From incidental news exposure to news engagement. How perceptions of the news post and news usage patterns influence engagement with news articles encountered on Facebook

Highlights：

• The study investigates engagement with incidentally encountered news articles on SNS.

• Topical interest and prior knowledge have the strongest effect on reading intentions.

• Topical interest also influences intentions to search for further information.

• Contextual social cues unique to SNS affect reading intentions, but not search intentions.

• Beneficial effects of incidental news exposure might be limited to interested users.