More Sources Create Greater Audience Engagement: An Investigation into the Relationship Between the Number of News Sources and Audience Responses

IF 4.9 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Communication Research Pub Date : 2025-02-27 DOI:10.1177/00936502251324549

Youngkee Ju, Pureum Lee

{"title":"More Sources Create Greater Audience Engagement: An Investigation into the Relationship Between the Number of News Sources and Audience Responses","authors":"Youngkee Ju, Pureum Lee","doi":"10.1177/00936502251324549","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Journalism quality has been examined primarily through a normative lens and investigated through descriptive methods that overlook news consumers’ actual responses to it. Taking a more empirical, media-effects approach, we explore how a particular index of journalism quality—the quantity of news sources—relates to audience engagement. The concept of multiple news sources inherently involves normative elements of quality journalism, such as being truthful, impartial, and complete. This study examines how responses by news consumers to COVID-19 news coverage varied based on the number of sources cited in each news story. We quantified the sources in pandemic news coverage from two South Korean newspapers and one broadcast television channel, comparing them with recipients’ responses in the form of comments, emotional expressions, and recommendations. Our findings reveal that the number of news sources used in COVID-19 health crisis coverage was associated with the number of comments made by news consumers. Similarly, audience clicks on emotional expressions increased as the number of news sources increased. Furthermore, there were more consumer recommendations for COVID-19 news coverage when the news media cited a greater number of sources. These findings underscore the implications of the multiple-source effect on audience engagement and suggest avenues for improving journalism quality.","PeriodicalId":48323,"journal":{"name":"Communication Research","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Research","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502251324549","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Journalism quality has been examined primarily through a normative lens and investigated through descriptive methods that overlook news consumers’ actual responses to it. Taking a more empirical, media-effects approach, we explore how a particular index of journalism quality—the quantity of news sources—relates to audience engagement. The concept of multiple news sources inherently involves normative elements of quality journalism, such as being truthful, impartial, and complete. This study examines how responses by news consumers to COVID-19 news coverage varied based on the number of sources cited in each news story. We quantified the sources in pandemic news coverage from two South Korean newspapers and one broadcast television channel, comparing them with recipients’ responses in the form of comments, emotional expressions, and recommendations. Our findings reveal that the number of news sources used in COVID-19 health crisis coverage was associated with the number of comments made by news consumers. Similarly, audience clicks on emotional expressions increased as the number of news sources increased. Furthermore, there were more consumer recommendations for COVID-19 news coverage when the news media cited a greater number of sources. These findings underscore the implications of the multiple-source effect on audience engagement and suggest avenues for improving journalism quality.

查看原文本刊更多论文

新闻来源越多，受众参与度越高：新闻来源数量与受众反应之间关系的调查

新闻质量主要是通过规范性视角和描述性方法进行研究的，这些方法忽视了新闻消费者对新闻质量的实际反应。我们采用一种更具实证性的媒体效应方法，探讨新闻质量的一个特定指标--新闻来源的数量--与受众参与度之间的关系。多种新闻来源的概念本质上涉及新闻质量的规范性要素，如真实、公正和完整。本研究探讨了新闻消费者对 COVID-19 新闻报道的反应是如何根据每篇新闻报道中引用的消息来源数量而变化的。我们对韩国两家报纸和一家广播电视频道的大流行病新闻报道中的消息来源进行了量化，并将其与接收者以评论、情感表达和建议等形式作出的反应进行了比较。我们的研究结果表明，COVID-19 健康危机报道中使用的新闻来源数量与新闻消费者的评论数量相关。同样，随着新闻来源数量的增加，受众对情感表达的点击也在增加。此外，当新闻媒体引用的新闻来源越多时，消费者对 COVID-19 新闻报道的建议也越多。这些发现强调了多来源效应对受众参与的影响，并提出了提高新闻质量的途径。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Communication Research COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

17.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Empirical research in communication began in the 20th century, and there are more researchers pursuing answers to communication questions today than at any other time. The editorial goal of Communication Research is to offer a special opportunity for reflection and change in the new millennium. To qualify for publication, research should, first, be explicitly tied to some form of communication; second, be theoretically driven with results that inform theory; third, use the most rigorous empirical methods; and fourth, be directly linked to the most important problems and issues facing humankind. Critieria do not privilege any particular context; indeed, we believe that the key problems facing humankind occur in close relationships, groups, organiations, and cultures.