journal article: exposure to online news

Two interesting articles about online news consumption, i.e. how and why citizens use the Internet for current affairs; which, to be fair, still represents a small proportion of time spent online.

JOURNAL OF BROADCASTING AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA
VOL 49; NUMBER 3; 2005

pp. 332-348
The Seeds of Audience Fragmentation: Specialization in the Use of Online News Sites
Tewksbury, D.

Contemporary normative concerns that the Internet might fragment national audiences and polities are based on suggestions that the medium is particularly conducive to specialized use. However, relatively little quantitative research has explicitly examined this contention. This study evaluates outlet specialization within the context of online news reading. Analyses of news viewing by a nationally representative panel of Internet users reveal that the user demographic profiles of news sites are individually distinct. More important, the topics that readers view vary by the sites they access. In sum, the provision of news over the Internet exhibits ample signs of outlet specialization.

pp. 296-313
Impact of Popularity Indications on Readers' Selective Exposure to Online News
Knobloch-Westerwick, S.; Sharma, N.; Hansen, D. L.; Alter, S.

Selecting news online may differ from traditional news choices, as most formal importance indicators in traditional media do not convert directly to online news. However, online portals feature news recommendations based on collaborative filtering. To investigate how recommendations affect information choices, 93 participants browsed online news that featured explicit (average rating) or implicit (times viewed) recommendations or no recommendations (control group) while news exposure was logged. Participants picked more articles if the portal featured explicit recommendations, and stronger explicit recommendations instigated longer exposure to associated articles. Implicit recommendations produced a curvilinear effect with longer exposure for low and high numbers.