Local News on Facebook: How Television Broadcasters use Facebook to Enhance Social Media News Engagement

Abstract

This study examines how local television broadcasters use Facebook to enhance social media news engagement. By scraping 1,063 news posts from nine local television stations’ Facebook pages, this investigation performs a content analysis on different features of news posts, including news topics, message vividness and interactivity, post time, and length of the post. This study further explores how news post features affect three dimensions of news engagement, indicated by reactions, comments, and shares.