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Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News
Consumption
Yuval Cohen, Marios Constantinides, Paul Marshall
To cite this version:
Yuval Cohen, Marios Constantinides, Paul Marshall. Places for News: A Situated Study of Context
in News Consumption. 17th IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT), Sep
2019, Paphos, Cyprus. pp.69-91, �10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_5�. �hal-02544615�
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in
News Consumption
Yuval Cohen
1
, Marios Constantinides
2
, and Paul Marshall
3
1
2
3
Abstract. This paper presents a qualitative study of contextual fac-
tors that affect news consumption on mobile devices. Participants re-
ported their daily news consumption activities over a period of two weeks
through a snippet-based diary and experience sampling study, followed
by semi-structured exit interviews. Wunderlist, a commercially available
task management application and note-taking software, was appropri-
ated for data collection. Findings highlighted a range of contextual fac-
tors that are not accounted for in current ‘contextually-aware’ news de-
livery technologies, and could be developed to better adapt such tech-
nologies in the future. These contextual factors were segmented to four
areas: triggers, positive/conducive factors, negative/distracting factors
and barriers to use.
Keywords: News Consumption · Mobile · Snippet technique · Context
Awareness · Contextual Factors
1 Introduction
News consumption is changing rapidly thanks to digital methods of consump-
tion, reinforced by almost ubiquitous handheld mobile devices. Social networking
platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and even direct messaging platforms such as
WhatsApp and Snapchat are becoming de facto distribution channels for news
stories. This wrests control over how news is presented to and consumed by
users away from publishers [40]. Furthermore, news content is increasingly being
presented in a ‘contextually-aware’ fashion, according to topics and locations.
While there has been a significant concern about and analysis of how emerg-
ing news consumption patterns can lead to the formation of ‘filter bubbles’ [41,
45], and how fake news stories spread through social networks [33], there has been
little focus on understanding exactly how social and personal context affect news
consumption habits (cf. [22]). The study presented in this paper first aims to
identify contextual factors relevant to news consumption, especially those of a
more qualitative and experiential nature, which have typically been overlooked
in previous research. Such research often defines context quite broadly [1] but
tends to focus on objective quantifiable aspects of context, such as geographical
location [19]. Our aim is to focus on what contextual factors are important prior
2 Y. Cohen et al.
to trying to use sensor data to identify them. Arguably, prior work has tended to
focus on those contextual factors that are straightforward to measure rather than
most salient from the users’ perspective. Furthermore, the study aims to explore
the effects of any identified contextual factors on user behaviour related to news
consumption, and the influence it has on the news consumption experience.
Our findings highlight a range of social, cultural, affective and individual
factors that drive the manner in which users consume news. We discuss these in
relationship to opportunities for the development of new types of context-aware
and adaptive news applications.
2 Background
2.1 Mobility and Context in HCI
The shift towards consumption on mobile devices is not an isolated phenomenon
within news consumption, and can be categorised as part of a larger trend de-
scribed by social scientists as a ‘mobility turn’ [56]. This perspective recognizes
that human interaction with technologies is increasingly distributed over both
time and space, and occurs in disparate social and physical contexts. Dourish &
Bell [23] focus on mobility in the context of urbanism, and treat it as a spatial
construct in which individuals render a space meaningful by acting in a certain
way. Some approaches in social sciences describe a set of codes that govern in-
teractions or non-interactions between individuals in public spaces [25]. Other
perspectives, more relevant to the current study, have focused on the role of tech-
nologies in the isolation of individuals from their environment, creating “solitude
and similitude” [3, 26].
An additional area of mobility research is studies of mobile work. While news
reading can generally be considered a non-work task, studies of mobile work have
the potential for generalizable insights. For example, Perry et al. [46] note the
existence of ‘dead times’–periods of time which workers spend riding various
forms of transportation or waiting for them to arrive, which creates opportunity
for news reading on mobile devices [20]. Other studies have focused on issues such
as battery life, connectivity and device limitations–all issues with relevance to
everyday mobile information needs [10]. User experience of news applications has
also been studied, particularly within the young generations, revealing factors
such as quick understanding, consistency, fun, diversity, and interests [57].
A large body of research in relation has focused on context in the develop-
ment of recommender systems. A comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art
news recommendation systems can be retrieved from [30]. In addition to partic-
ular challenges of news recommendations (e.g., recency aspects), the advanced
capabilities of today’s smartphones open a new road to enhance and transform
news consumption to a more personalized experience. The continuous connec-
tivity and access to smartphones’ sensors enable aspects of user’s context to
be incorporated into interaction with mobile apps. For example, Appazaar pro-
posed by Bohmer et al. [38], generates app recommendations combining the ac-
tual app usage and user’s current context. Similarly, Tavakolifard [54] leveraged
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 3
users’ location information to provide tailored news recommendation. Pessemier
et al. [17] demonstrated the potential of a context-aware content-based recom-
mendation engine which induces higher user satisfaction in the long run, and at
the same time enables the recommender to overcome the cold-start problem and
distinguish user preferences in various contextual situations.
