Picture: human eye photo by Vanessa Bumbeers, license Unsplash

Eye tracking study of news interaction on Facebook

The new article by Adrian Vergara, Ignacio Siles, Ana Claudia Castro, and Alonso Chaves, all of Universidad de Costa Rica, explores how Facebook users consume news incidentally through their news feed. The study analyzed the eye movements of 41 social media users, 62% women and 38% men. Participants were university students from different majors. Facebook … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 28 Sep 2020
Picture: man’s reflection on body of water, by Randy Jacob, license Unsplash

ARTICLE: Exposure to falsehoods in news and attempts to verify, from publics’ point of view

Falsehoods circulating online, such as fake news websites, rumours spread on purpose and political deceit, cause considerable concern for contemporary democracies. How do publics react to these concerns? And what do they believe about their own exposure to falsehoods in news? authors of a new research article ask. A comparative online survey related to election … Continued

Tags: , , , , ,
Published: 16 Apr 2020
Picture: untitled by Austin Neill, license Unsplash

ARTICLE: Empowering women in Niger with radio journalism

Radio can be used for reaching marginalised and isolated communities in many regions in the Global South. It is important to see whether information broadcasted is accurate, independent and aligned with listeners’ needs or wishes, Emma Heywood of the University of Sheffield, the author of a new study, writes. In Niger, gender inequality is widespread … Continued

Tags: , , , , ,
Published: 2 Apr 2020
Picture: Sand dust explosion by 11891922, license Pixabay

ARTICLE: Gatekeeping news after publication

Gatekeeping processes online are changing constantly and being affected by so-called secondary gatekeepers. The new article by Alfred Hermida of the University of British Columbia, presents a conceptual framework on the topic. It examines how news items gain attention in the circulation phase: what gatekeeping processes take place after publication. These processes can be observed, … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 18 Mar 2020
Picture: untitled by Priscilla Du Breez, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: “News-finds-me” perception is linked to social media use and political knowledge across countries

Social media has become the most important news source for many, and its use for finding news has increased tremendously over the past years. The “news finds me” perception (NFM) refers to the idea some have, that due to the vast amount of information available online and in social media, they don’t have to actively … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 10 Mar 2020

Deepfakes do not fool people, but still undermine trust in news

So-called deepfake videos do not deceive the audience, but they increase uncertainty and thus decrease trust in news. The result is reported by Loughborough University researchers Cristian Vaccari and Andrew Chadwick. They conducted an online experiment with a statistically representative sample of the British population (N = 2 005). The participants were first asked about … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 2 Mar 2020

Seeing news in a foreign language can stoke racial resentment

The language of news articles can increase racial resentment or -depending on the person- feelings of belonging. The findings come from two online experiments with White Americans (n=620) and supposed Hispanics living in the United States (n=362). In both experiments the participants were shown a total of nine news articles, dealing with politics, sports and … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 19 Feb 2020

ARTICLE: Youth’s digital literacy and civic engagement go together – but only for those who pay attention to news

How do different digital literacy skills and news readership interact in the context of civic engagement? Soo Jung Moon, of Unversity of West Georgia, and Sang Y. Bai, of National Youth Policy Institute, tackled this complex question through a large-scale survey (N = 2 584) of South Korean youths. Moon and Bai asked the respondents … Continued

Tags: , ,
Published: 18 Feb 2020

ARTICLE: Country images are shaped by news sources, not by content

Reading negative or positive news of a particular country alone does not affect the reader’s image of that country. The surprising result was discovered by Chen Yang, of Robert Morris University, and Gi Woong Yun, of University of Nevada. The authors conducted an online experiment with 172 American university students. The participants were directed to … Continued

Tags: , , ,
Published: 11 Feb 2020