News Consumption

The rise of sophisticated tools for tracking audiences online has begun to change the way media producers think about media audiences. This study examines this phenomenon in journalism, building on a revised theoretical model that accounts for greater audience engagement in the gatekeeping process. Research suggests that news editors, after long resisting or ignoring audience preferences, are becoming increasingly aware of and adaptive to consumer tastes as manifest via metrics. However, research also finds a gap in the news preferences of editors and audiences. This study asks: Who influences whom more in this disparity? Through longitudinal secondary data analysis of three U.S. online newspapers, and using structural equation modeling, this study finds that (1) audience clicks affect subsequent news placement, based on time-lagged analysis; (2) such influence intensifies during the course of the day; (3) there is no overall lagged effect of news placement on audience clicks; and (4) the lagged effect of audience clicks on news placement is stronger than the inverse. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Final version in print can be found at: http://crx.sagepub.com/content/41/4/505?etoc

The rise of news aggregator sites is a notable phenomenon in the contemporary media landscape. Outperforming traditional news outlets for and information, online news aggregators such as Yahoo News, Google News and the Huffington Post have become major sources of news for American audiences. Facing economic hardships, some news organizations cast blames on news aggregators for stealing their content and audiences. However, the relationship between news aggregators and traditional media outlets on the demand side has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Through a national survey of 1,143 U.S. Internet users, this study integrates the uses and gratifications paradigm and an economic approach to predict aggregator consumption and examine market competition. In terms of consumption, among demographic factors, age and ethnicity are the two major predictors of aggregator use. Among psychological factors, opinion motivations is the only non-predictor of aggregator use, suggesting that users do not seek opinion-driven content when they visit aggregator sites. In terms of competition, this study uncovers non-competitive relationships between three major news aggregators and 13 major TV, print and social media news outlets. Such findings are at odds with industry sentiment and the proposed model serves as a basis for further theorizing news aggregator consumption.

The concept of incidental news as information consumption dynamics, shows the changes experienced by the media system in the last  decades, as a consequence of the massification of the internet, social networks and mobile devices, creating increasingly active and connected users. Despite its contingency, it is not a new concept, but since the late twentieth century the notion of an informative “surprise of finding” had been worked by several scholars. This article consists of a descriptive literature review of the work that has been done about incidental news and news consumption in a context of social networks, as a way to establish the incidence of this consumption in the relationship of the audience with the informative content and its effects on the media production process.

Facebook groups allow people who share the same values and interests to gather together and form an online community where discussions and networking are cultivated. However, these Facebook groups can also be an avenue for propagating misinformation and fear such as those dedicated to people who are opposed to vaccination against COVID-19. Accordingly, this paper aims to analyze the news consumption behaviors of COVID-19 anti-vaxxers within selected Facebook groups based on their posts, comments, and reactions. A total of 601 posts from 7 anti-vax Facebook groups in the Philippines were classified according to the news source, Vaccination Attitudes Examination (VAX) Scale, and Sentiment Index; and analyzed using NRC Emotion Lexicon and Circuit of Culture. Through a shared account, the researchers enter the Facebook groups to observe the Facebook group members who identify as antivaxxers. The researchers analyze the news content these group members positively engage with, primarily sources from social media and blogs. The members' vaccination attitudes, which are chiefly health related, guide the study's eventual findings about the contributions of these Facebook groups to the vaccine infodemic. Having considered the outcomes and discoveries the study has provided, the researchers come to a comprehensive conclusion. The researchers also provide recommendations on a more streamlined approach to vaccine campaign drives, and increased safeguards against fake news.

