Moving Beyond Just the Facts:

1
Moving Beyond Just the Facts The Influence of
Online News on the Content and Structure of
Public Affairs Knowledge William P. Eveland
Jr Krisztina Marton Mihye Seo
EN5608 Week 4 Presentation by Lucy Poon
2

• More and more Americans go online for news.
• Nearly 20 of Americans sought election news
  online during
• the presidential election in 2000, compared
  to lt 5 in 1996.
• Over 1/3 of adults under 30 years old used the
  Web as a source of
• election news.
• A survey showed that
• 1/3 of Americans get news online at least once
  per week
• 15 get online news every day
• half of adults younger than 30 years of age
  get online
• news at least once per week.

Decline in newspaper readership, particularly
prominent among young Americans.
3

• The differences between Print and Online News
• eg, The New York Times and The New York Times on
  the Web
• Content differences are relatively small, rather
  a difference in
• overall structure and organization
• newspaper most important story at the top of
  the front page
• online newspaper
• - only the top few stories represent with
  more than a simple text
• headline on home page
• - other stories are organized by topic
  area, ranking of the stories
• depends on recency
• - use of story index
• Online newspapers use hyperlinks

4

• Effects produced by the difference in structure
  and organization between Print and Online News
• Readers of The New York Times on the Web were
  less likely to
• recall public affairs information
• Users of The New York Times on the Web had more
  structured free
• recall.
• Users of print New York Times had overall
  greater free recall of the
• news stories they read.

Difference in knowledge structure is caused by
the use of story index of the online Times
compared to the print Times.
5

• Effects produced by the difference in structure
  and organization between Print and Online News
• Hyperlinks between stories provided in some
  online information
• sites may also serve to improve knowledge
  structure because they
• communicate to readers how the news of the
  day, or the week, fits
• into a larger picture.

6

• Purposes of the Research Study
• How best to design online news sites to encourage
  learning?
• What features of online news may enhance or
  inhibit learning about public affairs?
• What exactly is learned online simple
  disconnected facts or an interconnected picture
  of the events that together represent public
  affairs?
• To compare online news sites that employ in-text
  hyperlinks to those with articles that simply
  mirror traditional print newspaper articles
  without hyperlinks between stories

7

• Knowledge Content and Structure
• Many common theories of human information
  processing posit
• that memory is constructed of various nodes
  that are connected
• to one another through links.
• Most scholars agree that knowledge is not simply
  the recall of
• recognition of simple facts.
• Some educational psychologists distinguished
  between three
• forms of knowledge
• Declarative Knowledge the act of being aware
  of something or knowing
• that it exists. It is divided two forms
  content and structure.
• Procedural Knowledge refers to knowledge in
  use or the application of
• declarative knowledge.
• Structural Knowledge it mediates the
  translation of declarative knowledge
• into procedural knowledge and facilitates
  the application of procedural
• knowledge. Structural knowledge is the
  knowledge of how concepts within
• a domain are interrelated.

8

• Factual knowledge the content of declarative
  knowledge. It is the
• potentially disconnected tidbits of
  information represented by the
• nodes in human memory.
• Knowledge Structure refers to the manner in
  which these nodes
• are organized or related in memory the
  structure of declarative
• knowledge.
• The research focus on the assessment of
  Knowledge Structure
• Density (KSD) - the simple density or number
  of interconnections
• across concepts within a domain of memory

9

• Learning from Hyperlinked vs Non-Hyperlinked News
• Do individual learn more from hyperlinked or
  non-hyperlinked online news sites?
• Do hyperlinked and non-hyperlinked online news
  sites lead to differences in information
  processing?
• Are there differences in the types of knowledge
  obtained from hyperlinked vs non-hyperlinked
  online news sites?

10

• Hypothesis
• Based on the notion of structural isomorphism,
  cognitive elaboration should be encouraged more
  by a linked than unlinked online news site.
• H1 Elaboration will be greater in the linked
  news condition than the unlinked news condition.
• Linked news could present cognitive difficulties
  for users disorientation, therefore, news sites
  with numerous links between articles should
  generate disorientation than an unlinked news
  site.
• H2 Disorientation will be greater in the linked
  news condition than the unlinked news condition.

