Editors versus audiences facing news: Is this discrepancy also repeated on social news networks?

Abstract

This study examines whether the frequent discrepancy between publishers and audiences over the news that interests them – the former preferring hard news, the latter soft news – is repeated on social networks. Based on a sample of 8,000 news stories uploaded to a Spanish-language news aggregator over 10 years (2006–2015), the number of hard, soft and general news stories published on its front page was calculated. In addition, the news stories that received the most votes, comments and visits were analysed, and correlations were sought among these three variables. The results show that users mainly chose hard news when voting (50.2%), followed by soft news (30.9%) and general news (18.9%). This was in sharp contrast to the results found for news consumption, where visitors access soft news much more than hard news. The investigation offers some clues about the extent to which the disparity of interests between journalists and readers facing news poses a real problem, and it also provides a new outlook on how editors can deal with audiences.