Digital Journalism

ISSN: 2167-0811 (Print) 2167-082X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rdij20

News in Social Media

Annika Bergström & Maria Jervelycke Belfrage

To cite this article: Annika Bergström & Maria Jervelycke Belfrage (2018) News in Social Media,
Digital Journalism, 6:5, 583-598, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2018.1423625

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 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Incidental consumption and the role of
opinion leaders

Annika Bergström and Maria Jervelycke Belfrage

Social network sites are becoming essential to how people experience news. The social media
feed is made up of a mixture of private and public postings, and news is intertwined with all
sorts of activities. What people are exposed to partly depends on the behaviour of their fellow
networkers. Drawing on theories of opinion leaders and the concept of incidental news con-
sumption, this article examines news-gathering on social media using a combination of repre-
sentative survey data and qualitative interviews with young people aged 16–19. Regression
analysis of the survey data reveals the primary factor explaining use of news on social media
is the habit of using online news services. Interest in news and age also contribute to this phe-
nomenon. The qualitative study reveals that interviewees’ news consumption through social
networks is frequent. While incidental, they nonetheless seem to count on being informed
through this medium. There is a widespread presence of opinion leaders in the respondents’
social media feeds, bringing attention to news they otherwise would have missed, and just as
important, delivering interpretation and context. The study also indicates that these opinion
leaders are perceived as central or even crucial to the news-gathering process.

KEYWORDS incidental consumption; interview study; news use; opinion leaders; represen-
tative survey; social media

Introduction
The news environment and news consumption practices are changing rapidly.
Society is moving from a traditional news cycle dominated by journalism professionals
to a more complex information cycle that incorporates ordinary people within the pro-
cess. Established news media organisations still produce most of the news consumed
today, including that which circulates through social media and aggregators (Domingo,
Masip and Costera Meijer 2015). Still, there has been a decrease in use of legacy news
media (e.g. newspapers, television and radio) on their traditional platforms. At the same
time, social network sites (SNSs) are becoming central to the way people experience
news. Indeed, SNSs overall, and particularly conversational networks such as Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter, are an increasingly significant source for news (Mitchell and
Page 2015).
This shift towards digital news outlets and SNSs is especially evident among
young people in large parts of the Western world (Associated Press-NORC Center for

Digital Journalism, 2018

Vol. 6, No. 5, 583–598, https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1423625
Ó 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distri-
bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed,
or built upon in any way.
584 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

Public Affairs Research 2015; Kohut et al. 2012; Reuters Institute Digital News Report
2016). For this reason, this latter group’s news consumption habits have been regarded
as a challenge for news industries, journalism practice and democracy in total (Elvestad,
Blekesaune, and Aalberg 2014).
SNSs facilitate access to news, as well as provide opportunities to engage in the
news process, through commenting, sharing and posting online (Holton et al. 2015).
What people are exposed to, thus, depends to a great extent on the interest and beha-
viour of those with whom they connect via this medium (Karlsen 2015; Thorson and
Wells 2015). Further, everyday news about current affairs is becoming integrated with
all sorts of activities, websites and genres (Bode 2016; Costera Meijer and Kormelink
2014).
One important feature of the above-mentioned shift from a traditional linear
news cycle towards a more complex information cycle (Chadwick 2011) is that news
can be distributed and picked up by the audience in an incidental way. Articles appear
in the content flow without particularly deliberate actions on the side of the user. In
SNS feeds, everyday news about current affairs appears because articles are suggested
automatically by the networks themselves through algorithms based on previous use, if
one “likes” or “follows” media organisations, or because fellow networkers share them.
Another important aspect of this growing trend is the presence of persons who
influence others in their news-gathering. Already in the 1950s, Katz and Lazarsfeld
(1955) identified the importance of others, so-called opinion leaders, in the distribution
of information from media and public sources. This concept fits very well into the over-
all idea of SNSs building on people passing on information of various kinds. This new
dynamic between leaders and followers, however, is relatively unexplored in mediated
interpersonal settings (Turcotte et al. 2015).
The aim of the study reported here is to reveal how young people use news in
their SNS feeds, whether use is incidental or deliberate, and what role friends and
followers in those networks play for news consumption. The study design includes a
representative survey of the Swedish population and an in-depth interview study with
young adults.

