Content engagement capacity: a network-based approach for evaluating the ability of frames to facilitate political online conversations

The generation of online conversations depend on participants’ ability to engage others. Existing approaches to measuring conversational influence rely on limited metrices, such as the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. Drawing from Cooperative Game Theory, this study introduces Content Engagement Capacity (CEC), an innovative network-based method for measuring the ability of content to facilitate conversations. Instead of testing each post in a vacuum, CEC operationalizes the capacity to engage others as a group effort, measuring the relationship between content features and engagement, accounting for the unique contribution of other posts. We test the method’s validity and applicability in the context of political frames, identified using the Analysis of Topic Model Network (ANTMN) approach. Results show that, on average, horserace framing produced the highest engagement on Twitter while strategy framing had the same effect on Reddit. As for facilitating conversations of specific frames, on Twitter, the use of specific frames consistently yielded more discussion of the same frames but on Reddit, all frames yielded discussion of political identity.