Context in relation to news consumption has also been studied by analyz-
ing social media behaviour. Social networking platforms such as Facebook and
Twitter are becoming de facto distribution channels of news. Many apps lever-
age knowledge from users’ social activities to recommend and deliver targeted
news feed. Pulse, for example, developed by LinkedIn, is an example of one
such app that delivers personalised news from a user’s professional network. Lu-
miNews [31], another example, leverages users’ location, social feed, and their
in-app actions to automatically infer their news interests. These, both implicit
and explicit, signals were found to improve recommendations and improve user’s
satisfaction over time.
2.2 News Consumption and Adaptive News Interfaces
Data from Reuters [40] shows that the use of smartphones to view news media
is rapidly growing, and is seen as the future for the news industry, especially
with younger demographics [44] – a transformative change from times when
mobile devices were thought of as “supplementary” to news-reading [58]. The
Reuters report discusses ‘gateways’ through which news is discovered, such as
search, social networks, and news-reading apps. It distinguishes between the
different roles that Facebook and Twitter play in news consumption – initiated
consumption vs. casual or play a central role in the discovery and presentation
of content. However, while these platforms increasingly direct people to online
news content (and play a role in the spreading of ‘fake news’ (e.g., [33]), we still
know little about the contextual factors that lead people to choose to consume
that content in particular situations.
Previous work relating to contextually-aware news consumption technology
has focused on appropriation of features and sensing technology within existing
technological platforms. One of the uses for such appropriated data is the devel-
opment of adaptive interfaces systems that ‘learn’ user habits and use patterns,
and adapt a user interface to better match those patterns [28]. Constantinides
et al. [14, 15] developed ‘Habito News’, an Android news app that presented
participants with live news items while simultaneously logging frequency, time
spent and location of reading, as well as speed and article completion rate using
scroll-tracking. The goal of this research was to profile and classify reading habits
into typical patterns of use, and to use those classifications as background to the
development of adaptive, context-dependent news-reading interfaces to match
them. Other notable work in this area [4, 54] has focused on customization of
content, rather than adaptation of the interface through which it is presented.
The current study aims to understand the contextual factors relating to news
consumption in order to understand if they might be classifiable in a way that
could drive the adaptation of content or the interface on which it is read.
4 Y. Cohen et al.
3 Method
In recent years, HCI researchers have used a variety of in-situ methods that were
previously limited to psychology and social sciences to better understand user
behaviour in general and context of use in particular. Some methods, such as
ethnography, typically require a researcher to be present among participants in
order to collect data [55], while others such as diary studies and experience sam-
pling rely on self-reporting by participants. Diaries have been used in studies of
information needs, with computerized [2, 9, 11, 32] and non-computerized [12, 18,
43] apparatus. The experience sampling method (ESM) has been used to obtain
in-situ information that is more real-time [9, 10, 13], and can be supplemented
by interviews aided by memory cues based on participant responses [7, 8, 36, 39].
A particular focus of self-reporting studies has been to lower the data entry
and overall participation burden inherent in such studies, especially when entries
are done under mobile conditions. Brandt et al. [6] proposed a ‘snippet’ technique
in which participants chose an input modality that they were most comfortable
with, and captured small pieces (‘snippets’) of information about their experience
in-situ. These later served as cues for a more detailed web-based diary. Sohn et
al. [52] used an adaptation of the technique, as did Church et al. [10], where
the snippet technique was used in combination with experience sampling and a
diary study to explore daily information needs.
In the current study, snippets were used in combination with event-based
ESM, triggered by participants’ news reading. Participant responses to snippets
were used as the basis for more detailed diary questions, and also served as
memory cues during exit interviews. The user study consisted of three parts: (a)
an instruction email; (b) snippet and diary questions; and (c) an exit interview.
Fig. 1. Snippets and diary questions via the Wunderlist app
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 5
A Instruction email: Participants received an email that included the study
brief, installation and sign-up instructions for the Wunderlist app
4
, and ex-
planations on the types and timing of the questions that would be sent to
them along with examples of how to answer the snippets, seeing as the snip-
pets were designed to be more open and vague than the diary questions.
B Snippets and Daily Questions: Participants were sent two sets of questions
every day through Wunderlist–snippets and diary questions, over a period of
two weeks. Snippets were sent every morning, asking participants to add a
short text or a picture of the context in which they consumed news that day.
Sending times varied from one day to another, so as to minimize the poten-
tial cognitive bias associated with scheduled experience sampling alerts [13].
During the first 3-4 days of participation, instructions were given with ex-
amples (Fig. 1). In following days, the examples were removed. Four to five
diary questions were sent every evening. Questions were limited in number
so as not to impose too high a burden on participants, and were usually
open ended so as to not limit the scope of responses. While questions var-
ied in wording and order from one day to another, so they would not seem
repetitive to participants, they were focused on four relatively distinct areas.
Table 1 contains descriptions of these areas, as well as several examples for
questions participants were asked about them. Initially, all participants re-
ceived the same questions, which were modified from day to day in order to
attain more detailed information about participant habits. However, as the
goal of the study was exploratory and data analysis progressed throughout,
the diary questions were customized for each participant on a daily basis.
C Exit interviews: Upon the ‘snippets and diary questions’ phase completion,
participants were interviewed. Interviews were conducted either in person
or via Skype, and were audio-recorded for later transcription and analysis.