Theoretical Perspectives
When studying media behaviour, the theory of uses and gratifications (U&G the-
ory) serves as a natural starting point. In the U&G theory, four factors are emphasised
when explaining media behaviour: motivational, situational, individual and structural
(McQuail 2010; Rubin 2002; Ruggiero 2000; Sullivan 2013). News consumption practices
in legacy media have historically proved to follow certain patterns. Regular use forms
habits in life, which contribute to everyday structure (Lull 1990; Rubin 2002) and habit-
ual media consumption is strongly related to a person’s life cycle. Individual characteris-
tics such as age, family formation and working situation are of great importance for
such habits (Lauf 2001; McQuail 2010). Research has made it evident that age is one of
the most important predictive factors concerning the consumption of news through
newspapers and other legacy media (Bakker and Sádaba 2010; Bergström and
Wadbring 2010; Lauf 2001; Skogerbø and Winsvold 2011; Trilling and Schönbach 2012).
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 585

Besides age, social engagement and a general political interest are usually good
predictors of news consumption practices, and their explanatory power has increased
over time (Putnam 1993; Strömbäck, Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata 2012). There are also pos-
itive correlations between socio-economic factors, such as education and income, and
news consumption habits; the higher formal education and the higher income, the
more frequent use of newspapers and broadcast news (Elvestad and Blekesaune 2008;
Ohlsson, Lindell, and Arkhede 2017). However, there is some evidence that news use
via SNSs is less well correlated with socio-economic variables than has been seen with
legacy media (Shearer and Gottfried 2017).
Social media networks show both similarities and differences, when compared to
legacy media. One area where this can be seen is in incidental exposure to the news.
People often choose to use the networks for reasons other than pure news consump-
tion. While there, though, they may be exposed to information or news they did not
seek out. In this, social media resembles low-control news environments such as televi-
sion news. The customising feature of SNSs, however, rather makes them a hybrid
“somewhere between the extremes of selective exposure and incidental exposure”
(Bode 2016, 30).
News organisations have their own presence on SNSs. Further, one’s friends and
acquaintances, as well as groups one follows, tend to share links and comment on
news. In consequence, a visit to a social media platform with the intention of seeking
private/social connection may result in exposure to different sorts of news in one’s
feed. In a report on young people’s news consumption (Madden, Lenhart, and Fontaine
2017, 4), the researchers formulate this consumption shift in an astute way: “In an age
of smart phones and social media, young people don’t follow the news, as much as it
follows them”.
In sum, the concept of incidental news consumption in the SNS context describes
how users come across news without having that specific intention to begin with. The
news-gathering can be regarded as a by-product of other activities, something occur-
ring with the habitual use of a certain medium, channel or content (Valeriani and Vac-
cari 2016). News consumption also becomes part of what is referred to as a “checking
cycle” (Costera Meijer and Kormelink 2014, 670), in which one constantly checks one’s
phone to stay on top of what occurs both in one’s personal life and, as well, the world
at large. This phenomenon is not new. However, in the SNS context, where pictures of
cats, parties, celebrities and socially oriented updates irregularly but continuously are
being mixed up with news stories, the possibility of running into news becomes sub-
stantially greater.
Incidental news consumption has proved to be widespread in social media. In an
American survey (Purcell et al. 2010), for instance, a majority of news users claim they
come across news content in an incidental manner. Online news users also state that
incidental news consumption provides information they otherwise would not have
received. Some even state that incidental consumption has become a major way of
obtaining news (Swart, Peters, and Broersma 2016; Yadamsuren and Erdelez 2010).
Young people also claim to get more news using social media than was their primary
intent (Hermida et al. 2012). They further report gaining access to more and different
sources and viewpoints than before (Sveningsson 2015). Respondents in one study
express that they might find something they have not heard about or did not know
586 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

