Comparing user-content interactivity and audience diversity across news and satire: differences in online engagement between satire, regular news and partisan news

ABSTRACT Normative theory on the functioning of the public sphere requires citizens to actively engage with the information that is provided to them. For a long time, however, the possibilities of user-content interactivity have been limited due to the one-directionality of the traditional mass media. Moreover, a re-occurring question is to what extent less-versus-more entertaining forms of news evoke audience engagement. This study analyzes the user-content engagement on online platforms in response to journalistic content and infotainment; more concretely, we compare whether the satire genre is more likely to evoke user-content interactivity than regular news and partisan news shows. To test our hypotheses, a large-scale data analysis of social media posts by a wide variety of American TV shows on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter has been conducted. Results demonstrate satire’s potential to encourage user-content interactivity: Satire videos generated (a) more likes and (b) more comments than the clips of regular news. However, we also find that (c) satire videos are related to less controversy, which arguably indicates that satire hampers the exchange of diverse ideas. Compared to partisan news – which shares many features of satire, but often lacks the humor component – satire elicits more likes but less commentary and less controversy.