Relevance Considerations in the Sharing of News in South Korea

The next speaker at the ICA 2024 conference is Jennifer Ihm, who begins by outlining key interests in news-sharing research: such content has been studied for its information value as well as its viral dissemination. But how do social media users assess the value and relevance of the news being shared? There might be two types of self-presentational value in news-sharing: based on self-constructive motivations, or based on audience-pleasing motivations (relational, informational, or entertainment aspects may all contribute here).

Issue relevance in news articles may be at the personal, audience, or societal level, then: personal relevance is likely to be especially related to self-constructive motivations; audience relevance will be related to audience-pleasing motivations; and societal relevance might combine both motivations – constructing a prosocial public image, as well as sharing news with relevance to audience members as members of society.

This study asked some 463 news sharers on Kakaotalk in South Korea about the news that they shared, their motivations for sharing it, and the issue and societal relevance of the articles that were shared. The relationship between personal relevance and self-construction motivations was supported; the relationship between audience relevance and audience-pleasing motivation was also supported; on societal relevance the results were more mixed, and entertainment motivations in particular complicated the picture.