before, and that they might find something they lacked (Yadamsuren and Erdelez
2010).
The concept of “incidental” merits greater attention relative to what this experi-
ence means to young SNS news consumers and the way it affects their news consump-
tion. The present study endeavours to shed more light on this topic.
Social media news distribution also, to a larger extent than legacy media, includes
information “shared by known others” (Bode 2016, 26). Originally, information-sharing
others were described by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) as opinion leaders passing on
media messages to other people who were not as frequently exposed to media. It was
demonstrated that opinion leaders exerted personal influence over the opinions and
attitudes of close others, a process of information-gathering sometimes termed “two-
step flow”.
The two-step flow theory and the context of the follower relate to models of
news selectivity (Sears and Freedman 1967). The selection of news historically meant
selecting a known source. People tuned in to particular news programmes or bought
known newspapers. Thus, their news environment depended on habitually consumed
media outlets. In the SNS environment, in contrast, one selects a story from a wide
range of sources suggested by network algorithms, friends or followers (Messing and
Westwood 2014). The tendency, then, is for news to be encountered more generally as
a result of incidental exposure or upon recommendations of others known to the user.
The role of opinion leaders in the SNS context has been identified in several stud-
ies. It is evident that friends and followers in social networks influence what news is
noticed in people’s flows, often under such banners as “liked”, “shared” or “recom-
mended” (Choi 2015; Hermida et al. 2012; Holton et al. 2015; Karlsen 2015; Weeks and
Holberg 2013). On Twitter a few individuals, readily trusted and often sought out for
guidance and information, were found to markedly influence others’ news consumption
(Choi 2015). These so-called “discussion catalysts” are usually the ones initiating a dis-
cussion (Himelboim, Gleave, and Smith 2009). A Canadian study (Hogan and Quan-
Haase 2010) found it was twice as likely that users preferred news links and recommen-
dations from friends and family, as compared to journalists and news organisations.
Opinion leaders and their interpersonal networks are equally essential in the flow
of communication in SNSs (Karlsen 2015). The process of the two-step flow of informa-
tion and news, however, takes two: a leader and a follower (Katz 1957), but the fol-
lower is only briefly characterised in the analyses between Katz and Lazarsfeld. Also,
studies of news consumption through social media have focused mainly on distribu-
tion, whereas little has been revealed about the relationship between leaders and fol-
lowers from the perspective of the latter. Greater focus is needed on how news and
information are used and interpreted (Hille and Bakker 2013; Karlsen 2015; Turcotte
et al. 2015; Weeks and Holberg 2013).
The present study reports on news consumption in young people’s SNS feeds
and what factors explain it. With the design of our study, we capture motivational, indi-
vidual and structural factors, and situational aspects, as outlined in previous U&G
research. By combining survey method with in-depth interviews, we not only capture
behavioural findings, but also attain a deeper understanding of: (a) the purposes
behind young people’s news use; and (b) how they make sense of the news flow in
their SNS feeds.
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 587

Three research questions constitute the basis for the analysis:

(1) To what extent do young people use news that appears in their SNS feeds, and
what factors contribute to the understanding of consumption?
(2) To what extent do young people perceive their news consumption on SNSs inci-
dental or deliberate?
(3) What role do opinion leaders play when young people consume news on SNSs?