Each interview lasted between 20 to 30 minutes, and included three parts:
(a) general and demographic data such as age and occupation; (b) targeted
questions about the participant’s responses during the situated study; and
(c) questions about their experience regarding the data collection method.
3.1 Data Analysis
An iterative approach to data collection was taken, whereby collected snippets
and diary responses were sampled on a daily basis and compared to concepts and
insights that had begun to emerge. Interview audio was transcribed verbatim.
Transcripts were then thematically analyzed [5]:
Open Coding: snippets, diaries and interviews were coded line-by-line using
the NVivo qualitative data analysis software; pertinent statements were labelled.
Axial coding: relationships were identified between the concepts and cate-
gories that emerged during open coding. We sought to discern the phenomenon
4
https://www.wunderlist.com/
6 Y. Cohen et al.
Table 1. Diary Question Topics and Examples
Question Topic Examples
Triggers for news-reading experiences – What made you want to read (or listen to,
or watch) the news today?
– Why did you choose to read, watch or listen
to the news at this specific time? (more than
one answer is OK)
Environment and surroundings (e.g.
concurrent activities, distractions,
public or social settings)
– What did you like about your reading envi-
ronment? What did you dislike?
– Were you around others while reading? If
yes did this affect your reading in any way?
– Did anything bother or distract you while
reading? If so what was it?
Feelings about news consumption ex-
perience as a whole
– Did you find the experience: positive, nega-
tive or neither? (please explain if possible)
– Did reading the news affect your mood in
any way? If yes in what way?
Reasons for ending a news-reading
experience
– Why did you stop reading?
– What made you stop reading?
at hand (i.e. news consumption), with an additional emphasis on causal, con-
textual and intervening conditions, as these were the focus of the research, and
would be the basis for later analysis. Analytic memos were used to note and
highlight developing themes.
Themes were reviewed in a manner roughly corresponding to the six phases
of thematic analysis set out by Braun and Clarke [5], though the process was
recursive rather than linear, as noted by Braun and Clarke – we moved be-
tween phases as needed, repeating and re-evaluating themes and coded text as
necessary.
3.2 Participants
Participants were recruited through personal contacts, social network posts, and
notice-board adverts at three university campuses. The advert included infor-
mation about remuneration, inclusion criteria and a link to an online sign-up
form. The inclusion criteria required participants to live in the UK, be 18 years
of age or above, use an iPhone or an Android based-smartphone (for purposes of
compatibility with the data collection app), and read the news on a regular basis
using a digital device, so that digital consumption habits could be gauged. The
signup form asked respondents to enter contact and demographic information,
and included several questions intended to confirm that participants meet the
inclusion criteria. This information was also used to diversify the study sample
in terms of age, gender and students vs. non-students. It was also used to gauge
commute time. Each participant was remunerated with a small payment in cash
or transfer upon completion of the study, and one larger value Amazon voucher
was drawn between all participants.
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 7
Seventeen knowledge workers were recruited for the main user study (ten
female). Participant ages ranged from 22 to 47 (M=30, SD=8). Fourteen partic-
ipants lived in London, and three lived outside of it but commuted to the city
on a daily basis. Eleven participants were students, and six were professionals.
3.3 Apparatus
The Wunderlist platform was used to implement the diary study and the ‘snip-
pet’ technique/experience sampling components of the study. Wunderlist pro-
vides a basic tier of its platform and apps free of charge. Therefore, participants
were not required to pay for downloading or using the app.
Participants installed the Wunderlist app on their mobile phone, where they
would receive notifications of new snippets or diary questions, which they could
tap in order to view and respond to each of these respective items. The app
allows users to enter text in several fields: the ‘task’ fields adjacent to the task-
completion checkboxes, a ‘notes’ area for freeform entry of text, and a comments
thread. Users were not instructed where to answer, and were given the freedom
to answer as they chose. On the researcher’s side, participants were managed
from Wunderlist’s software for Mac, with each participant being added as a ‘list’
that was shared by the researcher with the participant. Both the researcher and
the participant could freely add, edit and annotate items on the list.
4 Results
4.1 Triggers for reading the news
Triggers were specific reasons described by participants for consuming news in
a particular situation.
Break from study or work
A theme with nearly universal prevalence among participants was the use of
news consumption as a break from a different activity that usually required a
higher level of concentration. Reading, rather than listening or watching, was
usually cited as the way in which news was consumed. A very frequently dis-
cussed rationale for reading news during a break was that it is an activity that
still requires engagement, but not at the level required by work or study.
“[...] it’s sort of a quality break [...] switching to something that’s relatively
similar, the same kind of concentration is involved, but it’s still different enough
that it provides a rest from what I was working on.” P2 - Interview
Many participants described reading the news as something that didn’t need
the same level of concentration as work, and therefore provided an opportunity
to restore their ability to focus:
“If I’m really burnt out I won’t absorb any of the news, but it gives me
something to focus on that’s not concentrated on writing or coding or any of the
other things that I’m supposed to be doingA few hours later I will be ‘what did I
read again?”’ P3 Interview
8 Y. Cohen et al.
Furthermore, a number of participants mentioned the discrete nature of news
content as being conducive to their subsequent resumption of work. For example,
P2 (Interview) explained: “[...] it also has a beginning and the end - when I finish
reading an article I go back to work. I can obviously read another article, but
that will extend it by only a little”.
