Abstract:
Twenty-first century journalism has evolved from the traditional top-down, “one-to-many" model into a process involving producers, content and audiences. The interactive capabilities of Internet-based news products have enabled legacy media to connect with audiences in unprecedented fashion. This study was aimed at investigating the Facebook users’ engagement at Amhara Media Corporation. The relevant theoretical frameworks employed for the topic were new media theory, and uses and gratification theory. Twenty-first century journalism has evolved from the traditional top-down,” one-to-many" model into a process involving producers, content and audiences. The interactive capabilities of Internet-based news products have enabled legacy media to connect with audiences in unprecedented fashion. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. Through purposive sampling method, 30 news articles and 600 online user comments were taken. The content analysis were made based on the types of news story that posted by AMECO Online Media Monitoring, and category of online user comments to the media posted. Then, interviews were conducted with six online journalists at AMECO. The quantitative findings demonstrated that political and governmental issues, economic, and social issues were dominantly uploaded on the Facebook page. Apart from these news articles other issues got little attention. The quantitative findings also demonstrated that the users’ engagements in the comment section were dominated by negative comments. The data from the interview revealed the lack of well-organized participation in the comment section, and the information strategy was a one way communication which results negative impacts on the relationship between the online media and the users.