Methods and Data

It is fairly common to either gather self-reported frequency data on news con-
sumption or collect in-depth interpretations from a small non-representative sample.
However, a design capturing both habits and how young people make sense of their
use will work complementarily and broaden the understanding of news consumption
in SNSs (Kobbernagel and Schrøder 2016). The present study, therefore, includes both a
representative survey and an interview study with young people living in Sweden.
In order to answer the first research question, namely, the level of young people’s
news consumption in social media, a survey with a representative sample of the Swed-
ish population was used. In Sweden, since 1986, data are routinely collected in the
national Society, Opinion, Media (SOM) survey. Each year between 3,000 and 17,000
persons, aged 16–85 and living in Sweden, receive the SOM mail-in questionnaire. Out
of those questioned the response rate was 51 per cent. For the current analysis,
responses from persons aged 16–25, from the 2015 survey, were collected, which
makes 687 valid respondents for this study (see Vernersdotter 2016 for details on
research design). Respondent characteristics, by and large, faithfully reflect the Swedish
population in terms of gender, social class and level of education. However, older peo-
ple are somewhat over-represented, as the response rate in the youngest groups was
below average.
The average questionnaire consisted of approximately 16 pages and about 70
questions, most of them with fixed-answer options. Participants were asked about fre-
quency of use of news on social media: “How often do you generally use news from
the following [sources] on the Internet?” A seven-point scale was used: Daily, 5–6 days
a week, 3–4 days a week, 1–2 days a week, More seldom, Never. The independent vari-
ables are captured in several different survey questions. Sex and age (year of birth)
were integrated with the data-set from public registers. Formal education was mea-
sured in eight fixed categories. Use of online news services and use of social media
were determined in a battery of questions about online activities: “How often do you
generally use the Internet to do the following?” An eight-point scale was provided:
Never, Once during the last 12 months, Once during the last 6 months, Sometime in the
last 3 months, Once a month, Once a week, Several times a week and Daily. Interest in
news was measured for four locations: Sweden, residential area, the municipality where
you live and other countries, and an index was constructed with all four of these factors.
A four-point scale was used for interest in news and for political interest: Very interested,
Fairly interested, Not very interested and Not at all interested.
As with other statistical surveys, this questionnaire provides a general picture of
use of news in social media. To achieve in-depth insight into young people’s use of
588 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

news in social media, with regard to incidental consumption and the role of opinion
leaders (i.e. research questions two and three), group interviews also were conducted.
These took place during spring 2016. A total of 44 persons, aged 16–19, participated.
All were students at two different high schools. One offers vocational programmes and
the other provides college preparatory courses. One-third of those interviewed were
attending a vocational administration or trade programme. Two-thirds were attending a
college preparatory technology programme. The group interviews were conducted with
four to seven students per group, at their respective schools. Each interview lasted for
about one hour. This study focused on investigating not only the presence of news in
young people’s SNS flows, but also: (a) on how they reflect on news occurring in their
flow as encountered incidentally; and (b) their view on the role of opinion leaders.
Before the interviews, the interviewees were asked what kind of incidents and
events they consider news worthy and how they would define social media, after that
a simplified but stringent definition of news and social media was given to provide a
consensus around the concept and for the convenience of those interviewed. The fol-
lowing definitions were presented:
News: “Something that has happened or is still happening, that is being told by
the media, which was previously unknown, about something which is of greater value
for the many, and affects people’s lives, in one way or another”.
Social media: “A collective term for different digital platforms allowing people to
communicate with each other, through for example text, picture or sound. The differ-
ence between social media and other media is that the content is often produced by
the users themselves”.
There were 19 questions in the interview guide, with follow-up questions inserted
when it was deemed relevant. Many of the questions led to discussions among the stu-
dents, and it is possible that some participants could have been influenced by their
peers. There were, for example, answers referring to previous comments, but for most
of the time the students discussed their own personal experiences. The interviews were
recorded and transcribed before being analysed. The quotations presented, in the arti-
cle, were translated to English by the authors.
The respondents also answered a written questionnaire with a variety of ques-
tions about: what kind of news they receive in their SNS flows; what access they had to
traditional forms of media at home; what types of digital technology they used;
whether they considered themselves interested in news or not; and the extent to which
their news consumption could be described as planned or incidental. These questions
were posed to gain a brief idea of the students’ access to digital technology, as well as
their interest in news, without burdening the group interviews with too many individ-
ual questions. This questionnaire was not a focus of the analysis, but rather was used
when background information was of interest.

