More Sources Create Greater Audience Engagement: An Investigation into the Relationship Between the Number of News Sources and Audience Responses

Journalism quality has been examined primarily through a normative lens and investigated through descriptive methods that overlook news consumers’ actual responses to it. Taking a more empirical, media-effects approach, we explore how a particular index of journalism quality—the quantity of news sources—relates to audience engagement. The concept of multiple news sources inherently involves normative elements of quality journalism, such as being truthful, impartial, and complete. This study examines how responses by news consumers to COVID-19 news coverage varied based on the number of sources cited in each news story. We quantified the sources in pandemic news coverage from two South Korean newspapers and one broadcast television channel, comparing them with recipients’ responses in the form of comments, emotional expressions, and recommendations. Our findings reveal that the number of news sources used in COVID-19 health crisis coverage was associated with the number of comments made by news consumers. Similarly, audience clicks on emotional expressions increased as the number of news sources increased. Furthermore, there were more consumer recommendations for COVID-19 news coverage when the news media cited a greater number of sources. These findings underscore the implications of the multiple-source effect on audience engagement and suggest avenues for improving journalism quality.