Thomas B. Ksiazek

Media consumption across platforms: Identifying user-defined repertoires:

New media have made available a wide range of platforms and content choices. However, audiences cope with abundant choices by using more narrowly defined repertoires. Unfortunately, we know little of how users create repertoires across media platforms. This study uses factor analysis to identify user-defined repertoires from data obtained by following 495 users throughout an entire day. Results indicate the presence of four repertoires that are powerfully tied to the rhythms of people’s daily lives. These were in turn explained by a combination of factors such as audience availability and individual demographics.

Cultural Proximity and Audience Behavior: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency

Cultural proximity is a multidimensional concept, most often used to explain media preferences across national boundaries. The present study extends the construct, revealing its power to explain audience formation within a multicultural society. Portable People Meter data from Arbitron, Inc., was used to compare patterns of television and radio use across Spanish-speaking Hispanics, English-speaking Hispanics, and non-Hispanics in Houston, Texas. The results indicate that language preferences play a powerful role in determining audience behavior. Furthermore, while English-speaking Hispanics exhibit multicultural fluency, the other two populations show evidence of cultural polarization.

User engagement with online news: Conceptualizing interactivity and exploring the relationship between online news videos and user comments:

With the emergence and rapid acceptance of online news come new and varied opportunities for user engagement with content, along with alternative metrics for capturing those behaviors. This study focuses on interactive engagement with online news videos. We propose a theoretical framework for conceptualizing user engagement on a continuum from exposure to interactivity. Furthermore, we make a distinction between user–content (e.g. commenting) and user–user (e.g. replying to another user’s comment) modes of interaction. We then explore publicly available measures of these concepts and test a series of hypotheses to explore commenting and conversational behaviors in response to YouTube news videos. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications for advancing our understanding of user engagement with online news.

A Network Analytic Approach to Understanding Cross-Platform Audience Behavior

This article explains and implements a network analytic approach to the study of cross-platform audience behavior. It begins by conceptualizing large-scale patterns of media use in network terms, treating media outlets as nodes and the levels of audience duplication among them as links. Following that, it explains 2 common measures of audience duplication, Absolute Duplication and Primary Duplication, and offers a new measure, Deviation-from-Random Duplication. In doing so, techniques for converting duplication data into network data are discussed. This approach is then applied to analyze patterns of audience fragmentation, media publics, and audience polarization using data from Nielsens TV/Internet Convergence Panel. The findings show the value of using a network approach, by contributing to an alternative understanding of these patterns. Economic and policy implications are discussed, as well as broader reflections on the use of network analysis in the study of audience behavior.

Civil Interactivity: How News Organizations' Commenting Policies Explain Civility and Hostility in User Comments

The digital transformation of journalism enables new modes of interactivity with the news. While user comments are nearly ubiquitous across news Web sites, there is little understanding about how to improve the quality of discussion spaces that many characterize as hostile and vitriolic. This study uses a keyword content analysis of user comments across 20 news Web sites to understand the organizational policies that encourage more productive dialogue. The findings show that specific policies regarding user registration, moderation of comments, and reputation management systems are effective facilitators of civil discussion.

YOUTUBE AND THE CHALLENGE TO JOURNALISM

News media are an institution where ritualized journalistic practices govern the production of news content. This study analyzes those practices in a new realm, online video, to assess whether this form of video journalism deviates from traditional standards. A content analysis of 882 videos on YouTube reveals that most news videos adhere to traditional production practices (e.g., editing techniques, audio quality), but break from common content standards (e.g., use of sources, fairness). We find that these more relaxed content practices are rewarded with a higher number of views, while adherence to traditional production practices does not predict popularity. Interestingly, online videos that are repurposed from broadcast platforms experience the greatest spike in viewership when breaking from those standards, suggesting that such deviations in traditional television news are especially valued by audiences. We discuss these results in the context of the possibility of a new set of institutionalized practices and address implications for the current and future state of journalism.

BLOGGING FROM THE NICHES

Digital media lower barriers to entry and offer a “long tail” of specialized subject matter, providing scientist bloggers with the ability to contest traditional science news norms, thereby overcoming challenges associated with sourcing practices in science journalism. This study analyzes the sources of 41 science bloggers that discussed two different topics, global warming and intelligent design, between 2004 and 2007. The 3576 sources in these 300 posts are hand-coded by type of website. Results indicate that science bloggers often link to blogs and the online articles of traditional news media, similar to political bloggers writing about the same topics. Science bloggers also link heavily to academic and non-profit sources, differing from political bloggers in this study as well as previous research. In conclusion, science bloggers writing about science topics rely on conventional blog linking practices while expanding those voices which get heard online, adding complexity to online science news.

Discussing the News

The provision of online news provides unique opportunities for users to interact with content and with other users. One of the more common forms of interactivity involves commenting on news stories. These interactive features are often heralded for enabling virtual public discussion of current events. Yet there exists a widespread belief that these spaces fail to meet that lofty goal, instead exhibiting hostile and vitriolic discourse, which undermines the deliberative potential of online interaction. At the same time, there is a lack of consensus among researchers regarding the proper conceptualization of hostility, and its more desirable counterpart, civility. This article aims to integrate normative and contextual conceptual definitions of hostility and civility in online interactions with the news. Building on these, we develop operational definitions of the two concepts and analyze the presence of hostile and civil discussion in user comments posted to YouTube news videos. Further, we explore the possibility that the content and source of those news videos, as well as popularity and engagement metrics, may explain the degree of hostility and civility in comments.

Partisan Enclaves or Shared Media Experiences? A Network Approach to Understanding Citizens’ Political News Environments

The abundance of political media outlets raises concerns that citizens isolate themselves to likeminded news, leaving the public with infrequent shared media experiences and little exposure to disagreeable information. Network analysis of 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey data (N = 57,967) indicates these worries are exaggerated, as general interest news outlets like local newspapers and non-partisan television news are central to the public’s media environment. Although there is some variation between the media diets of Republicans and Democrats (FOX News and conservative talk radio are central to Republicans’ information network), neither group appears to engage in active avoidance of disagreeable information. Individuals across the political spectrum are not creating partisan “echo chambers” but instead have political media repertoires that are remarkably similar.

Commenting on the News

Journalists and digital news audiences value virtual conversations about the news, but only if they embody civil discussion. Drawing on a content analysis of 1379 stories and 333,605 user comments across 20 news websites, this study focuses on predictors of the volume of comments (as an indicator of user engagement and interactivity with the news) and the relative quality of those discussions, in terms of civility/hostility. The analysis explores variations in the degree and quality of user comments across story content (topic; including outside sources), story format (multimedia features), journalist participation in commenting platforms, and organizational commenting policies. The results shed light on how journalists and news organizations might encourage more and higher-quality user engagement with the news.