Findings
The first research question dealt with how common news consumption is in
young people’s SNS settings. This was measured with a survey question about how fre-
quently participants read news in a social network. The share of readers of news on
social media, in the general population, is 51 per cent (Bergström 2016). In the age
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 589

group studied here—16–25 year olds—the figure is 91 per cent. Forty-four per cent are
daily readers; 38 per cent are weekly but not daily readers; 9 per cent more seldom
obtain news on social media; and another 9 per cent never used social media to access
news within the last 12 months.
Reading news, as outlined in the theoretical section, is strongly related to socio-
demographic background and above all age. Other strong explanatory factors were for-
mal education and political interest. It is also likely that general online news habits
might influence news use via SNSs among the young persons’ studied.
Many of these factors are correlated, and a multivariate analysis (Ordinary Least
Square Regression) was conducted (Table 1). The single most important factor in the
model is the habit of using online news services, which is positively correlated to news
use on social media when controlling for the other factors in the model. Young people
who frequently visit news sites also have a more frequent habit of picking up news in
their SNS flows. There are also weak but significant effects of an interest in news (the
more interest, the more use of news in SNSs), age (the younger, the more use) and sex
(slightly more frequent use among young females, as opposed to males).
It is reasonable to assume that factors normally contributing to the understand-
ing of news habits might be of less import when studying SNS—a news context funda-
mentally different from other media (Bode 2016). Use of social media primarily has
other drivers, with news obtained more incidentally in relation to those more direct
motivating factors.
There is also some impact of age, interest in news and sex, but although statisti-
cally significant, these correlations are weak. Within this group of younger people stud-
ied in the survey, news consumption in SNS decreases with age. Further, young women
and have more frequent habits of using news in SNSs, as do people who have a higher
interest in news generally.
In contrast to what is known from studies of news consumption in legacy news
media, formal education and political interest are weakly correlated with exposure to
news in the SNS setting. The findings overall point to a potential path to news which
has a different arc than previous paths through traditional news sources have had. That
said, it is important to keep in mind that much of the news occurring in the SNS feeds
originates in legacy media.

TABLE 1
Consumption of news in social media, regression (OLS), 2015

Std beta

Sex −0.08*
Age (16–25) −0.12*
Formal education 0.00
Use of online news services 0.20***
Political interest 0.03
Interest in news 0.11**
Adjusted R2 0.07
n 687

*p < 0.05
**p < 0.01
***p < 0.001.
590 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

The findings from the survey suggest more in-depth studies of social media users,
and their exposure to news in that context. This is captured in the interview study
which, firstly, confirms the survey results on young people’s use of news in SNSs. Most
of the interviewees do get news through social media. Out of 44 young people inter-
viewed, 39 answered unquestionably “yes” to that query. Some added that they actively
have chosen to follow news sites on social media. Others indicated their motivation
had to do with sharing with friends; one person stated they obtain all their news on
Facebook. Questionnaire results indicated the most common way the young intervie-
wees obtain news is through social media. Facebook is the platform mentioned most
often, but Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube and Twitter also are present in their SNS news
context.
Although the reason they use SNSs is not primarily to access news, almost all
interviewees report that they are interested in current affairs and in keeping up with
news on civic and political issues, both in Sweden and abroad. Several report that they
are most interested in “big news”, by which they mean news that affects society in a
major way and that impacts many people. Approximately, one-third of the respondents
were born outside Sweden, and many of them follow news from their country of ori-
gin.
Corresponding to previous research on news interest among youth (The Swedish
Media Council 2015), the interviewees are interested in sports, entertainment and news
about celebrities. It is apparent that the youth in this study also are interested in social
and civic issues such as domestic and foreign politics. Further, they make a clear dis-
tinction between the latter and articles dealing with more lightweight concerns.

Dimensions of Incidental Use

The second research question addresses what has been described in the research
literature as incidental exposure to news. It became evident when analysing the mate-
rial that many respondents perceived their news consumption on SNSs in this manner.
More than half of the interviewed students report that they get news incidentally in
their feeds. At times this is because news organisations have their own presence on
social media, and respondents decided to follow such accounts. A more predominant
reason, though, is that their friends share news items:
I get a lot from friends who have “liked” or written comments, mainly incidentally, but
every day, many times.
My consumption is incidental, it’s always someone who “shares”, or “likes” or com-
ments. I see a lot even if I haven’t made a choice”