Research on the hybridization of journalism has tended to focus on the producers and their products,
but the blurring boundaries of news cannot be fully understood in the contemporary media landscape without
taking into account the place that journalistic information has in the media consumption habits of citizens.
News, put in the context of everyday life, is one of the many inputs that citizens have to engage with society,
learn and relax from their obligations. To explore these implications, we conducted a qualitative study of the
news consumption of 90 Wallonian citizens representing a variety of socioeconomic, geographic and
demographic characteristics. Participants filled in a semi-structured week-long media diary and were
interviewed before and after diary to collect their interpretations and justifications of the news consumption
described in the diaries. Results show how journalistic products are embedded in their daily lives as resources
to structure routines and fill in moments, but, at the same time, citizens appreciate the importance of news to
connect to their immediate context and have normative expectations on the quality of journalistic work.
Moreover, the plurality of motivations, platforms (from the newspaper to the cell phone) and uses of news
among our respondents invites for a reflection on the assumptions that professionals and scholars do about
the position and the role of journalism in society, a need to acknowledge the tension between the social
dispersion of news production practices and the normativity implicitly negotiated in each news story produced
and consumed.

Social media platforms have become the primary conduits to news for many consumers, yet little is known about how the content in social media posts is viewed and evaluated by consumers or how it shapes their decisions about selecting and sharing this information. A within-subjects eye-tracking experiment (N = 60), was conducted to examine the influence of image presence and valence on attention to and engagement with news stories on social media. Participants viewed a series of 29 social media posts of news stories, each of which was either paired with no image, a positively valenced image, or a negatively valenced image. Participants attention to the images was captured via eye tracking, and they answered dependent measures to gauge level of emotion and arousal, and intention to click and share. The results show that posts containing positive images elicited a higher level of visual attention than those with negative or no images, which led to higher intentions to click and share posts with positive images. The results provide a deeper understanding of the importance of images in driving news consumption, and offer practical implications for journalists, news organizations and groups using social media to spread a message.

A kutatás 2020 őszén 2000 fős országos reprezentatív mintán vizsgálta a magyarok politikai tájékozódási szokásait, preferenciáit és attitűdjeit. Az adatok – nem függetlenül a járványtól – a politika, a közélet iránti érdeklődés növekedését, egyúttal a hírigények gyors kielégítését  szolgáló online és közösségi hírforrások felértékelődését mutatják. A  lakosság összességében a független hírforrásokat tartja hitelesnek, de ez elsősorban az ellenzéki és pártnélküli válaszadók véleményéből
következik: a kormánypártiak szemében jellemzően a kormánymédia
termékei a hitelesek. A magyar társadalom polarizációja a hírfogyasztás
és a hírértelmezés mintázataiban is kimutatható.

Online news users interact with news on digital platforms in different ways. Some take advantage of the technical affordances that allow sharing, liking and commenting, while others do not. Based on a national survey of the Australian adult online news users, this study explores online news users’ different modes of interaction on digital platforms: non-interaction, signalling interaction, and expressive interaction. This study demonstrates that different types of online news users are largely determined by a combination of structural influences and individual factors related to the uptake, reception, and dissemination of news. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on news engagement by exploring the concept of interaction as a more specific term to describe online news behaviours, and identifies different types of news users connected to, rather than disembodied from, their practice. In doing so, this article advances the understanding of news consumption behaviour and its implications for engaging news audiences in the digital age.

The ubiquitous nature of online news, especially in social media, increasingly exposes readers to news even when they are not seeking it. Based on 50 semi-structured interviews with Spanish incidental news consumers, we inductively explore the effects of incidental news consumption and problematize the phenomenology of encountering news passively on social media. Our results first question previous quantitative analysis on the potential positive effects of incidental news exposure, evidencing its minimal or null effects on how citizens make sense of, and are informed about, public affairs and politics. Second, our findings indicate that citizens appraisals of incidental news content varies according to the producers involved, the topics addressed and the interest triggered. Our study contributes to current discussions of incidental news exposure, arguing that both quantitative and qualitative studies should consider the direct and indirect impact of structural, cognitive and situational variables to holistically account for incidental news effects.

