Computer Science Review 29 (2018) 74–94 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computer Science Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cosrev Survey Attention to news and its dissemination on Twitter: A surveyI Claudia Orellana-Rodriguez *, Mark T. Keane Insight Centre for Data Analytics, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland article info a b s t r a c t Article history: In recent years, news media have been hugely disrupted by news promotion, commentary and sharing Received 16 February 2018 in online, social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit). This disruption has been the subject of a Received in revised form 3 July 2018 significant literature that has largely used AI techniques – machine learning, text analytics and network Accepted 11 July 2018 models – to both (i) understand the factors underlying audience attention and news dissemination on social media (e.g., effects of popularity, type of day) and (ii) provide new tools/guidelines for journalists to better disseminate their news via these social media. This paper provides an integrative review of Keywords: Computational journalism the literature on the professional reporting of news on Twitter; focusing on how journalists and news Digital journalism outlets use Twitter as a platform to disseminate news, and on the factors that impact readers' attention Social media and engagement with that news on Twitter. Using the precise definition of a news-tweet (i.e., divided into News articles user, content and context features), the survey structures the literature to reveal the main findings on Twitter features affecting audience attention to news and its dissemination on Twitter. From this analysis, it then Journalism considers the most effective guidelines for digital journalists to better disseminate news in the future. News ' 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Audience engagement Audience attention Contents 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 75 1.1. Online developments: News moves online & social............................................................................................................................................ 75 1.2. Emerging developments: From computational to citizen journalism................................................................................................................ 76 1.3. Structure of the review .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 2. The good & the bad of news on Twitter............................................................................................................................................................................. 77 2.1. The good: How Twitter enhances journalism ...................................................................................................................................................... 77 2.2. The bad: How Twitter undermines journalism.................................................................................................................................................... 78 3. The anatomy of news-tweets & attention to them........................................................................................................................................................... 79 3.1. The news-tweet: Definition & features................................................................................................................................................................. 79 3.2. Attention to news-tweets: Definitions & distinctions......................................................................................................................................... 79 4. Features of news-tweets: Content, user & context........................................................................................................................................................... 80 5. Content features of news-tweets....................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 5.1. Headlines & what they convey.............................................................................................................................................................................. 81 5.2. News categories & topics: Reader & journalistic aspects .................................................................................................................................... 83 5.3. Tweet elements: Hashtags, mentions, replies & URLs......................................................................................................................................... 84 5.4. Textual elements: Stand-out phrases, commentaries, quotes & memes ........................................................................................................... 84 6. User features of news-tweets ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 85 6.1. Account ownership: Corporate versus individual accounts................................................................................................................................ 85 6.2. Branding & reputational features.......................................................................................................................................................................... 85 6.3. User features conveyed by tweeting style............................................................................................................................................................ 86 6.4. Features reflecting demographics: Gender, nationality & ethnicity................................................................................................................... 86 7. Context features of news-tweets....................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 7.1. Temporal aspects of news tweeting...................................................................................................................................................................... 87 7.2. Locational aspects of news tweeting .................................................................................................................................................................... 87 I No author associated with this paper has disclosed any potential or pertinent conflicts which may be perceived to have impending conflict with this work. For full disclosure statements refer to 10.1016/j.cosrev.2018.07.001. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Orellana-Rodriguez), [email protected] (M.T. Keane). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosrev.2018.07.001 1574-0137/' 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. C. Orellana-Rodriguez, M.T. Keane / Computer Science Review 29 (2018) 74–94 75 7.3. The visibility of news tweets................................................................................................................................................................................. 87 8. Studying the interactions between features..................................................................................................................................................................... 87 8.1. A sample study on feature interactions................................................................................................................................................................ 89 8.2. Structuring the diversity of research .................................................................................................................................................................... 89 9. Guidelines for news providers ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 9.1. Social media guidelines for journalists................................................................................................................................................................. 90 9.2. Specific guidelines on audience engagement....................................................................................................................................................... 91 10. Future directions................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 91 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 91 References ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 91 1.