Many interviewees also stated that they have different types of apps and push
notifications related to news on their mobile devices. But, interestingly enough, all of
them even those who do not actively follow news organisations seem to expect that
when something “big” or important is happening domestically or internationally, it will
show up in their social media feeds. Many of the interviewees expressed that, in a
sense, they do not have to search for news. Rather, if sufficiently important or interest-
ing, the news will find them (c.f. Madden, Lenhart, and Fontaine 2017). This indicates
that they do not mind receiving news through SNSs; quite the contrary, it seems to
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 591

have become a natural part of their SNS experience, and furthermore, something they
count on.
In this regard the interviewees report similar behaviour as has been seen in previ-
ous research (Swart, Peters, and Broersma 2016; Yadamsuren and Erdelez 2010). The
question arises whether this can really be conceptualised as incidental consumption. To
a certain extent the news exposure is deliberate, in that being updated and informed
in this manner is being taken for granted. There seems to be a deliberate choice to
keep up with current affairs via SNSs, though this is not always conducted in a system-
atic way.
It also became clear that the question of incidental news consumption can be
interpreted in at least two ways: news showing up on SNSs in an incidental way, as
opposed to consuming news in SNSs deliberately. News does appear in one’s feed,
mixed in with other updates, and the consumption is indeed incidental as opposed to
planned, since the intention when one uses SNSs is not primarily news acquisition.
Thus, there is a grey zone in SNS news consumption between incidental and more
deliberate ways of obtaining news, compared to its acquisition through traditional
news cycle. However, our study also indicates a level of awareness of this among the
young participants.
I used to have news push applications and alerts; Aftonbladet, GP, Expressen [Swedish
daily newspapers], but I got rid of them, it was way too much, I got beeps from my
phone all the time.

There is also some level of awareness concerning the algorithm’s part in this, i.e.
some of the interviewees know that if one clicks on a news link on a social media plat-
form, the algorithms will most likely deliver more from that source in the future:
In one way it’s planned, on Facebook, for example, if you have clicked on a news arti-
cle, then it’s like they know you want that kind of news, and [more news like that] will
keep appearing [in your feed].

Thus, a click that is incidental today might, due to ones knowledge about
algorithms, become part of ones news consumption plan.

The Role of Opinion Leaders

The third research question regards the role others play in exposing people to
news via SNSs. It is evident that most of the interviewees perceive some specific people
as opinion leaders in their SNS feeds. These are one or more persons particularly active
in their social media flows, who update often, post news and links to the original
source, and also often comment on the shared news. These persons also, according to
the interviewees, bring context to news articles.
A common response across participants was that such persons are especially
well-read. They are perceived to have in-depth knowledge of certain topics, for instance
sports, feminism and politics. It seems these people are respected on the basis of this
expertise in specific subject areas. This is something that most interviewees seem to
appreciate and value. This phenomenon is consistent with previous research (Choi
592 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

2015; Hermida et al. 2012; Holton et al. 2015; Karlsen 2015; Weeks and Holberg 2013;
Yadamsuren and Erdelez 2010). The opinion leaders are perceived to have significance
in that they pay attention to and flag news items the interviewees otherwise would
have missed. They also seem to play an important role regarding the interviewees need
for interpretation.
They are very important to me, since I have many [in my feed] who are interested in
politics. I usually read what they think and say. What plans they have, what they want,
what they are going to do, it’s important. I learn things.
It’s good; I get information I would have missed.
They have special knowledge, you can trust them.

The quotes indicate that these opinion leaders are perceived as essential or even
crucial in passing on news. Further, the respondents seem highly aware of the opinion
leaders’ role as vehicles and mediators of salient content. The interviewees also
expressed that they depend on them.
Some respondents stated they have made individual choices to enhance the flow
of news in their feed, for instance, actively choosing to follow news organisations or
individual journalists. Here, the typical motive was a wish to be informed about what is
going on in their hometown and, as well, to be updated on domestic or international
news. Most participants, whether active or less active, stated they keep on top of what
they refer to as “big” international news:
On Twitter, which I use now, I follow certain people that are involved in politics, and
also gamers. It partly consists of ‘shares’ and partly active choices that I have done.
I don’t use Twitter, I use Instagram. That’s where I move things forward, [since] I’ve
chosen specific people. I’ve chosen those [accounts] that generate news.
I have chosen several groups on Facebook that interest me; some of it is news but not
all of it.

