‘SOFT’ VERSUS ‘HARD’ NEWS ON MICROBLOGGING NETWORKS

Abstract

This article examines the variability of produsage (the hybridization of production and consumption) within popular social media by introducing semantic network analysis of information communication on Twitter. Utilizing user data (n[2,254,806]), the study examines the dynamics of produsage (a) as a function of user activity and (b) whether produsage levels vary based on either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ news information. The findings extend upon past socio-ethnographic studies of social media produsage and demonstrate that produsage is significantly low for low-activity users (the majority) but increases dramatically with user activity becoming the dominant communication modality for users with 5,000–25,000 status messages. The volume of soft news information is over double that of hard news information, while produsage networks vary only slightly based on the type of content distributed with ‘hard’ news information tending toward production bias and ‘soft’ news information toward consumption bias.

Keywords:

• social media
• produsage
• news
• Twitter
• semantic networks

Notes

This dataset is available for download at: http://webspace.newschool.edu/~horat351/twnews/index.php