In addition to children's photos of our friends and cat videos, we also casually encounter news content on social networks. Dr. Anna Sophie Kümpel and Lisa Merten examine how this happens by chance and what this news contact means.
You know it: A friend posts a link on Facebook. You click on it and a few minutes later you find yourself elbow deep in an article about an aspiring animal species at the other end of the globe. A report that you may not have searched for, but which nevertheless found you.
Incidental News Exposure, as the experts call it.
Dr. Anna Kümpel and
Lisa Merten are working intensively on this phenomenon in their research. Above all, they want to know how "accidental" this news contact really is and whether it is always to be evaluated positively.
They also talk about the difficulty as social scientists to obtain representative data on social media and about a communication science bias that often has to be overcome.
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Dr. Anna Sophie Kümpel
Publications by Anna Sophie Kümpel
Lisa Merten
Publications by Lisa Merten
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