Abstract
News softening describes a journalistic strategy to attract maximum attention with the help of certain content (soft news) or a soft style – a goal also included in the (algorithm-based) logics of social platforms. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the extent to which adapting news media to social media logic is accompanied by news softening, particularly due to the lack of a conceptual basis. The traditional softening concept (Reinemann et al., 2012), developed based on mass media logic and not considering social media-specific softening aspects, cannot be applied to social platforms without running the risk of underestimating the actual degree of news softening. For this reason, this paper develops the concept of “social news softening” based on the conceptualization of social media logic by Hermida and Mellado (2020), from which it derives adaptation strategies. The new concept includes five dimensions – emotionality, subjectivity, individualization framing, sensational framing, and audience orientation – and can be understood as a conceptual extension of the traditional concept, supplementing its dimensions and characteristics (many of which are still relevant to social media) with social media-specific ones. In addition, this paper provides considerations on how platform-specific affordances impact social news softening on distinct platforms. Thus, this paper is an important starting point for urgently needed empirical studies on news softening in the context of platformization processes and the adaptation of news media to the logics of social media. Therefore, this paper links softening research with current issues in journalism and media performance research.