Does the Type of News Aggregation Personalization Influence Information-Seeking Behavior?

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Does the Type of News Aggregation Personalization Influence Information-Seeking Behavior? THE AGGREGATION EFFECT: DOES THE TYPE OF NEWS AGGREGATION PERSONALIZATION INFLUENCE INFORMATION-SEEKING BEHAVIOR? By LAUREN D. FUREY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Lauren D. Furey To my kind and courageous dad, who inspired me to always follow my dreams ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Pursing my Ph.D. has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I would not have made it through this program without the love, support, kindness, and guidance of my family, teachers, and friends. I am incredibly lucky to have such wonderful people in my life, and I would like to thank everyone who helped me reach my dream of becoming a journalism professor. First, I would like to pay special tribute to my wife, Heather, for her unwavering love and support through two challenging graduate degrees. She has been there every day to share her confidence during stressful moments, and she always found time, despite the demanding workload, to fit in adventures and make life fun. I am also incredibly thankful for the love and encouragement of our two families. My mom has been an ever-present inspiration, and I am so honored that I’ve had the opportunity to, quite literally, follow in her footsteps. My brother, David, has taught me how to overcome obstacles with grace and strength, and I am so happy my sister, Liz, could be my partner in crime the past few years as we conquered our graduate programs together. And finally, I would like to thank my amazing in-laws and the Schoenbecks for their constant encouragement through lots of homemade cookies, cards, and care packages. Deepest gratitude is due to my advisor, Norm Lewis, for being my pillar the past three years. He not only guided me through the course of completing this dissertation but also through the first and hardest class of my doctoral program. Dr. Lewis’ expertise has helped me become a better scholar, writer, and teacher. In addition, he is one of the most selfless people I have ever met, and I will strive to my hardest to reflect his kindness in my interactions with students. 4 I would also like to thank my other committee members, Spiro Kiousis, Tamir Sorek, Michael Weigold, and Sriram Kalyanaraman for their guidance, which has pushed me to make my past, present, and future research more informed, rigorous, and both theoretically and practically significant. I am humbled and honored that I have gotten the opportunity to work with such amazing scholars, who are in equal measure wonderful people. Last but certainly not least, I would like to acknowledge all of the amazing friends I have made during my tenure at the University of Florida. Not only were they an incredible support system over the past three years, but they are also some of the best friends I have ever had. I am so grateful that I will get to call these people friends for life. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 10 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 14 Conceptualizing News Aggregators ........................................................................ 14 Study Purpose ........................................................................................................ 16 Effects of Selective Exposure from Aggregators ..................................................... 19 Increased Polarization ...................................................................................... 19 Amplified Narcissism ........................................................................................ 22 Hindered Democracy ........................................................................................ 23 Current Status of Research .................................................................................... 26 Academic Contribution ............................................................................................ 28 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................... 30 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................... 30 Conceptualizing Attitudes ................................................................................. 30 Rationale for ELM ............................................................................................. 32 Two Processing Routes.................................................................................... 35 Factors Increasing Motivation to Process ......................................................... 38 Effects of News Aggregation ................................................................................... 39 Conceptualizing Personalization ...................................................................... 39 Effects of Personalization on Attitudes ............................................................. 41 Effects of Personalization on Information-Seeking Behavior ............................ 42 Conceptualizing Different Types of Aggregators .............................................. 45 Effects of Different Types of Aggregators ......................................................... 47 Factors Influencing People’s Responses to News Aggregators .............................. 48 Cognitive Elaboration ....................................................................................... 48 Perceived Credibility ......................................................................................... 50 Effects of Different Types of News .......................................................................... 50 Conceptualizing Different Types of News ......................................................... 50 Responses to Different Types of News ............................................................ 52 Factors Influencing People’s Responses to Different Types of News ..................... 53 Interaction of Different Types of Aggregators and Different Types of News ........... 54 3 METHODS .............................................................................................................. 56 6 Overview ................................................................................................................. 56 Rationale for Experimental Method ......................................................................... 56 Limitations of Experiments ...................................................................................... 59 Participants ............................................................................................................. 60 Procedure ............................................................................................................... 61 Stimulus Materials .................................................................................................. 62 Type of News Manipulations ............................................................................ 62 Aggregation Manipulations ............................................................................... 63 Manipulation Checks............................................................................................... 65 Dependent Variables .............................................................................................. 65 Attitude toward the Content .............................................................................. 66 Information-Seeking Behavior .......................................................................... 66 Intervening Variables .............................................................................................. 67 Cognitive Elaboration ....................................................................................... 67 Perceived Credibility ......................................................................................... 68 Demographic Variables ........................................................................................... 68 4 RESULTS ............................................................................................................... 69 Descriptive Analysis of Data ................................................................................... 69 Preparing Measures for Analysis ............................................................................ 72 Manipulation Checks............................................................................................... 74 Hypothesis Testing ................................................................................................. 75 Type of Aggregator Results .............................................................................. 75 Intervening Variable Results for Type of Aggregator ........................................ 78 Type of News Results ...................................................................................... 80 Intervening Variable Results for Type of News ................................................
