Sharing News on Social Media in Singapore

The next speaker at IAMCR 2019 is Edson Tandoc Jr., who begins by pointing out the continuing shift to online and social media as a critical source of news – in Singapore, some 47% of users now access news via Facebook, for instance. This also enables audiences as well as news organisations to engage in promotion, distribution, data collection, and engagement around the news.

Sharing links to the news on social media is now also a form of cultural currency, therefore. Compared to other forms of news transmission, sharing news links increases the speed and reach of the news while preserving the original article; it also affects source perceptions, however, as friends and followers may see the sharing user rather than the original news outlet as the source of the article and assess its credibility on that basis.

Sharers themselves share the news in part for reasons of information, entertainment, and self-presentation – what you share affects how your friends and followers perceive you, in terms of your interests as well as your social and political identity, and some people will share particular news items specifically because they know their friends or family will be interested in them. This may strengthen (or weaken, I guess) interpersonal ties.

The present study examined news sharing motivations using a large survey of Singaporean users. It found that older users tend to share the news less; that self-presentation is a significant motivation for news sharing; that general trust in social media news may also be a driver of sharing; and that, most importantly, receiving news in one’s timeline also correlates with sharing news oneself.

This supports the idea of news sharing as social currency: there is a reciprocity here, and news receivers are therefore also encouraged to be news sharers. But this may also apply to sharing ‘fake news’: those who receive such disinformation in their timelines may also be encouraged to share it.