Social Media Review : Fox News



Fox News is a brand everybody knows. A lot of people love them, and a lot of people love to hate them. Regardless, their success is inarguable. Social media is becoming more and more important in the TV news industry, as it functions as somewhat of a second screen in news viewing. A solid social media presence can bring more eyeballs to their product. In this post, I will look at their social media strategy and see if there is anything that can be done to make them more successful.


Even with a predominantly “older” target demographic, Fox News still maintains a presence on the big 3 of the social media world: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On Twitter, their main account has 18.1 million followers, while their secondary account, Fox News Research (@foxnewsresearch), has 58.6k followers. That second twitter account acts as a supplement to the main account, with nothing but data and research being tweeted out. On their Facebook account, they have 16.7 million likes, dwarfing their main competitor MSNBC (2.2 million likes), but falling behind CNN (30 million likes). On Instagram, they have 2.3 million followers.

In all instances, their goal is to drive eyeballs to to their TV channel or to their website. Most posts on Facebook and Twitter include links to an article on the site, and also every post serves as something of an ad for Fox News Channel itself. If there is a topic being posted about on their social media, chances are they are talking about it live on TV at that moment. In that respect, I would call them extremely effective “produsers” because their content gets shared and retweeted, thus potentially driving more people to their network or website. Also, other media figures link to Fox News content on their own feeds, which allows them to sort of piggyback off of Fox News’ success.



Tucker Carlson is one of Fox News' biggest stars, and usually looks befuddled by his guests

Considering the older demographic of Fox News’ viewership, I feel that they use social media effectively enough. They do not seem to care about Snapchat very much, but I would argue that they do not need to. Their target audience isn’t on Snapchat, anyway. Same goes for Pinterest. They seem to focus all of their attention on Twitter and Facebook, a strategy that works pretty well for them. The only negative that I can see in their strategy is that they don’t try to court the younger viewer, however you can argue that the conservative politics that they talk about need to do the same thing. If conservatism isn’t cool to young people, then Fox News isn’t going to be, either.




Sean Hannity is consistency at the top of Fox News' ratings

In closing, I think that Fox News’ overall social media use is acceptable. It is no frills news and opinion with a conservative slant, which is what it’s viewership wants. They have rode this plan to great success in the TV ratings department, consistently beating their competition. Their average viewer skews older, so posting memes or being cute on social media wouldn’t work for them. Two things I would recommend would be to have a bigger presence on Snapchat, and to go live on Facebook or Twitter more often. They would do well to attract a younger audience, and a lot of those eyeballs are on Snapchat these days, not Facebook. Also, more and more people are cord cutters, or cord nevers, these days. A live stream on any of the Big 3 would bring viewers in that would not otherwise be there. I look forward to seeing how Fox News adapts to the new generation of people without cable TV subscriptions. They have to do this sooner, rather than later.

Or else their competition will catch up.

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