model of the five phases of audience participation we referred to earlier (Domingo et al., 2008; Hermida et al., 2011; see Table 1), the use of Facebook by news media not surprisingly corresponds mostly with the fourth phase of the news production process of distribution by social media. Nevertheless, these news media could gain more participation if they invested in Facebook in the fifth phase of the model, by stimulating comments, using polls and creating a committed community of audience, instead of ‘post content and take off’.
When news media want to make use of the benefits that Facebook can offer they should be aware of the dissimilarity with their own medium, that they serve a different audience, which requires a fundamentally different approach.
In part, we can explain the success of AD and NU.nl in the amount of fans and the degree of interaction by three factors: the way editors publish on Facebook, which we already discussed; the nature of these news media; and the manner and extent of the audience comments. Both AD and NU.nl publish mainly human-interest mixed with hard news items. The serious Dutch news media are doing less well in terms of interaction. The nature of the content (e.g. politics) might be less attractive to respond to. However, how audiences comment and how this may result in more quantitative and qualitative interaction should be further investigated.
This research has mainly asked the question how media – and their audience – use Facebook. We do not know yet why news media are using Facebook as they have until now. Therefore, the approach outlined in this study should be extended by interviews with editors in chief and social media editors.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.