1. Studying multimedia, interactivity and hypertext in online news media: a methodological approach General Online Research 2007 – Universität Leipzig

2. Learning from the news Exposure  knowledge (S – R) Exposure  information processing  knowledge (S – ? – R) Studying the ‘black box’ between exposure en knowledge Not only content, also structure and form  research question: what’s the effect of structure and form of online news media on the information-processing and knowledge?

3. Limited Capacity Model (Lang, 2000) “News consumer is a news processor with limited cognitive capacities” News processing Encoding Storage Retrieval

4. Model Multimedia Interactivity Hypertext Information- processing (encoding, storage, retrieval) Knowledge

5. Methodological issues Defining and sampling news media and messages Defining multimedia, interactivity and hypertext Measuring information-processing and knowledge

6. Sampling issues What’s an online news medium? –Internet is not one, big, homogeneous medium –Convergent meta-medium (e.g. online newspaper)online newspaper Divergent sub-media (e.g. news page, forum, web-tv, blogs, RSS-feeds, news alerts, …)forum web-tv Sampling messages from sub-media

7. Definition issues Multimedia  Convergence of multiple divergent media?  Convergence of multiple modalities? Interactivity  Control?  Conversation?  Production? Hypertext  Internal / external links?

8. Interactivity ready for operation 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) CONVERSTAION - Contact author (yes/no) - Contact other actors (yes/no) - Send to (yes/no) PRODUCTION - Produce message (yes/no) - Adapt message (yes/no) - React on message (yes/no) - Poll/survey (yes/no) - Assessment (yes/no)

9. Multimodality and hypertext ready for operation MULTIMODALITY Text (yes/no) Picture (yes/no) Video (yes/no) Sounds (yes/no) Music (yes/no) Diashow (yes/no) Infographic (yes/no) Poll / survey (yes/no) HYPERTEXT Number of klicks to article Number of text-internal links Number of medium-internal links Number of related external links Number of not-related external links Location in site mentioned (yes/no, text/url)

10. Multimedia InteractivityHypertext Sign systemControlConversationPublicationInternalExternal Online nieuwssite Text, picture, video, sound HighMediumLowHighMedium Paper in pdf Text, picture, graphic MediumLowNoneLow Web TV Video, sound, text Medium LowMediumNone Live TV Video, soundNone Web radio Sound, picture, text Low NoneLow None Live radio SoundLow NoneLowNone News in pictures Picture, textLow Infographic Graphic, textHighLowNoneHighNone Typology Flemish online news media

11. Multimedia InteractivityHypertext Sign systemControlConversationPublicationInternalExternal News blogText, pictureLowHigh News forumTextLowHigh Low Poll / surveyText, graphicLow HighLowNone Mail alertText, pictureMediumLowNoneHighNone News feed (RSS)TextMediumLowNoneMediumNone TeletextTextHighNone HighNone Typology Flemish online news media

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

13. Measuring information-processing 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) Measuring IP retrospectively by measuring type of knowledge –Recognition  encoding –Cued recall  storage –Free recall  retrieval

14. Research design Manipulation of online news (multimedia, interactivity, hypertext) Pre-test of knowledge Media consumption  think-aloud protocol Post-test (recognition, cued-free recall)

15. Summary Internet as infrastructure, as a complex of convergent and divergent media Besides content, form and structure is important Multimedia, 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