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[ecrea] Special Section in Mobile Media & Communication: News Consumption in an Age of Mobile Media (2015, Vol 3:2)
Mon Feb 23 20:28:58 GMT 2015
The OnlineFirst articles for a forthcoming Special Section in Mobile
Media & Communication (2015, Vol 3:2) are out. The special section
focuses on "News Consumption in an Age of Mobile Media" and contains
five original articles and a guest editorial – all of which are
OPEN-ACCESS for 6 months from now.
The social, cultural, and technological phenomenon of mobile news is an
important area of mobile media development, marking a paradigmatic shift
in the accessibility and use of news in everyday life. The special
section brings together a selection of five original articles authored
by scholars from a range of countries on three continents. The reader
will note several themes in the different papers. Playing on
alliteration, these can be seen to be the thematic areas of patterns,
people, place, and participation. The introduction to the Special
Section by Oscar Westlund - News consumption in an age of mobile media:
Patterns, people, place, and participation - introduces these four
areas, and is followed by brief summaries of how the five articles in
the special section contribute to the field. These will be published in
the following order, with full reference details and abstracts below:
Thorson, T., Karaliova, T., Shoenberger, H., Kim, E., & Fidler, R.
(2015). News use of mobile media: A contingency view. Mobile Media &
Communication, 1-19, doi:0.1177/2050157914557692
ABSTRACT:
A mobile contingency model is introduced and used to guide hypotheses
about how the
strength of people’s habits for using an incumbent medium (here, print
newspapers),
their degree of adoption of a newer medium (mobile devices), and their
attitudes about
the importance of professional news sources, influence their use of
mobile devices
for communication functions including entertainment, interpersonal
communication,
following news, financial transactions, and e-commerce. Secondary
analysis of a 2012
U.S. national phone survey is employed. Older respondents use mobile
devices less for
all functions, including following news, tend to be loyal print
subscribers, and highly agree
that it is important for news to be produced by professional news
sources. However,
when the effect of age is controlled, higher levels of education, and to
a lesser extent,
income, still significantly predict agreement about the importance of
professional news
sources. The results demonstrate the crucial impact of news attitudes,
and are largely
supportive of the mobile contingency model. The most important practical
implication
is that newspaper companies should be targeting their mobile
applications not to their
subscribers, but rather to nonsubscribers who have adopted mobile
devices, are highly
educated, and have higher incomes.
Chan, M. (2015). Examining the Influences of news use patterns,
motivations, and age cohort on mobile news use: The case of Hong Kong.
Mobile Media & Communication, 1-17, doi: 10.1177/2050157914550663
ABSTRACT:
Adopting perspectives from media displacement, complementary uses, and
uses and
gratifications theories, this study examines the relationships and
dynamics between
mobile news use and use of other mediums for accessing the news.
Findings from a
national sample in Hong Kong, which has among the highest mobile phone
penetration
rates in the world, found support for all perspectives. Those in the
18–34 and 35–
54 cohorts were mostly multiplatform users of news, yet subgroup
analyses reveal
different patterns of complementary uses and displacement. Moreover,
results showed
that different gratifications predict mobile hard news use and mobile
soft news use.
Implications and future prospects for mobile news are discussed.
Van Damme, K., Courtois, C., Verbrugge, K., & de Marez, L. (2015).What's
APPening to news? A mixed-method audience-centered study on mobile news
consumption, Mobile Media &Communication, 1-18, doi:10.1177/2050157914557691
ABSTRACT:
News is increasingly being consumed on a multitude of media devices,
including
mobile devices. In recent years, mobile news consumption has permeated
individuals’
news consumption repertoires. The main purpose of this study is twofold:
(a) gain
insight in how mobile news outlets infiltrated the broader news media
repertoires
of mobile device owners and (b) understand in what circumstances mobile
news is
consumed within these news media repertoires. The key is to understand
how and
why this widening agency in appropriating various places and social
spaces in everyday
life relates to general news media consumption (Peters, 2012). This
two-phased study
aims to illuminate how mobile device owners position their mobile news
consumption
in relation to other types of news media outlets. First, a guiding
cluster analysis of a
large-scale questionnaire (N= 1279) was performed, indicating three
types of news
consumers. Second, in order to thicken the originally derived clusters,
a mixed-method
study was set up, combining objective data originating from mobile
device logs with more
subjective audience constructions through personal diaries and
face-to-face interviews
(N= 30). This study reveals the Janus-faced nature of mobile news. On
the one hand,
the majority of news consumers dominantly relies on traditional media
outlets to stay
informed, only to supplement with online mobile services in specific
circumstances.
