Ice, Ice Bucket: Message Exposure of Health Campaigns Driven by Journalistic Coverage and Social Media Sharing

• In Event: Prosocial Campaigns and Technology

Abstract

For online health campaigns, journalists and online audiences play a vital role in message exposure. This study looks at the roles journalists and audiences played in crafting narratives and sharing stories about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge through social media venues. We explore the journalist-audience relationship by examining what news values and emotions journalists present in news, and how social media audiences share journalistic content. Results show that journalists continue to rely on predictable news values to report health campaigns, and emotions present in news are reflective of niche communities. However the audiences of Facebook and Twitter are strikingly unique, and there are noteworthy differences in news content shared on each platform. Facebook audiences are more prone to sharing emotional content than Twitter audiences.

Authors

• Danielle Kathleen Kilgo, Indiana University

• Kyser Lough, The U of Texas at Austin

• Martin Johannes Riedl, The University of Texas at Austin