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Will They Come and Will They Stay? Online Social Networks and News Consumption on External Websites

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  • Mahmood, Ammara
  • Sismeiro, Catarina

Abstract

This study explores the role of online engagement, homophily and social influence in explaining traffic and news consumption by social network users at an external news website. The authors jointly model visits and page views for a panel of users who registered with the news site using their Facebook accounts. In their model, the authors account for homophily using a latent space approach, and account for endogeneity, heterogeneity, and unobservable correlates. The results show that measures of an individual's activity on Facebook are positively associated with that individual's actions at the news site. In addition, knowing what a user's Facebook friends do at the content website provides insights into a focal user's behavior at that website, as visitors with friends who visit external news sites are more likely to visit the news website studied. In addition, news consumption (not just visits) also depends on friend's actions but such an impact varies with the individual's underlying browsing mode. We highlight the importance of social influence in news consumption and further show that homophily bias in news consumption is similar to prior research in other categories. Our study also highlights that visitors' past browsing patterns are important predictors of future content consumption, although social network information significantly improves prediction beyond the effect of such more traditional behavioral metrics. Finally we find that Managers can use readily available data for both prediction and targeting.

Suggested Citation

  • Mahmood, Ammara & Sismeiro, Catarina, 2017. "Will They Come and Will They Stay? Online Social Networks and News Consumption on External Websites," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 117-132.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:117-132
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2016.10.003
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    4. Diptiman Banerji & Ramendra Singh & Prashant Mishra, 2020. "Friendships in marketing: a taxonomy and future research directions," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 10(3), pages 223-243, December.
    5. Catarina Sismeiro & Ammara Mahmood, 2018. "Competitive vs. Complementary Effects in Online Social Networks and News Consumption: A Natural Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5014-5037, November.
    6. Garz, Marcel & Szucs, Ferenc, 2023. "Algorithmic selection and supply of political news on Facebook," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    7. María Teresa Ballestar & Pilar Grau-Carles & Jorge Sainz, 2019. "Predicting customer quality in e-commerce social networks: a machine learning approach," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 589-603, June.
    8. Chien-Lung Hsu & Yi-Chuan Liao, 2019. "Bridging User Perception and Stickiness in Business Microblog Contexts: A Moderated Mediation Model," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.

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