Online news media and interactivity: studying control, conversation, self- production and hyperlinks from a cognitive and methodological approach Drs. Michaël Opgenhaffen Information: Interactions and Impact RGU – Aberdeen, 26/06/07

PhD-project Lessius University College – Catholic University Leuven, Belgium Multimedia, interactivity and hypertext in online news: effect on objective and subjective knowledge

INTERNET Engines, blogs, Usenet, fora, … INFORMATION NEEDS MEDIATED INFORMATION RETRIEVAL KNOWLEDGE OUTCOME MEDIATED INFORMATION PROCESSING General model of retrieving and processing INTERNET

Mediated information-processing What happens once the news is retrieved? Effect of interactivity on information-processing and knowledge outcome? Theories from cognitive psychology / media studies

Purpose of this presentation Methodological + cognitive approach What do we study? –What are online news media? –What is interactivity? What is information-processing? –Limited capacity model –Effect of interactivity and hyperlinks –Measuring information-processing

What do we study?

What do we study: online news media What’s an online news medium? –Internet is not one, big, homogeneous medium –Convergent meta-medium (e.g. internet, online newspaper, news site, …)online newspaper Divergent sub-media (e.g. news page, forum, web-tv, blog, RSS-feeds, news alerts, …) Studying divergent sub-media Sampling messages from sub-media

Defining a medium: production Kozma (1991):  Sign system  Technology  Processing possibilities Hoogeveen (1997):  Perceptual (text, audio, video, …)  Technological (mpeg, jpeg, wmv, mp3, …)  Fysical (computer, television, mobile phone, …)

Defining a medium: consumption Survey in June, 2007 with 890 students between years  Digital divide in use by homogeneous group  100% online newspaper (convergent) -100% news site (divergent) -45% blogs (divergent) -31% videos (divergent) -28% audio (divergent) -27% discussion forum (divergent) -14% picture tray (divergent) -9% polls (divergent) -8% RSS-feeds (divergent) -6% newsletters (divergent) -…

What do we study: interactivity “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time” (Steuer, 1992).  Control “the expression of the extent that in a given series of communication exchanges, any third (or later) transmission is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmission” (Rafaeli, 1988, p. 111).  Conversation “the possibility to ad information online (Heeter, 1989)”  Publication

What do we study: hypertext Hypertext makes control, conversation and publication possible Internal hyperlinks  refer to other texts (or sections) within the news medium External hyperlinks  refer to texts or media located outside the news medium

Content analysis Online coverage of municipal and federal elections in Belgium in Convergent + divergent news media Digital newspapers, television and radio news sites, ‘online onlies’, alternative news media. ° classification / operationalisation of interactivity + hypertext

Interactivity ready for operation (1) CONTROL - Number of articles - Choice of modalities (yes/no) - Choice of frequence (obliged – optional – not) - Choice of category (obliged - optional - not) - Choice of chronology (obliged - optional – not) - Search by word (obliged – optional - not) - Personalisation (obliged - optional – not) - Adaptivity (obliged – optional – not) - Accessibility (push – pull) - Archiving (yes/no) - Print (yes/no) - Read later (yes/no) - Pay section (obliged – optional – not) - Advisory cues (yes/no)

Interactivity ready for operation (2) CONVERSATION - Contact author (yes/no) - Contact other actors (yes/no) - Send to (yes/no) PUBLICATION - publish message (yes/no) - Adapt message (yes/no) - React on message (yes/no) - Poll/survey (yes/no) - Rate information (yes/no)

Hypertext ready for operation Number of clicks to full article In article: –Number of text-internal links –Number of medium-internal links –Number of related external links –Number of non-related external links

Information-processing Learning from the news

The black box Exposure  knowledge (S – R) Exposure  information processing  knowledge (S – ? – R) Studying the ‘black box’ between exposure en knowledge

Model MultimediaMULTIMEDIA INTERACTIVITY HYPERTEXT INFORMATION- PROCESSING KNOWLEDGE

Limited Capacity Model (Lang, 2000) “News consumer is a news processor with limited cognitive capacities” News processing Encoding Storage Retrieval  Interactivity and hypertext both stimulates and hampers these processes

Implications of interactivity on IP Positive Involvement Evaluation Negative Selective scanning desorientation time-consuming cognitive overload Control + communication + publication

Implications of hypertext on IP Positive Structural isomorphism Evaluation Negative desorientation cognitive overload Internal / external links

InteractivityHypertext ControlConversationPublicationInternalExternal Online newspage HighMediumLowHighMedium Paper in pdf MediumLowNoneLow Web TV Medium LowMediumNone Live TV None Web radio Low NoneLow None Live radio Low NoneLowNone News in pictures Low Infographic HighLowNoneHighNone Assessment of effects

InteractivityHypertext ControlConversationPublicationInternalExternal News blog LowHigh News forum LowHigh Low Poll / survey Low HighLowNone Mail alert MediumLowNoneHighNone News feed (RSS) MediumLowNoneMediumNone Teletext HighNone HighNone Typology Flemish online news media

Measuring information-processing E.g. ? External hypertext  desoriëntation  Decreased knowledge ? ? Self-production of content  High involvement  High evaluation  Increased knowledge ?

Measuring information-processing First step (October 2007): Think-aloud protocol / thought-list procedure “asks a subject to report all his or her thoughts while doing some task. The goal is to capture what actually goes through a person’s mind as he or she performs a task.” (Shapiro, 1994) Using Morae-software to record voice and face expression during online news consumption  Degree of desorientation, evaluation, maintenance, cognitive overload, … / interactive and hypertextual feature

Measuring information-processing (2) Second step (January 2008): Measuring IP retrospectively by measuring type of knowledge after consumption of manipulated news media (cfr. Lang, 2000) (High – medium - low interactive) (High – medium – low hypertextual) Recognition = encoding Cued recall = storage Free recall = retrieval

Summary Internet as infrastructure, as a complex of convergent and divergent media Besides content, form and structure is important Interactivity and hypertext are multidimensional Exposure is not an adequate predictor of knowledge Combination of methodes/measures needed in order to measure the information-processing and the knowledge outcome