Even then, there is at least a tendency to stick to trusted brand
materials. On the other
hand, these mobile news outlets/products do seem to increasingly
infiltrate the daily
lives of mobile audiences who were previously disengaged with news.
Villi, M., & Matikainen, J. (2015). Mobile UDC: Online media content
distribution among finnish mobile users. Mobile Media & Communication,
1-16, doi: 0.1177/2050157914552156
ABSTRACT:
This paper examines the significance of user-distributed content (UDC)
for news
consumption, thereby offering an innovative take on mass communication
and the
participatory audience. From the viewpoint of media organizations, UDC
is a process by
which the mass media converge with online social networks through the
intentional use
of social media and other platforms and services in an effort to expand
the distribution
of media content. In order to focus specifically on mobile news
consumption, this
paper sheds light on the novel phenomenon of mobile user-distributed
content (mobile
UDC). Mobile UDC is manifested in mobile users’ ability to share online
media content
on a perpetual and ubiquitous basis. The study utilizes the results from
a survey carried
out with Finnish Internet users. The main finding is that mobile
Internet users are more
active in UDC than those who do not use the Internet with mobile
devices. It is thus
argued that mobile UDC, as a developing concept, can be used to explain
the practices
that are characteristic of mobile online news consumption.
Martin, J. (2015). Mobile political news and electoral participation: A
bridge for the democratic divide. Mobile Media & Communication, 1-20.
doi: 0.1177/2050157914550664
ABSTRACT:
This study explores the role of mobile news in democracy by examining
individual-level
variations in mobile election news use based on demographics,
socioeconomic indicators,
and mobile media activity breadth, and, in turn, how mobile news use is
associated with
political participation. Nationally representative data from a
random-sample survey of
American adults (N= 2,250) in the 2010 general election were analyzed to
better explain
who mobile election news users are, how they compare to nonusers, and
whether mobile
news use was associated with voter turnout and mobile campaign donation.
Findings
underscore the significance of mobile media use and mobile news as
phenomena of
emerging importance in the election campaigns, and important
differential patterns in the
relationships of sociodemographics, mobile media, and electoral
participation are discussed.
By providing a nuanced accounting of the socioeconomic and demographic
profile of
mobile election news users and how those individuals differ from
nonusers, this study
enriches explanations of how societal privilege and the benefits of
political engagement are
related in complicated ways to individual-level variations in consuming
and using mobile
election news. Notably, for racial minorities, mobile media may provide
a bridge across the
digital-driven democratic divide and a more effective means of engaging
with digital election
information than other ICTs. Analysis also extends what is known about
how citizens use
mobile news to engage with increasingly personalized election campaigns.
Results indicate
that mobile election news use was a significant positive predictor of
the odds of having
voted and whether individuals used their mobile devices to make
contributions during the
campaign. These findings support arguments that the unique qualities of
mobile devices are
contributing to new and different pathways to political engagement while
also retaining
significance in relation to traditional forms of offline political
participation.
The full reference and link to the guest editorial is:
Westlund, O. (2015). News consumption in an age of mobile media:
Patterns, people, place, and participation, Mobile Media &
Communication, 3(2), 1-9, doi:10.1177/2050157914563369.
Yours Sincerely
Oscar Westlund
--
OSCAR WESTLUND
PhD, Associate Professor
UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication
Box 710, 405 30 Göteborg
University website:
http://www.jmg.gu.se/english/contact/co-workers/westlund_oscar/
Personal website: www.oscarwestlund.com
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