Recommended publications
  • Role of Librarian in Internet and World Wide Web Environment K
    Informing Science Information Sciences Volume 4 No 1, 2001 Role of Librarian in Internet and World Wide Web Environment K. Nageswara Rao and KH Babu Defence Research & Development Laboratory Kanchanbagh Post, India [email protected] and [email protected] Abstract The transition of traditional library collections to digital or virtual collections presented the librarian with new opportunities. The Internet, Web en- vironment and associated sophisticated tools have given the librarian a new dynamic role to play and serve the new information based society in bet- ter ways than hitherto. Because of the powerful features of Web i.e. distributed, heterogeneous, collaborative, multimedia, multi-protocol, hyperme- dia-oriented architecture, World Wide Web has revolutionized the way people access information, and has opened up new possibilities in areas such as digital libraries, virtual libraries, scientific information retrieval and dissemination. Not only the world is becoming interconnected, but also the use of Internet and Web has changed the fundamental roles, paradigms, and organizational culture of libraries and librarians as well. The article describes the limitless scope of Internet and Web, the existence of the librarian in the changing environment, parallelism between information sci- ence and information technology, librarians and intelligent agents, working of intelligent agents, strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities in- volved in the relationship between librarians and the Web. The role of librarian in Internet and Web environment especially as intermediary, facilita- tor, end-user trainer, Web site builder, researcher, interface designer, knowledge manager and sifter of information resources is also described. Keywords: Role of Librarian, Internet, World Wide Web, Data Mining, Meta Data, Latent Semantic Indexing, Intelligent Agents, Search Intermediary, Facilitator, End-User Trainer, Web Site Builder, Researcher, Interface Designer, Knowledge Man- ager, Sifter.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Spam Timeline of Events and Notable Occurrences in the Advance of Spam
    The History of Spam Timeline of events and notable occurrences in the advance of spam July 2014 The History of Spam The growth of unsolicited e-mail imposes increasing costs on networks and causes considerable aggravation on the part of e-mail recipients. The history of spam is one that is closely tied to the history and evolution of the Internet itself. 1971 RFC 733: Mail Specifications 1978 First email spam was sent out to users of ARPANET – it was an ad for a presentation by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1984 Domain Name System (DNS) introduced 1986 Eric Thomas develops first commercial mailing list program called LISTSERV 1988 First know email Chain letter sent 1988 “Spamming” starts as prank by participants in multi-user dungeon games by MUDers (Multi User Dungeon) to fill rivals accounts with unwanted electronic junk mail. 1990 ARPANET terminates 1993 First use of the term spam was for a post from USENET by Richard Depew to news.admin.policy, which was the result of a bug in a software program that caused 200 messages to go out to the news group. The term “spam” itself was thought to have come from the spam skit by Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the sketch, a restaurant serves all its food with lots of spam, and the waitress repeats the word several times in describing how much spam is in the items. When she does this, a group of Vikings in the corner start a song: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!" Until told to shut up.
