A recent study of German news organizations has found that crime and politics topped the list of topics most often sent to audiences through WhatsApp.
The study was conducted by TU Dortmund University researchers Karin k and Lars Koppers. They looked at 78 news organizations and their newsrooms, including an online survey of 111 journalists who usually work with social media.
After analyzing 220 messages sent via WhatsApp, the study found that crime was the most frequent topic with 34.4% of all topics, followed by politics (10.6%), sports (10.5%), transportation (10.0%), entertainment (9.0%) and the economy (5.6%).
The study also revealed WhatsApp is not as popular among the news organizations in Germany as it is in other countries, such as Brazil and the U.S., but half of the newsrooms that were studied were using it.
To read more: https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1692685
Karin Boczek & Lars Koppers (2020) What’s New about WhatsApp for News? A Mixed-Method Study on News Outlets’ Strategies for Using WhatsApp, Digital Journalism, 8:1, 126-144, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2019.1692685