Morning habit
A majority of participants indicated that they consume news in bed or while
preparing and eating breakfast. Participants described this behaviour as habit-
ual, except in unforeseen circumstances such as lateness or being in a hurry.
This morning habit is corroborated in a study conducted by Bhmer et al., which
found news apps to be the most popular in the morning [37].
Two reasons were generally cited. The first is, to use the term given by several
participants, ‘wanting to know what’s going on in the world’:
“When I just wake up and I want to know what’s going on in the world, so
in the morning I always check it [...] it’s a habit, because I wake up... I always
wake up quite early, so I can take my time to start easily, have my breakfast,
and while I have my breakfast I’ll scroll down the news.” P5 - Interview
The second reason for morning news consumption was procrastination. This
was cited either together or apart from the need to be updated about the news.
“Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to start immediately with working, and I
just need to ease myself into it” P2 - Interview
Notifications and widgets
Notifications are small displays of text that appear on a computing device,
usually a smartphone or a tablet, and alert the user to a certain occurrence or
event. Widgets are slightly larger ‘windows’ of content, that usually show a string
of informative text and an image or graphic; notifications are momentary and
disappear within a few seconds while widgets permanently reside on the user’s
screen until they are removed. Both served as triggers for news consumption.
Participant responses indicated that they frequently decided whether to tap
on a notification or widget to read a story in more depth. One indicated that this
decision depends on the type of story, and whether she is otherwise busy. At times
she will be content with consuming a news item exclusively via a notification.
“The push notifications from the Guardian app keep me informed without my
having to read the story (or do anything).” P11 - Snippet
This participant later explained in detail: “[...] ’England won the Ashes’.. I
don’t actually need more information than that, for example [...] It’s completely
dependent on how interested I am in the story and also what I’m doing at the
time [...] they pop up at any time during the day, and I dont always have the
liberty to check it immediately, because I’m doing something else, and sometimes
I forget what it was before I’ve come back.” P11 - Interview
Social feed skimming
Participants described a logic for news consumption via social media that is
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 9
similar to the one they described for notifications and widgets i.e. a triage of
whether to explore an item further or not.
“I pick up a lot of stuff that I read through the news feed of my Facebook
page, [...] I find that more convenient way of accessing it, because it’s sort of
summarized in the posts that appear in my news feed” P14 - Interview
“[I] scroll down and see if there’s anything interesting [...] If you’re interested
then you’ll click on it [...] If not then just on to the next one. So it’s just a quick
scan of things to see if something really interesting has happened” P14 - Interview
Waiting for people or technology
People were often triggered to look at news items when waiting either for people
or for processes to complete. This can be viewed news consumption filling ‘dead
times’ [46] or consumption of news in ‘interstices’ [20].
“[...] you’re waiting for a friend for like an hour or something [...] it becomes
a bit tedious, because I know that I’m using this just to fill time, as opposed to
when I’m actually interested in something to read. [...] sometimes I really enjoy
it when I’m actually saying ‘OK, I actually want to see what’s going on today’,
but other times it’s just because I don’t have anything to do... It’s just to check
whatever is going on there” P8 - Interview
Another participant discussed the effect of anticipation while waiting for
people more poignantly, but pointed out that he sees news reading as a more
productive ‘time-killing’ exercise than playing a game.
“[...] it’s really just killing time until something happens or until someone will
meet me; It can be a bit frustrating, because if it’s something that you are waiting
for and you know it starts at a certain time, you can kind of judge what you will
read, but if you’re waiting for someone, it’s frustrating - they’ll arrive and you
are halfway through reading something... Because I tend not to go back to things
as well, I think it’s not as much of a relaxing experience. It’s more killing time
in a more productive way than playing a game, which I do sometimes.” P14 -
Interview
Situations of waiting for a certain process or machine to finish were also noted.
The difference here, as opposed to waiting for a person, is that participants could
better gauge the beginning and end time of the waiting experience.
Media multitasking
Participants indicated that they sometimes read news on a digital device as
a secondary activity while consuming content in another medium, such as tele-
vision, but not being fully engaged (cf. [48, 49]) . One participant noted this
happens when he is watching a television show together with his partner, and
is not particularly interested in its content. In such a scenario of split attention
between different forms of media, he will continuously evaluate the perceived
benefit from each source and compare between them, terming this process as an
‘interest/engrossment trade-off’.
“I will definitely scan a bit between the two [...] I guess it depends on how
engrossed I am in either; I guess if the movie [...] has a slow part, then I’ll move
back to the news, and if the news is really interesting, then I’ll get engrossed
10 Y. Cohen et al.
in that and focused on that, and then once I’m done I’ll look back up and say
‘this is going on’ in the movie [...] I’ll go back and forth. So it’s about the in-
terest/engrossment trade-off between the two, which will make me go back and
forth.” P3 - Interview
4.2 Conducive contextual factors
We define conducive contextual factors as those that have a positive effect on par-
ticipants’ news consumption experiences. Participants generally described these
factors as being associated with a more pleasurable experience, and being more
receptive to richer and longer content.
