This paper is in collaboration with @jiyoun-suk.bsky.social, @dongdongyang, @zhiyingyue, @wangrui.bsky.social, @xinxiadong, @zijianan,
@kennyjoseph.bsky.social. Check out the full paper here: journalqd.org/article/view.... We’d love to hear your feedback!

Thus, if we want to tackle today’s information challenges, we must study how news media and social media together drive information flows across the broader social media system.

While most cross-platform research focuses on differences between platforms, we highlight something critical: news media serves as the connective tissue across social media platforms.

Our key takeaway: users’ linking practices shape how information flows across platforms; news outlets and social media sites act as key information pathways in the system.

After news sites, social media platforms were the next most linked. YouTube stood out across different types of platforms, followed by Twitter, which was especially prominent on forums.

So, what did we find? News media sites dominated the link-sharing landscape (68.5% of all links for immigration and 48.4% for sexual violence), especially center-left (e.g., nytimes.com, cnn.com) and right-wing (e.g., breitbart.com, foxnews.com) outlets.

Using two massive datasets on #MeToo and immigration, we analyzed linking patterns in 60+ million posts across 186 social network sites and forums.

Specifically, we focus on hyperlinks—traces of cross-platform and cross-media sharing that not only enable information diffusion but also reveal key connectors across the social media system.