TY - JOUR
T1 - Engagement and interaction with online news
T2 - a case study of housing affordability discussions on Facebook
AU - Vaughan, Michael
AU - Vromen, Ariadne
AU - Martin, Fiona
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018/8/1
Y1 - 2018/8/1
N2 - Concerns about housing affordability in Australian capital cities have captured the public and political imagination. How, then, do ordinary citizens discuss the causes of and solutions to the increasing unaffordability of housing? This article examines evidence that branded Facebook channels provide a space for citizens to engage in everyday engagement and interaction on housing issues. We argue that studying branded, public Facebook pages, despite data access limitations, is an important way of tapping into broad citizen sentiment and understanding media influence on topical issues. We also find that different ways of framing housing affordability within news reporting are associated with different patterns of citizen engagement and interaction on Facebook. In particular, generational frames (critically linking housing affordability to either older people’s entrenched economic advantage or young people’s inability to save) are associated with high levels of user engagement, but the lowest level of discussion about policy solutions within dominant comment threads.
AB - Concerns about housing affordability in Australian capital cities have captured the public and political imagination. How, then, do ordinary citizens discuss the causes of and solutions to the increasing unaffordability of housing? This article examines evidence that branded Facebook channels provide a space for citizens to engage in everyday engagement and interaction on housing issues. We argue that studying branded, public Facebook pages, despite data access limitations, is an important way of tapping into broad citizen sentiment and understanding media influence on topical issues. We also find that different ways of framing housing affordability within news reporting are associated with different patterns of citizen engagement and interaction on Facebook. In particular, generational frames (critically linking housing affordability to either older people’s entrenched economic advantage or young people’s inability to save) are associated with high levels of user engagement, but the lowest level of discussion about policy solutions within dominant comment threads.
KW - housing affordability
KW - media democracy
KW - media participation
KW - public policy debate
KW - social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049788099&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1329878X18782998
DO - 10.1177/1329878X18782998
M3 - Article
SN - 1329-878X
VL - 168
SP - 31
EP - 47
JO - Media International Australia
JF - Media International Australia
IS - 1
ER -