Alertness and mood
Many participants highlighted how their emotional or cognitive capabilities in
a given context are reflected in their likelihood of consuming ‘hard news’ - topics
such as war or government corruption, or ‘soft news’ - topics such as celebrity
news or ‘man bites dog’ stories [34]. This ‘suitability spectrum’ of hard news vs.
soft news to the affective state of a user is outlined in Fig. 2.
One participant stated that a low level of alertness greatly reduces her at-
tention and receptiveness to content, even to the point of stop reading.
“[...] that’s a big factor [being tired]. I know that if I start reading an article
and I’m tired I feel like I’m just LOSING IT, I feel like nothing is coming into
my brain.. Nothing is going in. So at that point I stop” P2 - Interview
Another participant stated that while she will sometimes read news before
she goes to sleep at night, she does not want to read upsetting stories .
“I won’t try to read anything too harrowing [before going to sleep], you know,
we’re talking just interesting stuff... I try not to read about ISIS before I go to
bed” P12 - Interview
Another participant described the positive end of this spectrum in reference
to reading a newspaper on Sunday.
“Sunday is like the one day where I [...] just relax in the morning, because I
just have such a busy life [...] that’s my treat for Sunday, to just be able to lie in
bed with a cup of tea and read the papers [...] I will read something much more
in-depth, and longer, because I have the luxury of the time.” P11 - Interview
Background activity
The issue of the suitability of different kinds of background activities for
news consumption was one that split participants. Some stated that background
sounds are conducive for working. Others expressed ambivalence towards back-
ground sounds while reading. Additionally, several participants were distracted
by background activity, though the types of factors that would cause this varied
between participants.
“I’m actually used to it for my studies [...] having music in the background. It
doesn’t divert my attention, it only makes me know there’s something playing in
the background; I can’t concentrate without it. So when I want to listen to music
and read the news, I stay concentrated, it doesn’t split my attention. I mean, it
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 11
Fig. 2. User state - News consumption spectrum.
does split my attention, but I’m focused on the news, not on the music.” P6 -
Interview
Another participant indicated that the background environment will affect
the type of media she will choose for news consumption.
“[...] when I’m just walking on the street, I cannot read something and con-
centrate, so I prefer to listen to the podcast.” P1 - Interview
Other participants noted visual and physical aspects of background activity
as most affecting their news consumption experience. Some suggested that visual
distractions were more detrimental to concentration than auditory ones.
“There was a lot of movement in the room, which I caught from the corner
of my eye, so that kind of broke my attention [...] It can be less distracting
[auditory stimulations], you can get into a sort of ‘zone’, where you tune it out.”
P2 - Interview
Other participants noted crowding as a detrimental factor to reading on
public transport. One noted that he perceives as a personal safety issue.
“If I’m standing somewhere super-crowded, I’m not going to grab my phone
and read the news, like on the bus [...] same with the overground [train] during
rush-hour. It can get packed and I’m not going to break out my phone [...] it’s
just uncomfortable to do so, and also someone can just grab it and walk away”
P3 - Interview
Another participant noted privacy aspects of standing within a dense crowd
on the train.
“I tend to see other people looking. You get the feeling like someone else is
also watching what you’re reading, and that’s not really nice and makes me a bit
uncomfortable.” P7 - Interview
It should be noted that even with the consensus among participants as to
the distracting effects of crowding, some participants viewed them as tolerable
and were not willing to forego news-reading unless the situation was extreme.
“Sometimes it’s hard to [...] it’s too crowded to even get your phone out and
have a look at it [...] it’s loud and it’s bumpy [...] you can’t really focus on what
you’re looking at, but equally it’s something to do while you’re spending those 12
minutes or however long on the tube.” P11 - Interview
12 Y. Cohen et al.
4.3 Negative contextual factors
We define negative contextual factors as those that hampered participants news
consumption experience, possibly causing them to alter it in some way, such as
changing to another device, but not to end it.
Connectivity
Lack of Internet connectivity was cited by participants as a factor that hampers
news consumption. They discussed various responses to this type of situation.
While dedicated article-saving apps such as Pocket
5
have been developed for
offline reading scenarios, a prevalent solution among study participants was to
open multiple tabs in their mobile Internet browser - an item ‘hoarding’ of sorts,
though one user did note his frustration at the lack of serendipitous discovery.
“Usually on the public transport, I open news sites in different tabs and I
activate it. So I find that not very comfortable, because in fact, I need to check
the link, it doesn’t go through because there is no signal.” P6 - Interview
Another participant noted the use of the offline mode in the news app she uses
on her phone. “[...] the Guardian app actually works offline, you just can’t get
the pictures and there’s certain content that you can’t get, but you can actually
get the stories, even if you haven’t got a signal, which is amazing, and really
good.” P11 - Interview
For several participants, switching to a print newspaper was the preferable
option in a situation of no connectivity.
