The theory of the niche predicts that a new medium will compete with established media for consumer satisfaction, consumer time, and / or consumer advertising dollars. Competition between e-mail and telephone use was measured in this study at the level of gratifications derived by consumers. Gratifications and gratification opportunities (consumers' beliefs that a medium allows them to obtain greater opportunities for satisfaction) were derived from an analysis of open-ended questions. A second sample was interviewed by telephone and rated both mediums on gratification and gratification-opportunity scales. Forty-eight percent of respondents reported using the phone less since they adopted e-mail. Results indicate that a wider spectrum of needs is being served by the telephone, whereas e-mail provides greater gratification opportunities. The results indicate competition, but also indicate that the two mediums are not close substitutes.
Over the last decade, the Internet has become one of the most popular vehicles facilitating a variety of communication and information-sharing tasks worldwide. Its growing popularity as a new medium of communication has resulted in changes in use of traditional media. The purpose of this study was to better understand the uses of online news compared with news use via traditional media. In light of the niche theory and the theory of uses and gratifications, a new medium survives, grows, competes, and prospers by providing utility or gratification to consumers. In doing so, it may have effects on existing media by providing new solutions to old needs or to more contemporary needs. Data were collected in a telephone survey with 211 respondents in the Columbus, Ohio (Franklin County), metropolitan area. The results clearly indicate that the Internet has a competitive displacement effect on traditional media in the daily news domain with the largest displacements occurring for television and newspapers. The findings also show that there is a moderately high degree of overlap or similarity between the niches of the Internet and the traditional media on the gratification-opportunities dimension. In addition, the results suggest that the Internet has the broadest niche on the gratification opportunities dimension, providing users satisfaction with more needs than any of the traditional media on this dimension.
The recent growth of mobile channels has provided steadily increasing opportunities for individuals to access news and other mass-mediated content. Media ecological perspectives argue that the introduction of such new technologies can shift the existing biases in prevailing social systems. According to one ecological perspective, the theory of the niche, when new media technologies are successfully introduced into a domain, displacement may occur unless some alteration is made to the resource base. Interstices are conceptualized as the gaps in the routines of media users between scheduled activities. Through the use of a diary method, participants logged access to news using a variety of communication technologies, including mobile channels. Results indicated that traditional media occupied traditional niches with little evidence of displacement, while mobile channels occupied a new niche: access in the interstices.
This article defines dual-concept diversity as a two-dimensional construct that holds a central place of study in many fields, including communication. The authors present 12 measures of dual-concept diversity appearing in the literature and assess the differential sensitivity of these measures in capturing the two dimensions. After assessing each measure and eliminating measures that are redundant or computationally intractable, the article compares the remaining measures of diversity in a time series of 30 years of network radio programming. Graphic and statistical interrelationships are presented to facilitate comparison and choice between measures in future research.
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