To share is to receive: News as social currency for social media reciprocity

Abstract

Guided by the framework of reciprocity on social media, the current study investigated antecedents of news sharing. Using a two-wave panel survey involving 868 respondents who took two surveys about one year apart, this study examined the effect of frequency of receiving news on social media on subsequent news-sharing behaviour, while controlling for demographics, news-sharing motivations and trust in social media news. The study found that motivation for self-presentation and trust in news shared by one's social media network positively predicted news sharing on social media. Frequency of receiving news at Time 1 also predicted sharing news subsequently at Time 2. This points to news being valued as a form of social currency.