“[...] if I’m on the tube as well, I tend to pick up the free papers... I read the
news that way, so there’s not much point in me looking at the BBC website when
I’m on the tube. And also, I can’t get reception [...]” P11 - Interview
As noted, some participants preferred to avoid the news consumption expe-
rience altogether when not connected.
“If I’m in the tube, I cannot access the Internet, so I don’t think I will do
anything if I was on the tube.” P1 - Interview
Suboptimal smartphone experience
There was a consensus among participants that news-reading on a phone, while
unavoidable on many occasions, did not provide what they perceived to be the
optimal experience. A prevalent reason cited for this is that the phone is not con-
ducive to serendipitous discovery of additional content. One participant, noting
that the reading experience itself was satisfactory, suggested that following links
was more difficult on the phone.
“The actual reading experience is fine when you’re reading an article that you
want to read and it’s just text [...] but I feel like it doesn’t facilitate easy links
into other similar things [...] You can kind of scroll down through the article and
there are related items on certain websites, at the bottom. I think it’s something
to do with the screen size, that it just feels very claustrophobic [...] If there
was something in there that you wanted to read more about, it’s not as simple
5
https://getpocket.com/
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 13
as opening another tab in your browser on your laptop, for example.” P14 -
Interview
Another commonly cited issue was that certain websites were not customized
for viewing on the small screen of the phone. One participant noted this in regard
to serendipitous discovery while reading another piece of news.
“[...] it’s also frustrating when people haven’t [...] translated things properly
for mobile, which happens quite a lot, where text doesn’t resize properly. All of
that sort of stuff makes it less, you know, comfortable.” P14 - Interview
It should be noted that this perception of inconvenience was not universal
among participants. Several, particularly younger, participants stated that a
smartphone is their preferred device to consume news. One noted that when
having the choice between her phone and a larger device such as a laptop, she
will still choose her phone.
“[...] for reading at home, it’s not on the computer; Basically, I will use my
mobile phone [...] while I’m using the computer and doing some professional
work like typing some important stuff, if I want to have some leisure time, I will
take my mobile phone and send some message to my friends and also look for
some news on my mobile phone.” P1 - Interview
Multitasking
Participants indicated that in certain situations, they will consume news while
performing another concurrent task. Concurrent tasks varied in both type and
location, but generally had the effect of splitting attention, thereby decreasing
engagement and making a breakaway from news consumption more likely.
One participant noted the effect of a concurrent task on the type of content
she will choose to consume.
“[...] if I’m reading on my phone [...] in between things and in a situation
where something else is going on, reading as a way to pass the time [...] If it’s
a story that requires me to think, to process what’s going on, what the page is
telling me, then I can’t really get into it that much.” P2 - Interview
Another participant noted productivity as a driver for multitasking while
consuming news, and reiterated the effect it has on the type of content consumed.
“[...] if I’m at home I tend to feel more comfortable reading or watching the
news when I’m doing something else [...] I tend to feel like I’m being unproductive
if I spend an extended period of time reading or watching the news, so I tend
to do it when I take a break from something else or am actually engaged in
doing something else, so I sometimes have the news channel on while I’m sort
of tidying up, or doing something that doesn’t require [...] intellectual focus [...].
When I’m consuming news while I’m doing something else, it tends to be smaller
articles or news.” P14 - Interview
The tentativeness of user engagement in news consumption was also noted in
the context of multitasking. One participant noted, in the context of reading on
public transport, that news will always be secondary in terms of cognitive effort.
This directly relates to the utilitarian role he assigned to news consumption.
“I don’t think that there are many news items I would completely block ev-
erything out and not quite notice there’s something else happening, it’s like [...]
14 Y. Cohen et al.
just a distraction half the time. If I’m going to catch up with the news, it’s really
not important.” P17 - Interview
Together, these statements indicate that there are instances in which par-
ticipants will knowingly and willingly enter a situation in which they are not
devoting their full attention to the news consumption experience, but it is nev-
ertheless viewed by them as an appropriate activity.
4.4 Barriers to use
Barriers are factors that lead to a situation where a user who would otherwise
consume news chooses not to. This includes while already consuming news and
choosing to end the experience, or alternatively choosing not to consume news
in a certain situation at all.
‘Me time’
Several participants described some instances of their travel time on public
transport as one in which they do not want to engage in any form of news
consumption, or even any other activity. They described these occurrences as
opportunities for introspection, reflection on their own thoughts, and even re-
laxation. In this scenario, participants would avoid consuming any sort of media.
“[...] sometimes when you’re walking and you’re on public transport, you just
want your mind to be clear.” P9 - Interview
Another participant described this experience not only as a way to ‘clear
the mind’, but also as an environment in which she is secluded from unwanted
individuals or pieces of information, despite being on a populated train.
“Sometimes I’ll just be ‘this is me time’ [...] no one can get me, I’m not going
to fill my head with more information, there’s enough going on around me, my
head’s spinning with stuff, I just can’t put any more stuff in it, even if it’s a
distraction, I need to relax my mind, and the train, for me, is the only place I
can actually do that.” P12 - Interview
While ‘me time’ describes a positive affective state, it was stated by partici-
pants as a reason for not consuming news, therefore is classified as a barrier.