Since 2016, online social networks (OSNs), especially their "big data" algorithms, have been intensively blamed in popular news discourse for acting as echo chambers. These chambers entrap like-minded voters in closed ideological circles that cause serious damage to democratic processes. This study examines this "echo chamber" argument through the rather divisive case of EU politics among EU citizens. Based on an exploratory secondary analysis of the Eurobarometer 86.2 survey dataset, we investigate whether the reliance on OSNs as a primary EU political news source can lead people to more polarisation in EU-related political beliefs and attitudes than a reliance on traditional media. We found little evidence for this polarisation, lending credence to a rejection of social media's "echo chamber" effect.

In the study reported in this article, the diverse news media repertoires in Portugal are investigated using a Q-methodological approach. We analyse the participants' perceptions of the experienced values of the cross-media news landscape (Schrøder, 2012) and identify seven news media repertoires: quality media lovers (R1); broadcast media consumers (R2); television news addicts, press consumers and social media avoiders (R3); news snackers (R4); online based-media and social media addicts (R5); online newspaper lovers and radio news avoiders (R6); and television, press and social/online-based media consumers (R7). A preference for traditional media, especially television, and increasing use of social media, constitute the salient features of the Portuguese national news repertoires.

The purpose of the study is to examine and compare digital users’ motivations for news exposure in three European countries (Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) belonging to each of Hallin and Mancini’s media systems. For this research, a cross-national online survey (2020) of over 2,000 people in each country was used. The users’ assessment of the preferences for getting news (from sources that share, challenge or do not have a particular point of view) was analysed, as well as the influence of socio-demographic factors and interest in politics on those motivations. Our results show that a majority of digital users prefer unbiased news. With respect to the socio-demographic variables, a clear pattern can be discerned in the age variable, whereby the older they are, the greater the declared preference for unbiased news. On the other hand, those who show greater interest in politics do prefer reinforcing news. In terms of national differences, motivations for news exposure vary depending on the country studied. In Spain, in line with its belonging to the pluralist-polarised system, the preference for reinforcing news is higher than in Germany and in the United Kingdom.

Η 5η ετήσια Digital News Report του Ινστιτούτου Reuters για τη μελέτη της Δημοσιογραφίας του Πανεπιστημίου της Οξφόρδης ερευνά το μετα- βαλλόμενο περιβάλλον των μέσων ενημέρωσης και επικοινωνίας σε 26 χώρες. Η έρευνα είναι η μεγαλύτερη συγκριτική μελέτη της χρήσης δια- δικτυακών ειδήσεων στον κόσμο στην οποία συμμετείχαν περισσότερα από 50.000 άτομα. Η άνοδος της χρήσης κοινωνικών δικτύων για ενημε- ρωτικούς σκοπούς, η μείωση της απήχησης των τηλεοπτικών ειδήσεων, η κυριαρχία των κινητών τηλεφώνων ως συσκευών πρόσβασης στους ειδησεογραφικούς ιστότοπους, καθώς και η αυξανόμενη δυσαρέσκεια των χρηστών με τη διαδικτυακή διαφήμιση, συνιστούν κάποια από τα σημαντικότερα ευρήματα. Αυτές οι εξελίξεις, σε συνδυασμό με το γεγονός πως μόνο ένα μικρό ποσοστό χρηστών φέρεται πρόθυμο να πληρώσει για να διαβάζει ειδήσεις στο διαδίκτυο, ενδεχομένως θα έχουν πολύ σο- βαρές επιπτώσεις στα μέσα ενημέρωσης στο μέλλον.

The public’s anti-incumbent mood was at a then all-time high in the 2010 election with almost two-thirds (65 percent) agreeing that most members of Congress did not deserve re-election. Previous studies have not directly examined whether and how different types of media influence anti-incumbent attitudes. This study relies on a 2010 state poll to examine how partisan and mainstream news sources influence anti-incumbent attitudes, controlling for political and demographic variables, and how polarization mediates such effects. Using a structural equation model, this study finds that whereas reliance on partisan media is positively associated with anti-incumbent attitudes toward most Senators and representatives, reliance on mainstream media is negatively associated with it. On the other hand, reliance on neither media type is statistically associated with anti-incumbent attitudes toward one’s own representatives.