11

• Linked web designs may produce lower levels of
  factual knowledge than the unlinked web designs.
• H3 Factual knowledge will be lower in the linked
  news condition
• than the unlinked news condition.
• In-text links should encourage users to consider
  the interrelationships among issues covered in
  the news and thus to recognize more
  interconnections than those exposed to a site
  without the hyperlinks
• H4 Knowledge Structure Density (KSD) will be
  greater in the linked news condition than in the
  unlinked news condition.

12

• Elaboration should have positive influence on all
  forms of knowledge.
• H5a Elaboration will be positively related to
  factual knowledge
• H5b Elaboration will be positively related to
  KSD
• Disorientation may inhibit gains in both factual
  knowledge and KSD.
• H6a Disorientation will be negatively related to
  factual knowledge
• H6b Disorientation will be negatively related to
  KSD

13

• Method
• Participants
• Upper-level undergraduate students
• Average age around 22
• 60 majors in journalism and communication
• A median 3 hours per week of Web use
• Procedures
• Randomly assigned to one of the three conditions
• A control group
• A linked online newspaper group
• An unlinked online newspaper group

14

• Procedures
• Participants in the two experimental conditions
  were exposed to an online newspaper that closely
  resembled The New York Times on the Web.

• Homepage and 25 articles from the
• online Times were downloaded and
• modified to serve as the stimulus for the
• study.
• Advertisements were eliminated from
• the home page and all articles.
• Much of the content of the home page
• were removed.
• Layout of the home page and the New
• York Times label were preserved.

15
Procedures The articles selected were based on
the following systematic criteria a. any dates
appearing in the articles could be modified so
that the stories would appear recent b.
most articles could be considered to be at least
somewhat related to at least one other
article and thus can apply hyperlinks between
articles c. articles represented a reasonable
cross-section of topics from a normal day of
news d. no story would be so time-sensitive that
a typical participant could specifically
remember its occurrence in the weeks prior to the
experiment
16

• Procedures
• Unlinked condition stories could only be
  directly accessed through a story index on the
  home page
• Linked condition not only access to index link,
  but also access between many stories through
  in-text hyperlinks
• Participants in the two experimental group were
  asked to read the online newspaper in a
  supervised computer laboratory for 30 minutes.
• Post-test questionnaire were administered to the
  experimental
• groups.

17

• Results
• No significant difference in elaboration between
  participants in the unlinked news condition
  compared to those in linked news condition. H1
  was not supported.
• No significant difference in disorientation
  between participants in the linked news condition
  compared to those in the unlinked news condition.
  H2 was not supported.
• Subjects in the unlinked news condition scored
  significantly higher on the test of factual
  knowledge than those in the linked news
  condition. H3 was supported.
• Density was greater among those linked condition
  than the unlinked condition. H4 was supported.

18

• Elaboration was not positively related to factual
  public affairs. H5a was not supported.
• Elaboration was positively related to the
  density of public affairs knowledge. H5b was
  supported.
• 6. Disorientation was not negatively related to
  both factual knowledge and KSD. H6a and H6b were
  not supported.

19

• Findings
• A substantial difference between the effects
  observed on factual content and the density of
  knowledge structure regarding public affairs.
• The use of in-text hyperlinks can have beneficial
  effects depending on the type of knowledge
  measured.
• Density appears to be more likely to be
  influenced by cognitive elaboration on news
  content than is simple factual knowledge.
• A nonsignificant tendency for disorientation to
  be more detrimental to density than factual
  knowledge.
• Absence of an association between elaboration and
  factual knowledge.

20

• Conclusion
• What can designers of online news sites gain from
  these findings?
• If the goal is to communicate basic factual
  information, links should be avoided.
• Links seem to benefit those who commonly use the
  Web.
• These experienced users would be able to take
  advantage of the linking structure for forming
  impressions of related issues.
• Learning disconnected facts is greater among
  print or unlinked sources.

21

The End Thank you