"Henry Jenkins famously wrote, "If it doesn't spread, it's dead." With that concise observation, Jenkins captured a central truth of the digital era. Information, news, and media gain power when people choose to circulate them. Sharing amplifies the influence of news organizations, extending their reach across networks far beyond their own platforms. That insight has shaped much of what we understand about news sharing on social media and explains why news outlets invest heavily in optimizing content for these spaces -"
"But focusing on what spreads tells only part of the story. Social media may be a major vehicle for encountering news, yet people publicly share only a small fraction of what they consume. Most news remains private - read but never posted, forwarded, or otherwise made visible. While research has examined virality extensively, the equally consequential behavior of deliberately withholding news has been largely overlooked."
Sharing amplifies news influence because circulation extends reach across social networks. News outlets optimize content for social platforms to increase visibility but frequently fail to convert that visibility into sustainable revenue. Social media exposure coexists with low rates of public sharing; most consumed news remains private and unshared. Withholding news represents an active behavior that determines which stories become part of public discourse and which remain hidden. Deliberate withholding has consequential effects on public conversation and agenda-setting. Surveys of more than 400 social media users and textual analysis have been used to investigate motivations and patterns of withholding.
Read at Nieman Lab
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