Drs. Michaël Opgenhaffen Information: Interactions and Impact RGU – Aberdeen, 26/06/07
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Transcript of Drs. Michaël Opgenhaffen Information: Interactions and Impact RGU – Aberdeen, 26/06/07
Online news media and interactivity: studying control, conversation, self-
production and hyperlinks from a cognitive and methodological
approach
Drs. Michaël Opgenhaffen
Information: Interactions and ImpactRGU – 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
• 2006-2009
• 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, …)
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 18-22 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 andpublication 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 2006 + 2007
• 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-processingLearning 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
Interactivity Hypertext
Control Conversation Publication Internal External
Online newspage
High Medium Low High Medium
Paper in pdf Medium Low None Low Low
Web TV Medium Medium Low Medium None
Live TV None None None None None
Web radio Low Low None Low None
Live radio Low Low None Low None
News in pictures
Low Low Low Low Low
Infographic High Low None High None
Assessment of effects
Interactivity Hypertext
Control Conversation Publication Internal External
News blog Low High High High High
News forum Low High High Low Low
Poll / survey Low Low High Low None
Mail alert Medium Low None High None
News feed (RSS) Medium Low None Medium None
Teletext High None None High None
Typology Flemish online news media
Measuring information-processing
E.g.
? External hypertext desoriëntation Decreased knowledge ?
? Self-production of contentHigh 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 = encodingCued recall = storageFree 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