Heterogeneity Within Homogeneity:
Impact of online skills on the use of online news media and interactive news features

Michaël Opgenhaffen & Leen d’Haenens, University of Leuven

Communications: the European Journal of Communication Research, 37 (3), 297-316.

Results of an online survey (N=931) reveal that, in contrast with the general belief, college students do not at all seem to be heavy users of online news media and online news features (multimedia, interactivity and hypertext). A cluster analysis shows that the use of online news media and interactive features differs among the students, a majority of them being traditional users and some non-users. Logistic regressions demonstrate that the level of digital skills is a better predictor of news media and interactive features use than demographics. This article invites scholars in online journalism to emphasize on students’ differences rather than on similarities when it comes to measuring the impact of online news use. Our results suggest that digital skills as a prerequisite for using online news media and features should be centrally taken into account in future research.

Many of the studies focusing on the Internet and new technologies use adolescents or college students as subjects under study (e.g., Hargittai, 2008; Jones, Johnson-Yale, Millermaier & Pérez, 2009; McMillan & Morrison, 2006; Ogan & Groshek, 2008; Valenzuela, Park & Kee, 2009). Besides the fact that these samples are convenient and free, the focus on young people is defendable since young people are thought to be early adopters and heavy users of the Internet and online media (Eurobarometer, 2008; Pew Internet, 2002; 2005; 2007).

As a consequence, pre-adults are often studied as a group whose online behaviour is compared with that of other age groups, such as adults (Pew Internet, 2004; Thayer & Ray, 2006) or young teenagers (Livingstone & Bober, 2005). Often the results describe college students as heavy users of online media (e.g., Anderson, 2001; Metzger, Flanagin & Zwarun, 2003; Ogan, Ozakca & Groshek, 2008).

However, media scholars have also demonstrated that young people differ in their online media use and online skills (Hargittai, 2008; Weiser, 2000). Hargittai (2010) stresses that while young users are generally thought of as savvy with digital media, “considerable variation exists even among fully wired college students when it comes to understanding various aspects of Internet use” (p. 108). McMillan and Morrison (2006) recommend media studies to focus more on the differences among young people, even within a group that at first sight could be considered as homogeneous. They further argue that media scholars could benefit from breaking down their research subjects into the smallest possible age categories.

Hence, the main purpose of this article is to elaborate on college students, a specific group of pre-adults between the ages of 18 and 26, and to study their differences in use of online media. More specifically, we focus on the differences in online news media and interactive features.

The popularity of the Internet and online news forces media scholars to elaborate on the differences in online news use in an effort to investigate possible differences in knowledge outcome. Indeed, while studies have demonstrated the superiority of print news over online news in terms of news recall (Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000), online news features may have a positive impact on the ability to learn and understand the news (Dalrymple & Scheufele, 2007; Eveland, Seo & Marton, 2002, Opgenhaffen & d’Haenens, in press). Features allowing control over content (i.e., controlling selection, order, and presentation style of online news stories) tend to enhance concentration and motivation so that cognitive processes such as news attention and the making of associations between new and previously acquired knowledge happen more efficiently (Eveland & Dunwoody, 2002; Tremayne & Dunwoody, 2001; Wise, Bolls, & Schaefer, 2008). The possibility to communicate online with others about a given news item on discussion forums, through email and users’ reactions also impacts learning from online news. These interactive features are found to have a positive influence on the amount of time spent on the site and users' ability to recall news (Warnick, Xenos, Endres, & Gastil, 2005). Eveland (2004) contends that having a discussion about a news item may motivate users to invest in information processing. Other scholars (Kwak, Williams, Wang, & Lee, 2005; Scheufele, 2000) also show that a (political) discussion may have a positive impact on knowledge, assuming that the use of interactive features stimulating online talks about the news may also foster information processing and knowledge acquisition. News users can also contribute content to the news platforms. When confronted with this self-production interactivity news, users not only have to think what to write about or respond to, they also have to decide whether or not they want to participate in the first place. We suggest that this self-directed inquiry or ‘anticipatory elaboration’ (Eveland & Thomson, 2006) positively affects attention to the news, resulting in increased learning.

