When Rivalry Goes Away: Mainstream News Channels’ Usage Patterns of Facebook in Pakistan

Abstract

Once considered as the strongest form of influence, electronic media got its tough competitor as social media. Contrarily, the need for the promotion of content and attracting an audience stimulated electronic media managers to use social media for their marketing also.  The study examines how television news channels in Pakistan use social media, particularly, Facebook to advertise and promote their content and to target specific audiences. For the purpose, a content analysis of Facebook pages of four mainstream television channels: ARY News, Express News, Samaa News, Dunya News is conducted for a six-month period.. A strong association is observed between number of non-hashtags posts and number of comments on Facebook pages of TV channels.  Similarly Publication of Photos is also found positively associated with highest reaction response in Facebook pages of selected TV Channels. Videos and hash tag posts were found positively associated with sharing of the content whereas the number of Links posts is also associated with the usage of hash tags. Thus all the hypotheses were statistically approved at a significance level of <.05.