The audience logic in election news reporting on Facebook: what drives audience engagement in transitional democracies of Albania and Kosovo?

ABSTRACT

This study provides insights on how journalists in the Western Balkans conceptualize and practice audience engagement during electoral campaigns. Taking a holistic approach, we first explore audience demand and news supply of strategic and negative election news on Facebook, then turn to news editors to explore what type of audience logic drives their reporting. Our data confirm previous findings about audience demand for strategic news but contradict the predominance of audience negativity bias in the context of Southeast Europe. These findings support generic trends in how social media audiences engage with political information, but also emphasize the importance of the socio-political context as a determinant of audience engagement with online news. Interview data identified an alignment between journalists’ imagined readership preferences with the reality, yet reporting patterns on Facebook do not entirely follow engagement trends. Together, these findings suggest that journalism culture developed in this region is more nuanced than previously defined, while news editors embrace new technologies to serve the commercial needs and audience strengthening logics in parallel during electoral campaigns.

KEYWORDS:

• Audience engagement
• strategic frame
• horserace
• Facebook
• election news
• social media
• audience logic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2227847

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lindita Camaj

Lindita Camaj (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an Associate Professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. Her research addresses the role of news media in political processes, with a focus on digital communication, media effects, access to information and journalism in South East Europe.

Erlis Çela

Erlis Çela (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences, Beder University College in Tirana, Albania. His research interest includes the role of social media in journalism, disinformation, and media literacy.

Gjylie Rexha

Gjylie Rexha (Ph.D., University of Tirana) is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Media and Communication, UBT Higher Education Institution, in Kosovo. Her research addresses the role of journalists and media in political communication, especially focused on radio and television in Kosovo.