Followers do not dictate the virality of news outlets on social media

Author:

Sangiorgio Emanuele1ORCID,Cinelli Matteo2ORCID,Cerqueti Roy13ORCID,Quattrociocchi Walter2ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Sapienza University of Rome , Rome 00185 , Italy

2. Department of Computer Science, Sapienza University of Rome , Rome 00161 , Italy

3. GRANEM, Université d’Angers, SFR Confluences , Angers F-49000 , France

Abstract

Abstract Initially conceived for entertainment, social media platforms have profoundly transformed the dissemination of information and consequently reshaped the dynamics of agenda-setting. In this scenario, understanding the factors that capture audience attention and drive viral content is crucial. Employing Gibrat’s Law, which posits that an entity’s growth rate is unrelated to its size, we examine the engagement growth dynamics of news outlets on social media. Our analysis includes the Facebook historical data of over a thousand news outlets, encompassing approximately 57 million posts in four European languages from 2008 to the end of 2022. We discover universal growth dynamics according to which news virality is independent of the traditional size of the outlet. Moreover, our analysis reveals a significant long-term impact of news source reliability on engagement growth, with engagement induced by unreliable sources decreasing over time. We conclude the article by presenting a statistical model replicating the observed growth dynamics.

Funder

IRIS

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Reference86 articles.

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2. Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook;Schmidt;Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A,2017

3. News in social media: incidental consumption and the role of opinion leaders;Bergström;Digit J,2018

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