Examining the relationship between content length and engagement with news outlets on multiple social media platforms

The rise of social media has profoundly transformed the landscape of content production and dissemination, amplifying the competition for user attention within a scenario of information overabundance. To emerge from this overwhelming volume, content producers often act under the popular assumption that users favor shorter content, and that brevity enhances engagement. This study examines the relationship between news-related content and user engagement through an extensive dataset spanning ∼67 M posts from over 1100 news sources across four major platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube – between 2015 and 2024. We focus on the relationship between the content length and engagement of three distinct content types: Articles, Captions, and Videos. Our findings reveal that, in news dissemination, while shorter posts dominate in frequency, they never generate the most engagement, challenging the belief that brevity fosters attention. Furthermore, we observe a steady increase in the average content length over the years, contradicting expectations of a long-term shift toward shorter formats. These results highlight the importance of prioritizing content quality and audience relevance over superficial strategies, such as reducing content length, in designing effective approaches for news digital information dissemination.