Author:

Keywords:

Online Journalism, Interactivity, Hypertext, Information processing, Cognitive psychology

Abstract:

Today, online news consumers can read or hear the same news in different ways by consuming various types of online news media. General news sites, online news papers, news blogs, usenet, listservs, RSS-feeds, news alerts, news forums, wikinews sites, … all these online news media cover daily news in their own specific way. The main purpose of this paper is not to focus on the content, but instead on the formal and structural features of online news media and the possible effects on the information-processing that encompasses the computer-mediated news consumption. Apart from multimedia and hypertextuality, interactivity has always been considered to be a main feature of online news. Most of the time, interactivity has been studied as a communicational or dialogical feature. Interactivity is “an 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 transmissions" (Rafaeli, 1988). This approach considers interactivity as feedback, as two-way or multiple-way communication. Especially when studying blogs, forums or usenet, this specific function of interactivity is investigated. However, we suggest that it is better to include the control-over-content dimension of interactivity. This type of interactivity, that Steuer (1992) defines as “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time" deserves our attention. The presence of topic-based menus and built-in search engines, for example, give the user the opportunity to search for specific news items. In contemporary news sites, users do not only have control over content, but even can add new information to the existing as if they are real journalists. Thus, when studying interactivity of online news media, the conversation, control-over-content and production of content should be investigated. Based on theories from the information-processing tradition of cognitive psychology and media studies, two models are proposed that could help scholars to investigate the possible effects of online interactivity on the ‘black box’ of information-processing. Both the Limited Capacity Model (Lang, 2000) and the Cognitive Mediation Model (Eveland, 2001) focus on the cognitive processes during news consumption and learning from the news. The basic assumption of these two models is that a simple stimulus-response model, where news exposure is the stimulus and the knowledge outcome is the response, is not adequate to describe the learning process while consuming news. It is better to investigate the processes of encoding, storage and retrieval. The encoding of the perceived information is the converting of the information bits into a mental representation in the short-term memory. During the process of storage, the encoded information is linked to previously encoded messages so that mental associations are made. The last cognitive process of the information-processing is the retrieval, or the reactivation of earlier stored mental representations of a message that is perceived so that the message can be understood and new associations can be made. The better the encoding, storage and retrieval are performed, the better the information is memorised. But, these subprocesses require a lot of processing efforts from the news user and these recourses are limited. The amount of information that is successfully encoded, stored and retrieved depends on the amount of processing recourses required by and allocated to these processes when consuming the news. Past studies have demonstrated that, besides other formal and structural characteristics, the interactive features of online news media are involved when allocating the required recourses for information-processing. The general belief is that control over content elicits a great amount of involvement that elicits a more intense processing of information. Involvement helps the user to reduce or eliminate unwanted or superfluous information so that they can organise the message in a way that facilitates the information-processing. The limited amount of cognitive efforts can be invested in the processing of relevant and important news items. Also the possibility to discuss the news with other online news consumers could have, according to some scholars, a positive effect on the learning. Discussion can make news users motivated to invest in information-processing since it is necessary to evaluate the relevance of the discussion before participating. By doing so, cognitive processes are turned on even already before the actual conversation takes place. We suggest that the same is true for the self-production of news messages and that the evaluation of the relevance of writing an article could contribute to a better information-processing of the news. However, some online features of interactivity could elicit disorientation and selective scanning that reduce the learning process. In this paper, we first operationalise the three dimensions of interactivity and present the results of a content analysis of online news media in Flanders. We propose a typology of online news media that describes the different levels of interactivity among the various online news media (e.g. news blogs, rss-feeds, news alerts, digital newspaper). Indeed, we suggest that the internet should not be studied as a homogeneous news medium, but as a meta-medium that carries various divergent media with specific formal and structural features. Based on the proposed typology of online news media and cognitive theories, we can assess the possible effects of the various types of online media on the cognitive processes and the associated knowledge outcome. Secondly, we discuss the challenges of studying interactivity in online news media and focus on the difficulties of discriminating the different units of analysis. At last, we suggest further research into this area and put forward the need of innovative methodologies like think aloud protocols and eye tracking.