۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review

۳- Methods

۴- Results

۵- Discussion Declaration of interest

References

Abstract

Online news sharing has become an important process through which contemporary citizens experience news.News sharing is not only a behavioral outcome of news consumption but also an essential form of political engagement that reshapes the online information environment. This study offers empirical evidence regarding important article perceptions that drive online news sharing. Specifically, we examine how issue frame perceptions shape user-directed dissemination of news information. Using an online survey that exposes respondents to multiple news articles on a given public issue, this study found that perceptions of issue frame believability, bias, importance and influence significantly affected audience intention to share a news article. However, perceiving an issue frame to be believable is not sufficient for readers to forward that article. Moreover, these frame perceptions are formed through the lens of one’s political ideology. The relationship between issue frame perceptions and the likelihood of sharing is more pronounced for value-based frames and among partisans. Implications for online political participation and news exposure are discussed.

Introduction

Social media provide an important platform for online news consumption where news articles come to individuals through user-directed sharing (Bode, 2016). Pew Research suggests that news sharing has become one of the most important ways through which people experience news (“Navigating news online,” ۲۰۱۱). Given the expanded scope of how people encounter and interact with news information online and its potential impact on society, research attention to this area has grown considerably. Past research has typically approached the effects of exposure to news articles from a cognitive perspective, focusing on the resulting attitude change while largely overlooking behavioral intentions to interact with the message. While a few recent studies have examined expressive behaviors initiated by online news exposure, such as commenting (Hsueh, Yogeeswaran, & Malinen, 2015), tagging (Oeldorf-Hirsch & Sundar, 2015), and political talk (Shah, Cho, Eveland, & Kwak, 2005), news sharing has received relatively little attention. However, understanding news consumers’ sharing intentions is particularly important in the digital age where professional journalists are no longer the sole gatekeepers in news distribution; now audience members have become active participants in disseminating newsrelated information online. Viewed from this perspective, sharing is not only an important behavioral outcome of news consumption, but also a “soft” form of political participation that reshapes the news environment, affecting the salience of particular news articles by increasing their visibility as well as popularity (Webster & Ksiazek, 2012).