Counting on others means that one seeks out sources other than traditional news
distributors. The interviewees all seem to be fairly aware of the importance of being
critical of sources. In discussing what matters most, the source or the topic, two aspects
emerged. First, the source is important for credibility and the topic is important for per-
sonal interest. Second, participants’ interest increases significantly if the news is passed
along and/or commented on by a friend.
This second feature can be seen to reflect the ongoing development of social
media. Initially it was a tool for interpersonal relations, more concerning private and
social matters. Now it is increasingly filled with news material, and thereby becoming a
part of the users’ news consumption. As long as users mostly were engaging in more
personal matters, there was no immediate need to concern oneself about the source.
Either one knew the person directly, or the content was not sufficiently important to
fact-check. But when one’s feed is now being filled with a wide variety of news and
news-related posts, from less-known origins, one has to more carefully consider the
content source and its factual basis.
Yet not all interviewees agreed on the importance of the source. Twelve of the
44 students stated that the source does not impact their interest in a news item. They
will read it, and perhaps also click further. They argue, instead, it is the topic that is the
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 593

most important factor. If they are interested in the latter, they are more likely to read
news stories about it. That said, they are definitely aware of the source:
If a friend has shared something I check it out, and then I continue to the original
source to see that it is correct. It’s like, I get to know about it through a friend, and
then I go further.
There is a difference, what friends put out is more interesting, and if they share some-
thing, or write something, you want to read that, to see if you agree or not. After that
you want to read facts, not opinions. You get more info that way, if you get to hear
the different arguments.

It, therefore, seems that many of the interviewees have identified the function of
the filtering, interpreting and decoding that opinion leaders can offer. This seems to
stem from an awareness of a particular need for help in orienting oneself within the
news media landscape. Drawing on the findings, however, it is not evident this help
necessarily comes from a professional journalist. Rather, interviewees left open the pos-
sibility for others to contribute to the news distributing process. Further, as the quotes
show, if the topic is interesting enough, or if respondents want to check facts, they
may secondarily turn to original sources. These might very well be professional news
distributors. If participants’ interest in a specific news item then grows further, they
may continue to explore the subject by searching for more information on the Internet.

Conclusion and Discussion

Viewing of news via SNSs can be said to be relatively widespread. The share of
daily news consumers on social media is larger than for specific news outlets among
young Swedes, and it is evident that news is a significant part of the content in peo-
ple’s SNS feeds. Young adults express that they acquire news from their feeds. Further,
they even count on this content to keep them updated about current affairs. Social
networks are definitely emerging as spaces where deliberate and incidental news con-
sumption coexist. It is also clear that the news shared in young persons’ feeds serves
to widen their scope of information, in that they unintentionally come across news
items they would have missed out on, had it been relegated to traditional platforms.
Costera Meijer and Kormelink (2014) consider the term “news snacking”. They
describe this as consumption of brief news pieces, a lean-back way of news processing,
which serves the purpose of just obtaining a basic overview. While it is used primarily
for entertainment and to use up time, it can be a starting point for more in-depth news
consumption. The ways the interviewees in our study describe their news consumption
in SNS feeds suggests they are mainly consuming news in this fashion. They also
emphasise the role network friends play in engendering interest in the first place.
The young adults studied also clearly identify opinion leaders when it comes to
news distribution in their SNSs. They express a positive attitude towards these people
and even see them as a prerequisite for their keeping up on the news. It is evident that
the concept of opinion leaders is highly relevant in the SNS news context (c.f. Choi
2015; Karlsen 2015). This, in turn, suggests that news would spread only occasionally in
many young people’s SNS flows if certain people did not share it. Just as noted by
Hogan and Quan-Haase (2010), we found friends’ sharing is of greater importance than
594 ANNIKA BERGSTRÖM AND MARIA JERVELYCKE BELFRAGE

