News Consumption Revisited: Examining the Power of Habits in the 21 st Century - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

11th International Symposium on Online Journalism

April 24th, 2010 // Austin, TX

Angela M. Lee

Ph.D. Candidate

Annenberg School for Communication

University of Pennsylvania

alee@asc.upenn.edu

Michael X. Delli Carpini

Dean

Annenberg School for Communication

University of Pennsylvania

mxd@asc.upenn.edu

• Optimism among 1st wave of online journalism studies: Internet liberates news information.
• “A revolution”; “future of journalism”; “a whole new journalism”
• Q: How does the Internet make a difference in online news consumption?
• Democratize news information?

• Dominance of tradition news entities online
• Supply most news content;
• “Shovelware” of content;
• Have most traffic.
• Hindman (2008): “Accessibility does not equate visibility”
• In theory: Internet allows all voices to be heard
• In practice: Only those with megaphones are heard (i.e., Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN)
• “Myth of digital democracy”

• Def.: People lapse into habitual patterns of media consumption when supply > demand.
• Habits = “gratifications” in U&G, but rarely examined in Communication research
• Habits: An activity that is routinely performed, and often developed early on in one’s life.
• Primacy
• Frequency

• Contemporary Americans have grown up in three different news media and technological environments:
• Digital Natives (18-29): Print’s less central, TV&Radio news are still influential but declining. Grew up with Internet.
• Digital Immigrants (30-64): TV&Radio news dominated, though print was still important. Adopted the Internet later in life.
• Digital Settlers (65+): Print dominated, TV&Radio news on the rise. Grew up in analog-only environments

Source: Palfrey & Grasser, 2008

• Biennial Media Consumption Survey 2008 (BMCS) by the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press
• N=3600 nationally representative sample of adults
• Survey administered from April 29-May 21, 2008
• Logistic Regression Analysis
• SPSS 17.
• Chi-squares, Gamma and OLS also performed, and all findings yield the same conclusion as that of Logistic Regression Analysis

• In traditional media landscape…
• H1a: Settlers’ (65+) primary & most frequented news medium = Print
• H1b-c: Immigrants’ (30-64) primary & most frequented news medium = TV/Radio
• H1d: Natives’ (18-29) primary & most frequented news medium = Internet
• As would be expected, all hypotheses are supported, except for TV news use.
• Q: TV?

N= 271

Broadcast: ABC, NBC, CBS

Cable: CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, CNBC, FOX, BBC

• Specific websites that one turns to online will be influenced by one’s offline consumption habits
• H3a: Settlers (65+): Primarily visit print newspaper sites
• H3b,c: Immigrants (30-64): Primarily visit TV/radio sites
• H3d: Natives (18-29): Primarily visit non-traditional news sites
• i.e., Drudge, Digg, Slate, Topix, Blackamericaweb, Charter, Cox.net

• Being natural inhabitants of the Internet, Natives (18-29) will visit a greater variety of news websites than Immigrants orSettlers.

*See paper for logistic regression analyses*

N= 485

Newspaper:  TV: Half Radio:  Untraditional: 

Note: CNN, MSNBC and Fox = 70% of TV news sites

Q: Untraditional: Weird pattern? 6% total Settlers; Small N

N= 485

Q: Convergence of online news uses among younger population?

• Significantly more natives (29%) reported a greater variety of news sources than immigrants (27%) or settlers (11%). Also:

• Suitability of data
• Exploratory in nature
• Possibility of alternative explanations

Nonetheless…

• Emergence of interesting patterns
• Suggestive role of habits both offline and online

• Habits dictate traditional news medium choices
• Habitual offline news uses influence online news uses
• Even if there is accessibility and visibility, as long as news consumers don’t have the habit of seeking alternative sources, “digital democracy” is merited only in theory but not practice
• Possible maturation of habitual news uses over time
• Younger population (18-47) is converging in their online news use patterns

• “We can only change what we understand” (G.S. Adam, 1993)
• We need to understand why and how people consume news across media
• Angela’s forthcoming dissertation: Examining news consumption via Uses & Gratifications + Integrative Model of Behavior Change

Photo by: Angela M. Lee

Angela M. Lee

alee@asc.upenn.edu

Michael X. Delli Carpini

mxd@asc.upenn.edu