Zicheng Cheng

In the media convergence landscape, consumption of traditional, well-established media is increasingly combined with newer digital and online platforms such as blogs, podcasts, and social media, which has changed the way news users engage with media content. This study examines the relationship between hybrid media use—specifically, second screening—and trust in both professional and alternative media. Drawing on a two-wave U.S. panel data, first, we find that the second screening positively predicts individuals’ belief in the media’s ability to help them comprehend complex political matters, known in the literature as media efficacy. Furthermore, second screening is positively associated with alternative media trust but is not significantly related to trust in professional media. However, media efficacy positively mediates the connection between second screening and trust in both alternative and professional media. By delivering valuable information to help the public understand intricate political topics, the second screening promotes news media trust.

TikTok—the world’s most downloaded app since 2020, has become a place for more than silly dancing and lip-syncing. TikTok users are increasingly turning to TikTok for news content. Meanwhile, news publishers are embracing TikTok to reach a younger audience. We aim to examine the content strategy adopted by the most-followed news publishers on TikTok and how effective their TikTok strategy is in spurring audience engagement in terms of liking, commenting, and sharing. This study retrieved 101,292 TikTok news videos as of November 22, 2022. With the help of computer vision, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis, we found that TikTok news videos containing negative sentiment and more second-person view shots are associated with significantly higher audience engagement. In addition, this study demonstrated that the TikTok video features and engagement levels differ between the news publishers and other TikTok creators. Moderator analysis shows that both the effect of negative sentiment on engagement and the effect of the second-person view on engagement are moderated by the TikTok account type. The impact of negative sentiment and second-person view on engagement behaviors becomes smaller or even insignificant for news publisher TikTok videos. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this study.

Prior literature on political filter bubbles suggests an overall positive association between social media use and political networks diversification. Sometimes, this might not be the case. This study argues that the News Finds Me perception (NFM) or the belief that “one” can be well-informed about public affairs without actively seeking information as news will find “me” through “my” networks, tend to nurture a positive attitude toward algorithmic news gatekeeping. Likewise, NFM’s news over-reliance on one’s social network support the development of homogeneous information and discussion political networks in social media (political homophily). Results based on a variety of ordinary least squares regression models (cross-sectional, lagged, and autoregressive) from a U.S. representative panel survey, as we all as autoregressive structural equation model tests, indicate that this is indeed the case. This study serves to specifically clarify when and how social media and the NFM facilitate politically homogeneous filter bubbles.