the news disseminated by the media business. This clearly means that when relying on
news distribution in SNSs, legacy news channels are largely in the hands of ordinary
people.
This suggests the importance of source, rather than topic, when young people
decide what to read in their SNS feed. Our findings, though, indicate that source and
topic are both of great importance for picking up a news item, and that their respec-
tive different motive for importance is blurring to the respondents. A recent study by
Young (2015) including both survey and interviews, shows that young people also tend
to use different paths to news, ways they deem reasonable in relation to the topic. In
so doing they rely on an assumption about source credibility and source knowledge.
Therefore, even in this case the source seems to play an important role. Young’s study
further showed that the topic mattered: when it came to news covering such areas as
economy, crime, foreign affairs and the environment, study participants reported turn-
ing to professional news organisations. When the topics were about human rights-is-
sues such as abortion, religion, race and LGBTQ rights, social media sources were
preferred. A “curated” path, such as on semi-professional blogs, would instead be cho-
sen when looking for news about consumer information, how-to advice, hobbies, and
news or information about one’s career. Future research needs to more closely study
news paths for different issues in a complex and constantly changing media landscape.
The topic of content is strongly related to the consequences of selective expo-
sure. Interpreting our findings, it seems hard to avoid news in a feed constantly
updated by a wide-ranging social network. Further, there is clear evidence of incidental
consumption. It has been discussed in the public debate whether, rather than broaden-
ing news-gathering horizons, social media reduces the scope. It seems, however, that
the high-choice media environment that social media constitutes might be a mecha-
nism opening any so-called “filter bubble” or “echo chamber” (Hosanagar et al. 2014).
As such, it might contribute in closing information gaps (Bode 2016). Otherwise put,
SNSs could be a growing platform for news engagement in times where people easily
can opt out of news reading altogether (Beam et al. 2017). This points to the need for
in-depth research about what avoiding news, or being in an echo chamber really
means, if this phenomenon even exists.
Our study points out a diverse news diet among the young people interviewed.
Respondents also displayed a desire to stay updated, and a trust in others to keep
them informed. We do not know from the limited data, however, whether this is com-
mon in the overall population and encourage further examination of these areas in rep-
resentative, large-scale studies. The survey analysis indicates that there might be
differences also within the group of young adults with regard to news habits in SNS,
and to further widen the scope of incidental consumption and the role of opinion lead-
ers, there is a need also for in-depth studies with young person’s post-high school. Fur-
ther, our study points to the need for more research on what is actually perceived as
news in today’s media landscape. It seems that the boundaries people draw between
news and other information are definitively shifting (Swart, Peters, and Broersma 2016).
Additional investigation in this area is therefore encouraged.
News is essential in Western democracies. This has been claimed, first and fore-
most, in relation to legacy news media. Dependence on the SNS feed to provide neces-
sary or desired news further raises questions about how reliable these feeds are in
delivering such content. Does the individual user receive about the same varied news
 NEWS IN SOCIAL MEDIA 595

mix as, for instance, a newspaper reader or one following main broadcast channels? Is
each person’s feed satisfying from an informed citizen’s perspective? This study does
not capture whether news in SNS feeds could be equal to legacy news media, vis à vis
enlightenment of citizens. Rather, it identifies the need for effect studies, to determine
the contribution of SNSs as news providers on a societal level.
It is evident from the findings of this study that young people to a great extent
consume news appearing in their SNS feed, and that this largely is a part of a more
general digital activity. Although incidental, the interviewees count on the news to
occur rather frequent, and they to a large extent count on people in their networks to
pass on everyday news on different topics. One overall conclusion is that even though
SNSs are not a primary source themselves, they nonetheless could be considered an
important distributor of current affairs from legacy media companies and other conven-
tional sources. While abandoning traditional distribution forms, many people will con-
tinue to encounter traditional distributors, though this might happen across alternative
settings. SNSs should be considered a significant factor in this context. The role of
social media, thus, merits further emphasis in future research on news repertoires.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Annika Bergström (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Depart-

ment of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. Corresponding author. E-mail: annika.bergstrom@jmg.gu.se.
Maria Jervelycke Belfrage, Department of Journalism, Media and Communication,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. E-mail: maria.jervelycke@jmg.gu.se.