Why Do News Sharers Choose Not to Share News? A Self-Presentation Model of Deliberate News Withholding on Social Media

What news spreads on social media equally depends on what news users do and do not share. However, prior research has predominantly focused on successful news sharing , overlooking the equally consequential behavior of deliberate news withholding. This study addresses that gap by proposing a self-presentation model of deliberate news withholding on social media, integrating three dominant approaches previously used to examine successful news sharing: (1) the informational approach focusing on the virality of news content, (2) the structural approach emphasizing social media network characteristics, and (3) the relational approach centered on users’ self-presentation and management of relationships with their audience. Specifically, this study combines two types of data: (1) survey data from 408 users and (2) a text analysis of news content they withheld in their three most active chatrooms. We examine how users selectively withhold news with varying levels of emotionality, argumentativeness, and hard or soft news value, depending on the characteristics of their audience networks – particularly network size and tie strength – and in relation to three self-presentational goals: self-construction, privacy protection, and audience-pleasing. Findings show that users strategically withhold varied types of news content across different user-audience networks to meet distinct self-presentational goals, thereby managing audience expectations and curating their online image. By shifting attention from news sharing to news withholding, this study offers a more complete account of how everyday users shape news flows and social discourse on social media.