the temptation of customization Online News & Society the temptation of customization Ester de Waal, e.dewaal@uva.nl Zeppelin University, 7 October 2008

Internetworldstats the long tail

A challenge to the public sphere News online: A challenge to the public sphere The Internet offers a great quantity and diversity of political and socially relevant information for public scrutiny and opens possibilities for deliberation, but, it also fragments discourse by allowing great control to customize the available information. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (Schwartz, 2005)

“unanticipated encounters, involving topics and points of view that people have not sought out and perhaps find quite irritating, are central to democracy and even to freedom itself” Sunstein (2004)

User control vs. professional guidance The multi-layered format of online newspapers encourages users to pursue their own path and select information that matches their interests. Traditional newspapers typically guide their readers and surprise them with topics beyond their interests.

Input (media content) Print Online Information selection based on Own interest & professional guidance Own interest (user control) Type of exposure Planned exposure & accidental exposure (reliable surprises) Planned exposure (selective scanning) Route of information processing Central (high elaboration) & peripheral (low elaboration) Central Type of learning Active learning & passive or incidental learning Active learning Output (knowledge) Long-term, profound or in-depth knowledge & short-term, less profound knowledge or awareness Long-term, profound knowledge

“high-choice media decrease encounters with news and with political content in particular” Prior (2005)

Method & measurements Telephone survey December 2002, n=1000; January 2005, n=400 (panel) Perceived agenda (awareness) Media exposure, generic (frequency & duration) & specific (exposure to particular content, e.g. politics) Demographics (age, gender, education) Interests

Who are online news users?

Impact on the perceived range of topics Frequency of use (times per week) Duration of use (minutes per time) Online newspapers + (edu high) Print Newspapers (interest low) (interest average)

Impact on the perceived range of topics All topics Political topics Online newspapers Other news sites +

Online new sites do expand the public agenda, given that they are: well-structured (and surprise their users), and/or used to satisfy the need for orientation (i.e. if users are motivated to find out about a variety of topics/what is going in society), and/or other conditions?

The high-choice environment does not exclude broad-scope learning Perceived agenda Main findings: Print newspapers are able to “trap” the less involved Online newspapers increase the range of perceived topics , but only of higher educated people and if used for longer periods of time Other news websites increase the range of perceived topics if users are simply exposed to them The high-choice environment does not exclude broad-scope learning

Trends in media use displacement Main findings: Online newspapers are increasingly used at the expense of traditional printed newspapers, particularly among young people (substitutive use) Other news sites are increasingly used complementary to traditional printed dailies (supplementary use) Other news sites are increasingly used at the expense of newspaper websites (substitutive use)

All in all Society still profits from traditional newspapers So far, online newspapers fail to expand awareness of public affairs issues Are, on the internet, other news sites or better structured web editions of newspapers then our hope for the future?

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung e-paper

cool, they all do different tricks!

Search: google video: “day of the long tail” www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm Search: google video: “day of the long tail” Search: google video: “the paradox of choice”