Understanding news-sharing across different platforms: the effects of newsworthiness and gratifications from news-sharing

Abstract

Introduction. As news consumption on social networking sites increases, dissemination of disinformation such as fake news-sharing is a new threat to the entire news ecosystem. In this paper, we examined whether sharing motives are different when sharing news from the social networking sites and from news aggregators. Method. We conducted an online experiment to investigate and compare the motivational aspects of information sharing on two different types of prominent news channels: Facebook and the Korean news aggregator, Naver. The motivational aspects of sharing were examined, namely newsworthiness and gratification from news sharing. Analysis. We analysed experimental survey data (N=303) from social media users in South Korea and conducted structural equation modeling. Results. We found that status seeking is the strongest motivation prompting news-sharing on Facebook, while information seeking is the strongest motivation prompting news sharing when consuming news on Naver. Conclusions. The results of this study reveal that news sharing differs across news distribution channels due to differences in motivation and inattention to news credibility.