News, Place & Relevance
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ABC Digital Network News, Place & Relevance A study of people’s experiences with a location and preference aware mobile news and information service. News, Place & Relevance A study of people’s experiences with a location and preference aware mobile news and information service. Canberra Friends – Photo (cc) Richard Thorek Priscilla Davies & Astrid Scott Editor: Viveka Weiley Contributors: Nicolaas Earnshaw and Charlie Szasz Prepared for: Angela Clark, Director ABC Digital Network © 2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, Place and Relevance News, Place and Relevance CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2 2. SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS 6 3. RESEARCH APPROACH 12 4. DISCOVERIES 22 5. DISCUSSION 98 6. CONCLUSIONS 110 iv ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1 News, Place and Relevance News, Place and Relevance 1. INTRODUCTION Media organisations have been pivotal in driving the shift towards personalised news and information experiences for mobile. It is now possible for news stories and articles to be surfaced and recommended to individuals based on their stated preferences, previous activity or reading history. Google Now and Zite are high profile examples of these types of services. In this landscape of the personalised experience, it’s common for location to be a key content discovery and organising principle. People can see what’s happening close to their GPS location, explore the news around them via a map, or filter content according to proximity to a certain place. These approaches are already proving their usefulness, yet they are still relatively new and there are gaps in our collective knowledge about what rates as location-relevant content, and how it might be surfaced for a particular user at a particular time. For example, does a story increase in relevance when it’s closer to home? How do people engage with news and information from locations other than where a person is located right now? If people have relationships with many places, is there some way to accommodate that? How does location-relevance interplay with other factors of relevance such as topic or time? Are there interest topics for which location makes a difference to people’s understanding and level of engagement with stories? How does location-relevance interplay with other factors of relevance such as topic or time? To add another layer of complexity, there is a further question: are there sufficient quality digital stories produced to enable content discovery via location-match alone? Perhaps in the cities there is enough, but regionally-based news and information seekers have a harder time because the contraction of media towards state capitals means that the volume of locally-specific stories has reduced. So how does this impact news and information flows within regional communities? This report contains some answers to those questions by providing insight into people’s perspectives of news, place and relevance. It also describes some implications of these discoveries for media service providers who create and distribute news and information. Farm Circles Photo (cc) Gorter Folkert Bungendore 2 ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 3 Photo (cc) Jessica Brisbane News, Place and Relevance News, Place and Relevance The lessons contained in this report were collected whilst undertaking This report has been created to help media service providers make some the third pilot of ABC Innovation’s Location project (‘Spoke 3’). Many of decisions about: those lessons further substantiated findings from earlier pilots (‘Spoke 1’ and ‘Spoke 2’). • How to go about making content more relevant when location is a key factor determining a person’s pathway into news and information. Spoke 3 took the form of a smartphone app that was built and tested with • How to service areas outside of major capital cities, and those living people living in regions of ACT and Albury-Wodonga from September to on state-border regions. December, 2014. The app featured a single news feed of recommended content that was dynamically generated according to various factors, • What the regionally-based news-seeker (target audience) wants, including a person’s location and topic preferences. Each interaction values and needs in relation to content about their local area. was tracked in order for the app to ‘learn’ from a person’s behaviour over • How ‘competing’ media providers might cooperate to service the time, thereby further influencing their news mix. The app content drew needs of a particular community or interest group. from multiple content sources including the ABC, local media outlets, local interest groups and council news. • How to describe content via labelling and categorisation in order to ensure it is more discoverable to people. Overall, the project’s research approach comprised a mixture of • How to expose content in ways that liberates it from the limitations of quantative data analysis and qualitative feedback. Using custom web vertical distribution, thereby making it accessible to people who may analytics, researchers looked for patterns in the collective actions and not engage with your core products. app preferences of 1296 users. Time was spent undertaking surveying • Whether or not experimenting with different news presentations and interviewing Spoke users in the pilot regions in order to gain insight may help you identify gaps in your content offering or opportunities. into their behaviours, needs and values; why they made certain choices in Spoke’s design was just one example of how presenting content in their news-seeking habits overall; how they used the Spoke app, and what unusual way exposed content gaps for the ABC. they thought of it. 44 ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 5 News, Place and Relevance News, Place and Relevance 2. SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS People’s motivations for seeking news. Understanding the reasons why people seek out news and information is key to ensuring relevance of content. News helps me make conversation with other people, and I want to lighten my mood are two examples of twelve motivation statements that were generated from this research. These statements are a useful reference for those who wish to develop a content Hume Dam strategy built around audience motivations. Photo (cc) Alex Blackburn People’s news-seeking habits and values. Spoke research participants from ACT and Albury-Wodonga regions describe how they normally access news and information, and which People’s location interests. sources are most valuable to them in various scenarios and contexts. Identifying how location matters to people was a primary objective of this research. Spoke has shown that location based services need not solely be As a news and information seeker... about where I’m at right now but can extend to the other places I care about. • I like being able to access and cross-reference Participants were questioned about their location interests, and how news from multiple sources and platforms. those interests impact their experiences using Spoke and other news and • When a story is local, I turn to social media or to information services. a medley of locally-situated media providers. • When a story is of national significance, As a news and information seeker... I am likely to turn to the ABC. • My interest in location isn’t confined to my local area. • When a story is international in scope, I may • If the news is local to me, then my topic interests expand. go to the top international news outlets. • Sometimes an unfolding news event • I’ve noticed the contraction of local media triggers my interest in a new place. services towards Sydney and Melbourne. • Media coverage paints vivid pictures of • Above all else, I want mobile news to places, thereby shaping my worldview. be accurate and up-to-date. • I live in a border region, so state-split • I get sick of the same news repeated over and over again. presentations of news are very inconvenient. 6 ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC-WHP-2015-A ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7 News, Place and Relevance News, Place and Relevance People’s topic interests Responses to Spoke’s content People mentally position topics along the scale of more locally relevant to recommendation system more globally relevant. The more local a story is, the more personal and Spoke’s presentation of news was quite different from more traditional direct the impacts of the news story will likely be. Through analysing mobile news apps. Instead of providing menu items such as ‘just in’ or people’s interactions with Spoke, and then questioning them about their ‘world news’, Spoke comprised a single news feed organised by a content personal associations with news topics and subject matters, revealed recommendation algorithm that responded to people’s stated preferences content gaps and service opportunities that media providers may and their previous activity. This research set out to understand how consider addressing. Spoke’s alternative presentation changed people’s behaviour and people’s engagement with the news. Research participants liked the concept of a recommendation system, but the way it is implementated makes all the difference to their trust and acceptance of it. As a news and information seeker... As a news and information seeker... • Give me more grass roots political coverage. • It’s okay for the ABC to track and collect my personal • There is more big business than I need. data because I trust the ABC to use it responsibly. • What’s on for me? Events, arts and entertainment. • Spoke surprises me with interesting stuff • Crime is compelling, even when it’s not close to me. I didn’t expect I’d ever want. • Education is about my kids and I.