In other words, college students who do not go online to consume news or those who do not have the skills to use the different online news features in the correct manner run the risk of being less news aware, compared to those who are heavily consuming online news and who are benefiting from all the innovative features on offer. When investigating young people’s news knowledge, one first has to investigate the differences in use of online news.

We start by elaborating on the literature that focuses on the differences in online use instead of online access. Next, we point out how online news should be studied as a heterogeneous object under study, thereby focusing on the different online news platforms and different interactive news features. We then formulate our hypotheses concerning differences in use and the impact of online skills. Finally, results of our online survey are presented.

Differences in online use

Previous studies have stressed that the traditional digital divide in terms of access versus non-access is more and more closing and that more attention should go out to what people really do online once they have access (Hargittai, 2002; 2003; 2008; Peter & Valkenburg, 2006; Van Dijk, 2005; Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003). The shrinking digital divide in access seems especially the case for college students who grew up with the Internet and who, if they do not have a computer at home, have access to the Internet on their university college or university campuses (Eurobarometer, 2008). As stated before, many studies have demonstrated that college students are heavy users of the Internet (Anderson, 2001; Hong, Li, Mao & Stanton, 2007; Metzger, Flanagin, & Zwarun, 2003; Ogan, Ozakca & Groshek, 2008; Pew Internet, 2002). Hence, a shift from a focus on the access to Internet to a focus on the use of the Internet is worthwhile, or as Hargittai (2008, p. 603) stated: “Because this population segment has the largest level of diffusion, considering refined measures of use differences is of particular importance with this group of people given that simple measures of access may wrongly suggest that inequalities have all but disappeared.”

Following the assumption of uses and gratifications scholars who argue that people actively use media to satisfy certain needs (Blumler, 1979), it is assumed that the use of Internet also depends on the gratifications sought by online users (Ferguson & Perse, 2000; Kaye & Johnson, 2004; Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000). People go online for a vast amount of specific reasons so that differences in use may be, at least partially, caused by differences in motives. Looking for online news is found to be an important reason to go online (Charney & Greenberg, 2001; Didi & Larose, 2006; Ogan & Groshek, 2008). However, college students also go online for entertainment and communication purposes, such as downloading music (Kinally et al., 2008), instant messaging (Chung & Nam, 2007) and social networking (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008). In sum, some of the college students may go online for online news, while others may mainly use the Internet for reasons of entertainment or communication.

One of the factors that are thought to have an impact on users’ motivations to go online is the level of digital skills. Hargittai (2008) and Van Dijk (2005) stress the fact that the way people use the Internet is at least in part driven by their online skills. These authors argue that online skills deserve more attention now that the online environment is getting ever more complex. According to Van Dijk (2005), differences in ‘skill access’ are even greater than the divides in motivation and material access, with for example younger people being more skilled than older people. People who cannot cope with the technical demands imposed on them by the online environment run the risk to get discouraged, lose motivation and eventually start spending less time online (Hargittai, 2002). As a consequence, a usage gap may occur between parts of the population systematically using and fully benefiting from advanced technologies and other parts merely resorting to rather basic online applications (Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003). This ‘second-level digital divide’ (Hargittai, 2002), marked between those who fully pursue the potentials and the benefits of online applications and those who participate less, may be caused by differences in online skills and may in turn result in a so-called double jeopardy effect describing the discrepancy between disenfranchised groups, participating less in the information society compared to the ones who are digitally well equipped to fully participate online (Hargittai, 2003).

Following the above arguments, this second-level divide presumably also holds for the differences in online news consumption. Online news has become more complex and its adequate use requires a lot of information skills such as knowing and controlling the hyperlinked structure, the layout and design of multimedia and the fragmented nature of the online environment which imposes user control (Van Dijk, 2005). It may be assumed that adequate use of innovative online news and interactive news features is not possible when one lacks basic online skills. Since it is demonstrated that great differences subsist in the way Internet users possess these basic online skills (Hargittai, 2002), including among college students (Hargittai, 2008), we assume that some students do not make use of the innovative features due to a lack of the skills required. This may lead to a situation whereby some students are reading specialized news media such as political discussion forums in combination with news updates by RSS feeds, while others limit themselves to scanning through the general news sites without knowing how to make use of interactive news features.

