“We Rewrote This Title”: How News Headlines Are Remediated on Facebook and How This Affects Engagement

Abstract

Social media have become a very important news platform, both for the presentation and consumption of news by social media users. News is therefore eagerly shared by news media on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in the hope of reaching as many news consumers as possible. In this highly competitive media landscape, news media aim to attract consumer attention to these news stories by incorporating the social media logic into their reporting. In this study, we focus specifically on the conversion and accompanying adaptations of news originating from online news sites to the Facebook page of a news medium, with a focus on the (re)formulation of the headline that functions as an important element in both online news articles and Facebook posts. Based on computational analysis, we compare the headlines of news items on the news outlet’s website to the headlines published on Facebook and link these with the user engagement metrics ( N = 10,579). The findings revealed that the routine of rewriting or adapting headlines on Facebook in contemporary journalism is rather common and that this rewriting is done with an eye toward injecting elements that better align with the social media logic, consequently magnifying its impact on engagement.