    [Show full text]
  • The Internet and the Web T6 a Technical View of System Analysis and Design
    Technology Guides T1 Hardware T2 Software T3 Data and Databases T4 Telecommunications ᮣ T5 The Internet and the Web T6 A Technical View of System Analysis and Design Technology Guide The Internet 5 and the Web T5.1 What Is the Internet? T5.2 Basic Characteristics and Capabilities of the Internet T5.3 Browsing and the World Wide Web T5.4 Communication Tools for the Internet T5.5 Other Internet Tools T5.1 T5.2 Technology Guide The Internet and the Web T5.1 What Is the Internet?1 The Internet (“the Net”) is a network that connects hundreds of thousands of inter- nal organizational computer networks worldwide. Examples of internal organiza- tional computer networks are a university computer system, the computer system of a corporation such as IBM or McDonald’s, a hospital computer system, or a system used by a small business across the street from you. Participating computer systems, called nodes, include PCs, local area networks, database(s), and mainframes.A node may include several networks of an organization, possibly connected by a wide area network. The Internet connects to hundreds of thousands of computer networks in more than 200 countries so that people can access data in other organizations, and can communicate and collaborate around the globe, quickly and inexpensively. Thus, the Internet has become a necessity in the conduct of modern business. The Internet grew out of an experimental project of the Advanced Research Proj- BRIEF HISTORY ect Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.The project was initiated in 1969 as ARPAnet to test the feasibility of a wide area computer network over which researchers, educators, military personnel, and government agencies could share data, exchange messages, and transfer files.
    [Show full text]
  • Imessage Privacy HITB, Kuala Lumpur, Oct
    Quarkslab on iMessage Privacy HITB, Kuala Lumpur, oct. 2013 @pod2g ([email protected]) gg ([email protected]) Presentations • Quarkslab is a research company specialized in cutting edge solutions to complex security problems. We provide innovative, efficient and practical solutions based on profound knowledge and years of experience in the field. • gg: security researcher, cryptography R.E. specialist. Joined Quarkslab in 2012 • @pod2g: security researcher, long background in Apple product security. Joined Quarkslab in 2013 Plan I. The current political and media context II. The iMessage protocol III. MITM attacks IV. Countermeasures V. Final thoughts I. THE CONTEXT NSA, PRISM, Apple NSA’s PRISM (US-984XN) • American supervision program • Mass surveillance data mining • Based on alliances with american firms • Can collect texts, emails, photos, etc. • Foreigners are also potential targets • Program was leaked by Edward Snowden Is Apple included? • Washington Post have leaked PRISM presentation slides that are said to be coming from the NSA • Looking at them, Apple joined in oct 2012 • Slides talk of « data collection », which sounds like a transparent process Apple publicly says: « Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government’s “Prism” program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order. » Source: https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/ What about iMessages? « Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place.
    [Show full text]
  • ABF Podcast Series and Communication and Media
    Document 1 ABF Podcast Series A monthly podcast series featuring different elements of Australian Border Force will be developed. The series will invite engagement with ABF by the Australian public and related government agencies, promote ABF’s border security arrangements and position ABF as a policy champion. The podcast series will be developed in-house and distributed via a number of suitable podcast directories and the Border.gov.au website. The series could be promoted through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook engagement, Border Bulletin, and the revised DIBP intranet. Five reasons to podcast #1: Professional Development From Walkmans to iPods to smartphones, portable music has revolutionised the world, but in today’s society people are looking to take more than music with them–they’re looking for ways to learn more. Podcasts provide opportunities to learn without taking extra time in their day. #2: Trust Websites and blogs are a great way to give valuable information to your audience, but by delivering the same content through a podcast, you’re able to use your voice to bring your content to life. You have the ability to connect with your audience on a more personal level. #3: Mobility According to Eddison Research, nearly two-thirds of podcast consumers do most of their podcast listening on mobile devices. With a website or blog, you are asking an audience to sit down and give you 10 – 15 minutes of their time to read your posts. By turning that same material into a podcast, you’ve opened up your audience from people sitting down at their desk to people in the car, jogging, and working.
    [Show full text]
  • Processing Online News Streams for Large-Scale Semantic Analysis
    Processing Online News Streams for Large-Scale Semantic Analysis Milosˇ Krstajic´ #1, Florian Mansmann #2, Andreas Stoffel #3, Martin Atkinson ∗4, Daniel A. Keim #5 #University of Konstanz Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ∗EC Joint Research Centre Ispra, Italy [email protected] Abstract— While Internet has enabled us to access a vast challenges in legal, security and/or political spheres. amount of online news articles originating from thousands of In our concrete case, we obtained a live stream of online different sources, the human capability to read all these articles news articles, which are continuously collected by the Euro- has stayed rather constant. Usually, the publishing industry takes over the role of filtering this enormous amount of information pean Media Monitor (EMM) [1]. An interesting aspect of this and presenting it in an appropriate way to the group of their data is the fact, that the articles are written in a multitude subscribers. In this paper, the semantic analysis of such news of languages. EMM thereby focuses on entity extraction and streams is discussed by introducing a system that streams online news clustering approaches in order to cope with this multi- news collected by the Europe Media Monitor to our proposed lingual corpus of news articles. In contrast to EMM, our semantic news analysis system. Thereby, we describe in detail the emerging challenges and the corresponding engineering solutions system is designed to support the user in the following two to process incoming articles close to real-time.