Besides digital skills, this article also elaborates on the well-studied demographic variables which are often studied as factors predicting general Internet use. With regard to age, younger people are more likely to use the Internet than older people (Stempel III, Hargrove & Bernt, 2000, Pew Internet, 2009), which also seems true for online news consumption (Pew Internet, 2008; Yang & Patwardhan, 2004). Younger people are also better in performing online tasks than older people (Hargittai, 2002). Also experience with the medium seems to be an important factor in predicting online activities (Howard, Rainie & Jones, 2001; Loges & Jung, 2001). Important gendered differences in use also subsist. Although computers and Internet are no longer reserved for male users (Jackson, Ervin, Gardner & Schmitt, 2001), women tend to have different attitudes and usage patterns from male users. In general, men spend more time online than women (Kennedy, Wellman & Klement, 2003), a finding which also holds for college students (Golub, Baillie & Brown, 2007; Odell, Korgen, Schumacher & Delucchi, 2000). Women have more negative attitudes towards computers (Broos, 2005) and men use the Internet mainly for reasons of entertainment and leisure while female users go online for interpersonal communication and educational purposes (Weiser, 2000). While male and female users do not differ in digital skills (Hargittai, 2002; Hargittai & Shafer, 2006), male users are nevertheless more likely to select web sites with video and audio features than female users (Mitra, Willyard, Platt & Parsons, 2005).

In an effort to study the impact of the abovementioned users’ characteristics on online news consumption, we discuss the distinction between online news media and online news features. In the next section, we elaborate on the heterogeneity of online news.

Heterogeneity of online news

Current journalism practice is characterized by a growing convergence of multiple technologies, services and practices, changing the way in which news items are presented and consumed. Due to the process of digitizing the information into bits and bytes, all information can be combined, transformed or even manipulated. This digitization of information has erased the boundaries between print, television, radio and online technologies (Boczkowski & Ferris, 2005) so that journalistic messages can be a combination of texts, photos, sounds, movies and even animated infographics. The traditional approach of convergence sees this combination of old and new media as “a unification of functions – the coming together of previously distinct products that employ digital technologies” (Yoffie, 1997, p. 2).

This approach of considering the “Internet as one medium”, however, can be challenged. First, it seems less appropriate to study the Internet as a specific medium among other media like print newspapers, radio, television and magazines. Instead, it may be better to see the Internet as an “infrastructure” (Stoll, 1995, p. 55) functioning as a channel through which media messages are sent from sender to receiver. The Internet should be studied as a huge, distributed media database (Manovich, 2001). Opgenhaffen (2008a) follows this approach by arguing that multimedia online in fact constitute the combined use of multiple platforms or submedia (e.g., a news site, news blog, discussion forum or RSS-feeds) on the Internet and that journalism scholars may benefit from studying these different submedia instead of considering the Internet as one news medium. The interesting thing is that these distinct news media are often integrated into a single online news platform to be considered as a metamedium. This is certainly the case for digital newspapers that do not only offer text articles, accompanying photos and at times video shoots, but also deliver the same news item through multiple distribution platforms. Two similar studies of digital newspapers in the United States showed that online newspapers take advantage of online capabilities embracing a variety of news media, including RSS feeds, paper in PDF, online videos, blogs, and others (Bivings Report, 2006; Veglis, 2007). A news item can be described on the front page of the online newspaper, covered by a journalist in the website’s news blog and at the same time be the topic of discussion on the message board of that same online newspaper. According to Drotner (2002) this ‘unity of diversity’ or the presentation of distinct news media within one meta-medium (e.g., online newspaper) is considered to be one of the long-term developments and thus deserves more attention in (online) media and journalism studies and research with a view to a better informed citizen, fully reaping the benefits of participation in the information society.