User behavior patterns when consuming and sharing information on social networks are analyzed, paying special attention to the effects of the type of presentation and the type of social network. As is common when analyzing activity on social networks, we used the experience sampling method, in which a group of volunteer participants are asked, at diffe

Chatbots are a burgeoning opportunity for news media outlets to disseminate their content in a conversational way, and create an engaging experience around it. Since chatbots are social and
interactive technologies, they might be effective tools to lower the threshold of engaging with news content containing opposing views. In an experiment, we test this idea by investigating whether people are more likely to accept a news article containing conflicting views when it is delivered by a chatbot, as compared with the same article on a news website. The results indicated that people agreed more to a counter-attitudinal news article when it was delivered by a news chatbot (compared with the website article). In addition, users also perceived this chatbot article as more credible. The underlying process for this effect was that people attributed human-like characteristics to the chatbot on an implicit level (i.e., perceived mindless anthropomorphism).
These results are discussed in the light of their potential contribution to an informed public discourse and a decrease in polarization in our society.

This paper reports a study of the use of local news sources by young people in GCC countries. With the expansion of
pan-Arab news services, especially via satellite TV channels, concern has grown that these well-resourced news
operations have pulled audiences away from local news suppliers. New research reported here indicates that there is still an appetite for local news and that even young people – who have displayed the greatest enthusiasm for the newer
services – will tune into local news services both online and offline. Local services may represent niche markets and
cater to specific news interests that have prevailed despite the popularity of pan-Arab news services. 1221 media and
communication students completed a survey, reporting how and where they get their news in different GCC regions.
The research found that most respondents followed what was happening in their local communities and that their news
consumption could be quite varied. Rather than relying on one or two main sources of local news, most respondents
reportedly used a wide variety of online and non-online sources depending on which local topic they were seeking
information about.

Up until a few years ago, disinformation used to be synonymous with “lack of information,” ascribable to citizens' low interest in public affairs. However, since 2016 and especially as a result of the US electoral campaign (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017) and Brexit (Bastos & Mercea, 2019), disinformation also becomes a spoken about factor, above all referring to the deliberate efforts of certain agents to misinform with lies and half-truths, intoxicating and even saturating the citizen, in what have been called “disinformation operations.” Much of the success of these false news lies in their virality, that is, in their ability to be shared by Internet users throughout different social networks and instant messaging applications. From a broader perspective, disinformation is a modality within what has been called “problematic information”(Jack, 2017), which includes various types of information that are inaccurate, misleading, improperly attributed, or totally fabricated. In order to carry out this investigation, 1,216 telephone interviews were conducted through cell phones in Venezuela. The survey firm More Consulting carried out the field work, which took place between January 20th and 29th of 2020. The demographic of the study consists of people older than 18 years registered in the national electoral registry. The type of sampling consisted of a random selection of municipalities previously classified according to different strata (cities of large, medium, and small size, rural and urban, with various levels of poverty). In these municipalities, a selection was made of both the telephone samples and interviewees by dynamization of quotas (by region, sex and age). The sampling error is 2.81%, with a confidence level of 95%. The questionnaire as a whole includes questions related to interest in politics, news consumption, trust in the media, and concern about disinformation, among other issues. For this work, the answers pertaining to the following research questions are analyzed: RQ1: In a polarized society like that of Venezuela, are there notable differences between the ways of informing themselves among pro-government and pro-opposition supporters? RQ2: What are the types of digital disinformation that Venezuelans are most concerned about? RQ3: Is it possible to notice a different sensitivity to the different forms of digital or online disinformation based on the political self-definition of Venezuelans, their age, their gender or their educational level?