The socialisation of media has made sharing online news second nature. Some items go viral while others get left alone. A study of stories appearing on the New York Times website has attempted to show what motivates people to share news. Why do some stories spread their wings across our inboxes and others stay rooted to their homepage and quietly disappear?

Pennsylvania State University researchers Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman have suggested that readers most want to share articles that inspire ‘awe’. The study argues that awe encourages virality because “awe inducing stimuli also tend to be entertaining [and are] particularly likely to drive people to talk to others to understand how they feel.”

The study found that positive news was shared more frequently than negative. Our Metrica Numbers research shows that more good news is written about our clients than bad, suggesting that positive news is more attractive to both journalists and readers.

We will soon be publishing the results of our ongoing research into the social media debate about the UK’s political parties in anticipation of the forthcoming general election. This has shown that the reverse is true in politics than in the wider debate about brands. There is more negative comment about political parties than positive. This is likely to be because political parties are not just products or brands, despite how they market themselves, they inspire an emotional response in those who choose to write about them. We will be publishing these results soon and throughout the campaign.

Is a well shared story the same as a good news story? Not necessarily. A widely read but not widely shared story is still influential and more so, a story that isn’t necessarily widely read but is read by the right people, is heavily influential. Understanding what drives virality is useful in helping to understand what catches a readers’ attention, though this research doesn’t mean that communicators need to ‘awe’ their audience every time to be successful.

Remember to click the icons at the foot of this post to share it!

In Chicago and San Francisco, The Printed Blog was launched; it is the world's first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content.  The content can be localised to a neighborhood level, a key point raised in a Richard Bagnall blog post.  For advertisers, this 'hyperlocal' marketing provides more relevant propositions and cost savings than city-wide and regional newspapers.  According to founder Joshua Karp, Chicago could support up to 100 local editions, which benefits the advertisers as well as the readers. He notes in an interview:

"Instead of having one paper where the ads cost $20,000 or more, [we'll have] hundreds of local editions where the ads cost $18... why should you spend thousands of dollars and advertise for an entire city when you can spend tens of dollars and target the specific people who are most likely to buy your product," he said. 

Will this web-to-print approach prove itself?  Will social media migrate further into newspapers?  How might this shift PR planning?  Will a web-to-print blog work?

All of us at Metrica welcome your thoughts.

Imagine a world in which newspapers have been wholly replaced by online news sites… not so hard is it?! And somehow, without even trying, it makes sense.

Jeff Jarvis muses the idea in his Guardian column today, referring first of all to a vision outlined to him by Edward Roussel, head of digital for the Telegraph. Roussel’s vision is that Google becomes an online distribuitor for a paper’s content so it can concentrate on its real job (journalism).

And Bob Wyman, a technology entrepreneur, agrees: "If Google can provide free hosting to the 'citizen journalists' who are making life difficult for the newspapers, Google should be able to host the newspapers for free as well." It’s a good point and one which lends weight to the idea that the days of hard copy news papers are numbered.

And there are more:

·         As Wyman points out, Google, with all its services (search engines, alert systems, video serving, database services, application hosting), is kitted out to be the ideal news distributor: "Ideally, every newsroom would be able to think of Google, and all its capabilities, as their own”

·         Moving to an online news model which offers publications the opportunity to concentrate wholly on content (and not worry about distribution) should also, one would hope, have a positive affect on the quality of copy

·         If audience/reader interaction and conversation is moving online then a hard copy newspaper’s content essentially becomes isolated – from both dialouge and commerical opportunity

·         And surely online better reflects contemporary lifestyles…

·         Plus of course there are the environmental benefits…

So already (I think) the argument for waving goodbye to newspapers and moving online is becoming really rather compelling.