    [Show full text]
  • Handling Information Overload on Usenet
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Department of Informatics Handling Information Overload on Usenet Advanced Caching Methods for News Jan Ingvoldstad Cand Scient Thesis 4th August 2001 Abstract Usenet is the name of a world wide network of servers for group communica- tion between people. From 1979 and onwards, it has seen a near exponential growth in the amount of data transported, which has been a strain on band- width and storage. There has been a wide range of academic research with focus on the WWW, but Usenet has been neglected. Instead, Usenet’s evolu- tion has been dominated by practical solutions. This thesis describes the history of Usenet in a growth perspective, and introduces methods for collection and analysis of statistical data for testing the usefulness of various caching strategies. A set of different caching strategies are proposed and examined in light of bandwidth and storage demands as well as user perceived performance. I have shown that advanced caching methods for news offers relief for reading servers’ storage and bandwidth capacity by exploiting usage patterns for fetching or prefetching articles the users may want to read, but it will not solve the problem of near exponential growth nor the problems of Usenet’s backbone peers. Preface When I first started my studies at the University in Oslo in the autumn of 1991, I thought I was going to be a mathematician, and followed my first class in university level mathematics with vigor.
    [Show full text]
  • Web Design Specialist
    Web Design Specialist Lesson 1: Overview of Web Design Concepts Objectives • Balance customer needs and usability with site design principles and aesthetics • Identify Web site characteristics and strategies to enable them, including interactivity, navigation, database integration • Identify purpose and usefulness of multimedia • Write X/HTML code to create a static Web page with text and images • Identify multimedia Web design principles, and choose appropriate multimedia technologies for a site based on usability criteria The Nature of the Web • Current Web development direction • Tools and technology – Graphical user interface (GUI) – What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Web Design Concepts • Push technology • Multimedia • Interactivity Newer Technologies • Dynamic HTML (DHTML) • Alternative browsers • Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) • Extensible Markup Language (XML) • JavaScript Summary ! Balance customer needs and usability with site design principles and aesthetics ! Identify Web site characteristics and strategies to enable them, including interactivity, navigation, database integration ! Identify purpose and usefulness of multimedia ! Write X/HTML code to create a static Web page with text and images ! Identify multimedia Web design principles, and choose appropriate multimedia technologies for a site based on usability criteria Lesson 2: Web Development Teams Objectives • Identify job responsibilities and tasks of a Web designer or Web development team member • Develop and update your Web design portfolio with demonstration pages
    [Show full text]
  • An Empirical Study to Validate the Technology Acceptance Model in Lebanon
    Towards the Acceptance of RSS to Support Learning: An empirical study to validate the Technology Acceptance Model in Lebanon Dr. Ali Tarhini1, Dr. Mohammad Hassouna2, Dr. Muhammad Sharif Abbasi3 and Dr. Jorge Orozco4 1School of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University London, UK 2Department of Computing and Information Systems, University of Greenwich, UK 3Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Sindh University, Pakistan 4Department of Information System, Brunel University London, UK [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: Simpler is better. There are a lot of “needs” in e-Learning, and there’s often a limit to the time, talent, and money that can be thrown at them individually. Contemporary pedagogy in technology and engineering disciplines, within the higher education context, champion instructional designs that emphasize peer instruction and rich formative feedback. However, it can be challenging to maintain student engagement outside the traditional classroom environment and ensure that students receive feedback in time to help them with ongoing assignments. The use of virtual learning platforms, such as Blackboard Learn, and web feed syndication, using technology such as Rich Site Summaries (RSS), can help overcome such challenges. However, during an initial pilot at an institution in Lebanon, only 21% of students reported making use of both these facilities. In this study, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to guide the development of a scale to be used to investigate antecedents to the use of web feeds. The proposed scale was reviewed by 4 experts and piloted with 235 students. The collected data were analysed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique based on AMOS methods.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Podcasting in Effective Curriculum Renewal
    ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology Vol. 18, No. 2, July 2010, 105–118 The role of podcasting in effective curriculum renewal Ming Niea*, Alejandro Armellinia, Sue Harringtonb, Kelly Barklambb and Ray Randallb aBeyond Distance Research Alliance, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; bSchool of Psychology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK (TaylorCALT_A_492849.sgmReceived and Francis 17 February 2010; final version received 27 April 2010) 10.1080/09687769.2010.492849ALT-J,[email protected] MingNie &Research Article Francis (print)/1741-1629 2010 in Learning Technology(online) This paper reports on a case study into the contribution of podcasting to the curriculum transformation of two distance-taught master’s programmes. Both programmes attract work-based Occupational Psychology practitioners, most of whom are in full-time employment. Challenges faced by the course team included adding flexibility to the curricula, increasing learner engagement (both with learning materials and feedback) and reducing learner isolation. As part of a coordinated enhancement effort, which included changes to curriculum design and delivery, 59 podcasts were introduced into the curriculum over a 12-month period. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from students and staff throughout the study. Action research ensured a regular flow of relevant evidence informing each stage of the renewal process. Evidence suggested that the students’ learning experiences improved as a result of four key benefits associated with the integration of podcasting in learning design: personalisation; an additional and different format for providing clear and engaging guidance, support and feedback; increased flexibility and mobility within the curricula; and ‘design once, deliver many times’ with minimum adaptation.
    [Show full text]
  • Educational Design of Short, Audio-Only Podcasts: the Teacher and Student Experience
    Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2010, 26(3), 386-399 Educational design of short, audio-only podcasts: The teacher and student experience Lucy Taylor The University of Sydney Steve Clark The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study on the use of podcasting in higher education. The study was conducted during 2007 and 2008 and involved students from 20 units of study. Research data was gathered by distributing an in-class survey to 4584 enrolled students, with 39% (1780) of students completing the survey. Qualitative data was gathered by conducting student focus groups, with a total of 158 students participating, and interviewing teaching staff on their podcasting experiences. The results identified three broad approaches to podcasting employed: re- framed podcasts, or content reproduced in multiple media (e.g., textbook chapters summarised as podcast episodes); complementary podcasts that added extra information to enhance the student learning experience; and supplementary podcasts that re-design and broadcast content previously presented in class. Introduction With each new technology created and disseminated into the global market today, there is a rush by academics to find novel ways to implement and apply these devices in their learning and teaching. Many technologies were not originally intended or designed to be used in the educational field and are often referred to as “edutainment devices” (Egenfeldt-Neilsen, 2005 as cited in Wheeler, 2009). Wheeler (2009) identified 3 common edutainment devices: iPods, global positioning systems, and smart phones not developed for learning, emphasising that “academics require a good understanding of potential teaching applications” if these devices are to be successfully re-purposed into a learning and teaching context.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Economy of the Internet1 Korinna Patelis
    The Political Economy of the Internet1 Korinna Patelis Dept. of Media and Communications Goldsmiths College University of London June 2000 1 This thesis was supervised by Pr. J. Curran and examined by Pr.C. Levy (internal examiner) and Pr. C. Sparks (external examiner) 1 ABSTRACT This thesis contributes to the critique of and attempts to supersede a dominant approach to the Internet which sees in the Internet the locus of mythical changes and the cure for a number of the ills besetting contemporary society. It does so by presenting and analysing empirical research which situates Internet communication squarely within socio-economic structures. The empirical research presented relocates the Internet within the current wider turn towards commercial expansion in the sphere of communication and the neo-liberal call for the deregulation of media industries. The complexity of the policy frameworks within which this latter is articulated in the US and Europe is examined. The thesis positions Internet communication at the intersection of key capitalist industries, including telecommunications, Internet service provision, on-line content provision and the software industry. Data according to which the pre-existing economic structures prevalent in these industries produce a series of structural inequalities which define Internet communication are presented. It is further argued that such structural inequalities, the boundaries within which on-line communication occurs, are the result of the interlacing of the industries in question, an interlacing defined by the cultural and industrial functions of the industries. In other words, particular industrial and cultural environments are produced by the interplay of these industries - an interplay which the thesis calls signposting.
    [Show full text]