1. M ULTIMEDIA E FFECTS ON N EWS S TORY C REDIBILITY, N EWSWORTHINESS, AND R ECALL Derrick Ho, Youn-Joo Park, Alice Roach, Yue Sun University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

2. I NTRODUCTION Multimedia Internet-based Convergence Journalism

4. L ITERATURE R EVIEW Multimedia Effects Multiple modality story Variables Credibility Newsworthiness Recall

5. R ESEARCH QUESTION RQ Do multiple multimedia elements influence an online news storys credibility, newsworthiness, and recall? Hypothesis: Multimedia elements will enhance a news storys: (1) Credibility (2) Newsworthiness (3) Recall

6. M ETHOD Experiment One-Factor Within-Subjects Design Post-Test Only Variables IV: Modality 1) text-only 2) text with multiple multimedia elements (text plus photos, audio, and video) DV: Credibility, newsworthiness, and recall.

7. Sample (1) Sixty students from Midwest University. (2) Random sample & snowball sampling. Procedure (1) News stories and questionnaires posted on SurveyGizmo. (2) Emails to subjects. Stimuli (1) Text-only stories: a) c arbon footprint of orange juice, b) baseball bat production, and c) rope climbing to maintain wind turbines. (2) Multimedia stories: a) immigration and assimilation in U.S. high schools, b) sea turtle extinction, and c) safety of tap water. (3) 500 words text & video without stamp. (4) Random orders according to last name. M ETHOD C ONTINUED

8. M ETHOD C ONTINUED -- M EASURES Credibility Believability, objectivity, trustworthiness, fairness, accuracy, and thoroughness of the news story. 9-item Likert-type scales. Newsworthiness Significance or effect, interest or relevance. 9-item Likert-type scales. Recall Comprehensibility Fill-in-the-blank & multiple choice questions.

9. R ESULTS Use repeated-measures ANOVA to analyze each hypothesis. Credibility Supported ( F (1, 47) = 8.394, p =.006 <.01 Text-only < Multimedia ). Newsworthiness Supported ( F (1, 47) = 36.726, p =.000 <.001 Text-only < Multimedia ). Recall Supported ( F (1, 36) = 8.969, p =.005 <.01 Text-only < Multimedia ). Mean Score

10. DISCUSSION Implications Multimedia stories are perceived as more credible and newsworthy than text-only stories, and participants could remember more details from stories with multiple multimedia elements than from stories that were text-only. Limitations Time control Future Research Number of multimedia elements Type of multimedia elements More dependent variables

11. C ONTACT INFORMATION Yue Sun Masters student, Strategic Communication, School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. Email: ysdy4@mail.missouri.edu