News overload
Some participants described negative emotions triggered by cumulative or suc-
cessive instances of what they perceived as bad news, i.e. stories of a negative
nature. While all participants who described this chose to stop consuming news
as a result, the differences between them were in the intensity of emotions. One
participant was relatively vivid:
“there are days when [...] especially if there’s been a barrage of [...] Bad news,
recently... Sometime you just want to put your head in the sand and go ‘I don’t
want to know today’.” P11 - Interview
Another participant described a state of disinterest:
“most of the news I don’t find very interesting, like who killed who this week-
end or a famous person that died, you know, doing something stupid, I don’t find
that interesting.” P17 - Interview
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 15
Kinetosis
Several participants noted the issue of dizziness, nausea and an uncomfortable
physical feeling while using a digital device to read in a moving vehicle.
One participant noted that she resolves the issues by only reading books,
using a customized app that rectifies the motion-induced unpleasantness. This
could possibly indicate a desire to carry on with the reading experience despite
the physical obstacle, finding solutions to manage the issue.
“If I’m on public transportation I’ll read a book, I don’t usually read news. [...]
I have a tendency to get motion sickness, and reading a book... I have a particular
app on my phone that makes it very easy to read books, whereas reading pretty
much anything else is very. It gives me motion sickness.” P4 - Interview
Another participant indicated that she will avoid reading while she is stand-
ing on the train, as the simultaneous balancing and reading actions cause dizzi-
ness and nausea, however this does not occur when she is seated.
“[...] if it’s too crowded then I wouldn’t have a place to sit, I will have to hang
on to something like hold the rails or just try to balance myself, and I dont want
to read while I’m doing that, and usually I get this dizziness when I’m trying
to read while I’m balancing... So, I switch to music and I wont read while I’m
standing.” P7 - Interview
For another participant, the way to prevent dizziness is to eliminate reading
altogether and listen to a podcast instead:
“If I was on the bus, if I read news or if I read anything, I will feel dizzy,
so I prefer to listen to podcasts. Also, this applies to when I’m just walking on
the street, I cannot read something and concentrate, so I prefer to listen to the
podcast.” P1 - Interview
5 Discussion
5.1 Main Results
The current study discovered a variety of contextual factors that play an im-
portant role in news consumption, mostly of a phenomenological nature [21] -
relating less to informational and computational aspects of a given context, and
relating more to the social, cultural, affective and behavioural elements that
comprise an individual’s context of use.
The discovery of such contextual factors demonstrates the role of interpreta-
tion and sense-making processes on how users interact with technology, as well
as the dynamic, momentary nature of user actions within a given context. This
is especially noticeable in the fluid patterns of device use in relation to the space
in which they are being used, such as participants’ preference to read news on
their phone at home or at work.
These findings, coupled with a news experience increasingly shaped by mo-
bility, are important to the central finding of this paper–the creation of news
consumption ‘places’ by users. Participants indicated that they appropriate dif-
ferent spaces and devices to create contexts and environments for news consump-
tion that suit specific and dynamic momentary needs and affective states, often
16 Y. Cohen et al.
independently from physical location. These findings link to Harrison and Dour-
ish’s [27] discussion of the creation of place through situated meaning making.
5.2 Theoretical Implications
News consumption is opportunistic: Situation matters more than phys-
ical location
To a considerable degree, the findings of our study demonstrate that users
create their own meaningful contexts for news consumption, adapting and ap-
propriating a wide range of situations. In many, participants saw elements such
as background noise, lack of connectivity, waning alertness or an additional con-
current task not as barriers, but merely as detracting factors in an array of
considerations that shaped their news consumption experience. In certain in-
stances, factors such as suitability of news consumption to a specific situation
took precedence over other detracting factors, suggesting an interplay between
context, affective state, and consumption. In other cases, factors such as kine-
tosis (motion sickness) and the desire for ‘me time’ led to no news consumption
or even technology use at all.
The findings show that the factors affecting participants’ news consumption
habits were not only numerous, but also changed within an experience as a
perceived need to do so arose in ways that were situated [53]. In one example,
participants indicated that they changed their actions in-situ as a result of both
internal and external states. For example, participants indicated that when wait-
ing for other people, they will continuously adapt the type of content they read
in terms of topic and length, in order to suit the waiting time and level of con-
centration they predict they will have. Another example is in the case of media
multitasking, where concurrent activities of watching television and reading the
news encouraged a continuous in-situ reassessment of media consumption prefer-
ences, in what one participant described as an ‘interest/engrossment trade-off’.
Consumption characteristics are shaped by momentary needs and
states into consumption ‘niches’
Examined from a broad perspective, the results of this study indicate that mo-
mentary needs are a primary driver for news consumption. Participants generally
viewed news consumption as a break or leisure activity, which they engaged in
when they wanted to keep their mind busy, fill otherwise ‘dead time’ or in cases
where news consumption is a daily or weekly ritual. Importantly, in some cases,
such as daily or weekly rituals, the needs and context seemed to relate specifically
to supporting the consumption of news content.
