Female-authored stories more likely to be shared

Students who share articles online rarely think twice about their motives behind it. But Wharton professors Katherine Milkman and Jonah Berger are dedicated to exploring the science behind each click.

Since the summer of 2008, Milkman and Berger have been conducting research on The New York Times’s “Most E-Mailed” list of articles. Last week, they announced new findings that may have an effect on the publishing world.

“Female authors are significantly more likely to be forwarded than male authors” regardless of the topic that they are writing about, Milkman said.

“It could be because they write about different things, choose different topics, or have a different style,” she said. “Or it could be that they’re just better than men.”

Another theory is that a woman who lands a job at the Times is likely to be “more qualified and better at what she does” than her male colleagues, Milkman said in an interview on National Public Radio last week.

The study also found that “awe-inspiring” stories are the most likely to be forwarded, Milkman said.

The study was done using a web crawler that checked the most e-mailed list every fifteen minutes. Berger and Milkman gathered the data and analyzed the content of more 3,000 stories.

Milkman believes her study could change the way newspaper editors assign stories, since it identifies the types of articles that appeal to readers most.

“I think a lot of newspapers are paying attention, hopefully not to the detriment of responsible reporting,” she said.

While the Times has not utilized their data yet, Berger said many other newspapers do take these findings into account.

“While at The Washington Post in the mid-90s, there was an editor assigned to find interesting stories,” Deirdre Childress, the entertainment editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote in an e-mail. “I think that if we found a certain area of reader interest that was sustainable, we would certainly give it a try.”

Many newspapers are working to increase circulation, Childress added. “If an idea has so much resonance that it is floated to others, we would definitely pay close attention.”

The Inquirer keeps readers’ interests in mind when assigning stories, according to Assistant Business Editor Paul Schweizer, who identified personal finance as an example topic of interest.

Catering to reader’s interest after all, is not a new invention, Milkman said.

“If a newspaper is making its articles sexier, more exciting, more awe-inducing in order to generate more readership, then I think all they’re doing is something they’ve been doing for 100 years, or longer,” she said on NPR.

Using the study’s results, newspaper companies may maximize advertising revenue by increasing the price of ads next to popular articles.

We are still doing research on the most e-mailed list, Milkman said, and the effects of the study are uncertain.

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