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This is an Accepted Manuscript of a chapter published in Me- dia Convergence Handbook Vol. 1. Journalism, Broadcasting, and Social Media Aspects of Convergence To cite this article: Villi, Mikko, Matikainen, Janne and Khaldarova, Irina (2015) Recommend, Tweet, Share: User-Distributed Content (UDC) and the Convergence of News Media and Social Networks. In Media Convergence Handbook Vol. 1. Journalism, Broadcast- ing, and Social Media Aspects of Convergence, edited by Ar- tur Lugmayr and Cinzia Dal Zotto. Heidelberg: Springer, 289- 306. 2 Recommend, Tweet, Share: User- Distributed Content (UDC) and the Convergence of News Media and Social Networks Mikko Villi [email protected] Janne Matikainen [email protected] Irina Khaldarova [email protected] Abstract The paper explores how the participatory audience dis- seminates the online content produced by news media. Here, user- distributed content (UDC) acts as a conceptual framework. The concept of UDC refers to the process by which the mass media converge with the online social networks through the intentional use of social media features and platforms in order to expand the number of content delivery channels and maximize visibility online. The focus of the paper is both on the news media’s internal use (social plugins) and external use (Facebook pages, Twitter accounts) of social media tools and platforms in content distribution. The study draws on the examination of fifteen news media in seven countries. The data con- sists of almost 50,000 news items and the communicative activity surrounding them. The three main findings of the study are: (1) the audience shares online news content actively by using social plugins, (2) the activity of the news media in social media (especially on Facebook and Twitter) impacts the activity of the audience, and (3) the news media are more active on Twitter than on Face- 3 book, despite the fact that the audience is often more active on Face- book. The study suggests that practices related to UDC should be more strongly incorporated into the management strategies of news media as peer-communication among the audience has a growing significance in the consumption and distribution of online media content. 1 Introduction The media industry is challenged by a complex environment. This is mainly due to a multitude of technological developments (digitaliza- tion, internetization, the emergence of new communication devices) and the growing significance of the participatory audience assisted by various web services and platforms, mostly referred to as the social media. In social media, the mass media and the horizontal communication networks of the users1 are converging in increasingly multifarious ways. They interact on the individual, group, organisa- tional and societal level (van Dijck, 2006). Therefore, it is not sur- prising that most of the so-called legacy media companies are keen on adapting their offerings to the networked communication environment and playing an active role as part of the social networks. A key approach used by news media to incorporate social media features into their online practices is enabling the audience to share and distribute news content. Mass media consumption does not remain on the individual level alone. It flows from personal media use toward more collective ex- periences and social sharing (Heikkilä et al., 2011). Accordingly, Jensen (2010, p.14) proposes a shift of focus from media to communication, an agenda emphasising the recombination and reconfigura- tion of one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication. 1 ‘Users’ are generally referred to as Internet actors; in the Internet environment, members of the audience and media consumers are increasingly also users. 2 The social plugins (Kontaxis et al., 2012) have also been referred to as ‘social bookmarking tools’ (Messner et al., 2011) or ‘social buttons’ (Gerlitz and Helmond, 2011). 3 Socialbakers (www.socialbakers.com) is a global social media and digital analytics company 4 This poses challenges to media studies, especially that in the social media environment, mass communication is increasingly subject to interpersonal communication; that is, the mass media rely increasingly on the interpersonal networks of audience communities in dis- tributing their content. As Livingstone (2004, p.75) notes, ‘Mediated communication is no longer simply or even mainly mass communication (from one to many), but rather, the media now facilitate communication among peers (both one to one and many to many).’ When studying the role of the audience in the online practices of media companies, emphasis has often been placed on user-generated content (UGC) (Thurman, 2008; Napoli, 2010; Wardle and Wil- liams, 2010; Singer et al., 2011). To offer an innovative take on mass communication and the participatory audience, the paper examines the significance of communication in audience communities for news media, instead of focusing on the role of the audience in producing content with or for the media. This emphasis enables the mapping of an emerging conceptual terrain by highlighting the growing importance of user-distributed content (UDC). The concept of UDC (Villi, 2012; Napoli, 2009) refers to the process by which the mass media converge with the online social networks through the intentional use of social media features and platforms in an effort to expand the number of content delivery channels and maximize visibility online. Practices related to UDC (although not using the concept of UDC) have been discussed in works by Glynn et al., 2011; Lee and Ma, 2011; Bechmann, 2012; Hermida et al., 2012; Himelboim and McCreery, 2012; and Weeks and Holbert, 2012. By utilizing UDC as a conceptual framework, this paper examines how news media can tap into the communicative dimensions of participatory audience communities. Many legacy media have already launched online sites in the latter half of the 1990s, but for a long time, their online practices were rather a matter of performing one- way mass communication and did not engage in participatory pro- cesses with the audience. It is only during the last several years that the development of social media tools and platforms has cultivated new forms of relationships between the producers and consumers of 5 professional media content. The legacy media have integrated social media tools, such as social plugins2 like the Facebook Recommend and Twitter buttons, into their sites, making their content more readi- ly available for horizontal distribution among the audience. In this study, such integration of social media features into the news media’s own websites is defined as the internal use of social media. This includes the possibilities offered on the websites for the audience to comment on articles, provide photographs and, in the context of this paper, the possibility to share content using social plugins. The news media also take advantage of the social media platforms outside of their own domains. This is done by using social media networks, such as Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. In this paper, this is referred to as the external use of social media. This paper contributes to the study of the media industry by empiri- cally examining UDC. An important goal in the study is to develop a metric for the collection of data on the internal and external use of social media in the rapidly changing online environment. The study draws on the examination of 15 news media, which are based in seven different countries—Finland, Sweden, Germany, Russia, UK, US and Qatar. By analysing the sizeable amount of data, the study sheds light on how these news media have implemented social plugins on their own websites, how the audience uses the social plugins and how the media build their presence on the social media platforms. In relation to the external use of social media, the study provides in- formation on how the selected news media use Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and how active audience participation is in this context. Based on the analysis of the empirical data, three main findings are presented. First, the audience shares news content actively by using social plugins. Second, by being active in social media (especially on Facebook and Twitter), the news media can promote the distribution of their content by the audience. Third, news media are more 2 The social plugins (Kontaxis et al., 2012) have also been referred to as ‘social bookmarking tools’ (Messner et al., 2011) or ‘social buttons’ (Gerlitz and Helmond, 2011). 6 active on Twitter than on Facebook despite the fact that the audience is more active on Facebook. The main conclusion in the paper is that the audience has an important role in the distribution of news content and that this role can be substantially supported by the news media themselves. 2 Literature Review In the paper, the plural audience communities is used when stressing that instead of a mass audience, the social consumption of media content takes place in smaller, networked audience communities that maintain contact through several channels and communication tools (Marshall, 2004. p.103.). One’s Facebook friends are an example of such a community. A close point of reference to audience communities is the concept of ‘networked publics’, especially when it is used to refer to a networked collection of peers (boyd, 2011). In social media, the dynamics of publication and distribution of news are being reshaped by networked publics (Hermida et al., 2012). Social media have become the top outlet for people to access news stories shared by other Internet users (Ma et al., 2012). In a world of links and feeds, it is often easier to find the next thing to read, watch or listen to from friends than it is to stick with any given publication (Anderson et al., 2013, p.8).

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