While contextual findings were segmented for presentation purposes, the in-
terplay between the momentary needs that drove these factors was just as impor-
tant. For example, a situation where news consumption was triggered by waiting
for someone also included the distracting element of expectation. Participants
indicated that this had an effect both on the type of news they consumed and
on their level of concentration and immersion. It is this interplay that seemingly
connects physical environment, affective state, and type of news being consumed.
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 17
A needs-based approach is an essential part of the assumption that users
appropriate spaces for news consumption. In this appropriation process, users
essentially match a momentary need with the availability of opportunity to re-
alize that need, thereby creating their own unique news consumption ‘places’,
or ‘consumption niches’. Dimmick et al. [20] previously discussed the concept
of ‘niches’ in terms of time and space interstices in which users ‘fit’ their news
consumption, such as with their mobile devices while commuting, or on a desk-
top computer at work. By focusing on aspects of time and space, Dimmick
perhaps addresses elements inherent in a view of context as something to be
measured [20], rather than from the perspective of the individual experiencing
it. Indeed, Dimmick concludes his paper by defining it as a call for further explo-
ration into the intertwining of media consumption in mobile contexts and users
daily lives. The results of the current study add to Dimmick’s work by adding a
phenomenological layer of context to the theory of niches in news consumption.
The act of creating these ‘consumption niches’, and the needs that drive it, point
to news consumption being an opportunistic activity.
5.3 Practical Implications
As this study was exploratory, its goal is to serve as a starting point for future
exploration of the identified contextual factors. While today’s sensing technol-
ogy facilitates easy measurements of movement, lighting and latitude-longitude
coordinates, elements such as user alertness, mood and distraction are not yet
as easy to identify. However, significant advances are being made in classifying
factors such as user mood [35, 51, 24] and boredom [49] from smartphone and
wearable data, and it is likely that smartphones and wearable devices in the near
future might be able to robustly detect users’ affective state [29], which might
have significant implications for the development of new kinds of context aware
news applications. For example, the affective state of an individual could be
used as a proxy to whether they are receptive to content that is ‘hard news’, or
whether they will be more open to ‘soft news’. In other words, a classifier could
predict the ‘user-alertness’ based on user’s emotional state, mobility patterns,
or any other passive data.
Additionally, our work could expand the possibilities of previous adaptive
content models such as the one proposed by Billsus and Pazzani [4] and Tavako-
lifard et al. [54]. Just as importantly, it can expand upon the work started by
Constantinides et al. [14–16] by adding to the range of factors by which adap-
tive interfaces match a user’s habits, preferences and affective state. For example,
factors such as the ‘morning habit’, the ‘break from work or study’, the ‘media
multitasking’, the ‘connectivity’, and the ‘suboptimal smartphone experience’
could be easily identified from smartphones’ sensors. In turn, the raw sensors
signals could be translated into features to train models to detect these high-
level factors. Having such models will be of particular use, for example, in the
multitude of instances where contextual factors affected the length of text that
users would read. For example, more concise descriptions of news content could
be presented when users are more tired or distracted.
18 Y. Cohen et al.
5.4 Limitations
The current study is subject to several limitations in the design and the results
of the study. First, some of the methods used in the study carry the potential
for certain biases. Diaries, being a reflective and self-reported method, have
the potential for retrospective distortions [59]. Similarly, interviews are subject
to recall errors, seeing as they are retrospective conducted even longer after
participants’ actions have taken place. However, the use of memory cues during
interviews [42] and scheduling of the interviews as closely to the in-situ study
as possible [50] were designed to alleviate this. An additional memory-related
limitation pertains to the subset of users who, on several occasions, ‘aggregated’
snippets and diary questions and answered them all at once. While not rendering
the collected data unusable by any means, this behaviour effectively negates the
‘real-time’ qualities of ESM and the value of snippets as memory cues, leaving
the data as a traditional diary study. Similarly, there were also occurrences of
participants responding to snippets, diary questions or both on the following
day after they were sent. Seeing as uncued memory lasts for about one day [50],
this behaviour might introduce some additional retrospective distortions, though
supposedly not substantial ones. Finally, while the sample of 17 participants for
this study is relatively standard for self-reporting studies such as diary studies
and experience sampling, it would be ideal to further explore and gauge the
effectiveness of the methodology presented in this paper, both for situated studies
as a whole, and for news consumption and media studies in particular.
6 Conclusion
This study aimed to discover contextual factors that are of a qualitative nature,
and that are currently not addressed by ‘contextually-aware’ research and soft-
ware frameworks. The study produced findings that indicated a range of social,
cultural and individual factors that drive the manner in which users consume
news, and contextual factors. Most notably, the findings indicated that individu-
als often construct a context of use that is partially or wholly independent of the
space in which their interaction with technology is taking place, reinforces earlier
work by into the appropriation of spaces [27]. Participation rates and statements
indicated a low participation burden, true to the original study design goal.
These results can be of use to the wider HCI community by serving as a
starting point for further research into the phenomenological aspects of context,
and enabling the development of news and media consumption technologies that
will address these contextual factors, such as previous work into adaptive news
interfaces [14]. Additionally, this research may herald further work into the de-
sign of in-situ methods that lower participant data-entry burden, as well as the
appropriation of ‘off the shelf’ software applications for the purpose of in-situ
research.
Places for News: A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption 19
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