Study monitoring tweeted news links finds American and British readers more drawn to opinion and world news, while Spaniards are more attracted to local and national news, Brazilians to arts and sports, Germans to economy and politics

Kendall Sinclair

WASHINGTON , September 27, 2013 (Asian News International) – Researchers have used data collected from Twitter to study readers' news preferences across the globe, a new study has found.

In a new article published in SAGE Open, researchers discovered that different countries have stronger preference towards different types of articles.

For example, American and British readers are more drawn to opinion and world news, Spaniards to local and national news, Brazilians to sports and arts, and Germans to politics and economy.

The researchers also found that German and Spanish readers are more likely to read national newspapers compared to British readers, who prefer foreign publications.

Authors Marco Toledo Bastos and Gabriela Zago conducted the study by monitoring tweeted news links from eight of the largest national newspapers in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, and Germany over two weeks in 2012.

The researchers analyzed123,191 tweets from Germany, 394,533 from Brazil, 792,952 from Spain, 537,606 from the UK, and 994,417 from America, totaling of 2,842,699 tweets.

Through their analysis, the researchers found not only that social media helps to demonstrate readership patterns, but also that through social media the readers themselves play an active role in determining the popularity of different news stories.

"Audiences now have the opportunity to express their agency, not only as readers of texts but also as a fundamental piece that decides which news articles are replicated and which news section gets the most attention across social networking sites," the researchers wrote. (ANI)

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