Wendy Norris's List: Reader surveys

"The assumption that traditional and new media destroy social capital is not supported empirically. Moreover, online network capital augments offline network capital and web surfing coincides with more online socializing. However, this additional capital appears not to have benefits in terms of social support and loneliness. The reverse causal relation between loneliness and media use also could not be established."

"This study assesses differences in use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and relates them to patterns of expressive political participation, mobilization efforts, and traditional civic participation. Relying on data collected in August 2008 from a random sample of respondents designed to represent Colombia's adult urban population, this paper provides evidence that informational uses of ICTs (Internet and mobile phones) are significantly related to expressive participation in the online domain, which in turn results in a host of traditional or offline civic and political participatory behaviors indirectly through mobilization efforts. That these relationships occur within the context of a society in crisis suggests that new communication technologies offer an additional pathway to democratic political engagement in such societies."

"We measure the effects of online news readership on both
political participation and political polarization using a unique set of political and media usage surveys
fielded between 2000 and 2007; we combine these surveys with information about the availability of
broadband Internet service. We find that online news readership increases interest in politics but does
not affect subsequent outcomes such as political participation or polarization"

"We conducted a field experiment to measure the effect of exposure to newspapers on political behavior and opinion. Before the 2005 Virginia gubernatorial election, we randomly assigned individuals to a Washington Post free subscription treatment, a Washington Times free subscription treatment, or a control treatment. We find no effect of either paper on political knowledge, stated opinions, or turnout in post-election survey and voter data. However, receiving either paper led to more support for the Democratic candidate, suggesting that media slant mattered less in this case than media exposure. Some evidence from voting records also suggests that receiving either paper led to increased 2006 voter turnout. "

"This article assesses the main findings and dominant modes of inquiry in recent scholarship on online news consumption. The findings suggest that the consumption of news on the internet has not yet differed drastically from the consumption of news in traditional media."

"Participants preferred personalization based on general news topics. Declared interest in general news topics adequately predicted the actual interests in some topics, while in others users’ interests differed between general news topics and subtopics. The variance in interest in items also differed among topics. "

"All online media were seen as only moderately credible, with blogs and online newspapers being rated higher than online broadcast and cable news. Reliance on the online source proved to be the strongest predictor of whether it was judged as credible. "

"The data suggest that the most-emailed list, part of a larger family of news recommendation engines (NREs), acts both as an aggregator of individual actions and as a new way for online users to navigate online information. In this second capacity, NREs demonstrate a public endorsement of particular content. This endorsement may both affect the articles to which news consumers are exposed and change their attitude towards these articles. NREs thus have the potential to change patterns of news consumption by allowing readers to communicate both with each other and, indirectly, with news institutions themselves. "

"Exposure to news outlets with high levels of political content (such as public television news and broadsheet newspapers) contributes the most to knowledge gains and increases the propensity to turn out to vote."

"This research explores means by which news media may help promote public awareness and consideration of reasons for supporting differing perspectives on public issues. The study draws on the concept argument repertoire (Cappella et al., 2002) and recent work on citizens’ exposure to diverse issue positions and rationales (Mutz, 2006). Merging scholarship in political psychology and information processing, the study introduces the reflective cue—a contextual cue designed to fit news media formats and induce more systematic processing of news. A controlled experiment (n = 265) documents support for the study's predictions that the exposure to the reflective cue in news would have positive effects on information-processing behavior and cognitive orientations related to the role of informed citizenry and media in democracy. Interestingly, exposure to the cue did not enhance subjects’ expression of issue-position reasons. I discuss possible explanations and implications of the findings, and offer directions for future. "

"For researchers, this paper provides a framework to identify and understand the way the potential key factors contribute to the adoption of online news services. For practitioners, this framework lists the features that specifically attract online news users. Understanding users' preferences is of major importance in e-businesses for making strategic decisions to increase user satisfaction, as well as improving the performance of the business. "

"In interface development, it is crucial to reflect the users' expectations and mental models. By meeting users' expectations, errors can be prevented and the efficiency of the interaction can be enhanced. Applying these guidelines to website development reveals the need to know where users expect to find the most common web objects like the search field, home button or the navigation."

"Using data from a national survey, this article explores the relationship between nine common socio-technical advantages of online news and how it is used and alters existing news use habits. The article finds that apart from the ability to ‘have my say to the news media’, all the other attributes — no cost, multitasking, more news choices, in-depth and background information, 24/7 updates, customization, ability to discuss news with peers, and the existence of different viewpoints — have a more or less marked effect on the way people adopt, use and integrate online news into daily life. Most remarkably, online news users seem to expect immediacy at the same time as depth and diversity of news and views. Ironically, however, each of these attributes contributes, at various levels, to the displacement effect of online news on each of the four traditional news media. The many implications of these findings for journalism are placed in the context of recent developments in the online news industry. "

"This study examines audience uses of three types of interactivity, user motivations for visiting an online newspaper, and the relationship between user motivations and use of the different types of interactive features. There are three types of interactivity on a continuum: medium, human/medium, and human interactivity. In an online survey of 542 respondents, results indicate that medium interactive features were used most frequently and human interactive features used the least. Three motivations for using online newspapers emerged—information seeking/surveillance, socialization, and entertainment. In addition, further analysis found that although all three motivations were predictors of use of medium interactive features, the information seeking/surveillance motivation was not a significant predictor of use of human/medium and human interactive features. "

"Studies have gone beyond simply grafting the motivation measures used in traditional media studies to the Internet and have recognized that unique aspects of the Internet, such as level of interactivity, need to be taken into account in uses and gratifications studies."