Mobile news consumption and political news interest: A time budget perspective

Abstract

This study explores mobile news consumption from a time budget perspective. Time constraint is a major factor influencing people's news consumption, but it has not been examined specifically in the previous studies. Because mobile media can exploit the time gaps when other media are inappropriate or inconvenient to use, they have a unique capacity to increase the available time for news consumption. Data for the empirical analysis were collected in a random sample mail survey with 253 respondents in the Midwest United States from September to November 2012. The results indicated that mobile news users have significantly longer work time and shorter disposable time (tighter time budget) than non-users; people with tight time budget are more likely to have more mobile news applications and spend more time on mobile news than are people with loose time budget; and people who are interested in political news spend more time on mobile news than do people who are not.

Time for digital media but no time for school? An investigation of displacement effects among adolescents of gen X, Y, and Z.

“…Most theoretical approaches focus on specific dimensions of the media (e.g., content, availability) or dimensions of the media demand (e.g., characteristics of the recipients) to explain media choice (e.g., Uses-and-Gratifications, Dynamic Transactional Model; for an overview, see Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015). Interestingly, none of these theories takes the role of time constraints explicitly into account (Seufert & Wilhelm, 2014)-although media choice is also a decision about using scarce time resources (Schnauber-Stockmann & Mangold, 2020;Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2019;Vilhelmson et al, 2018;Zhang & Ha, 2016).…”

“…The concept of time displacement can serve as a theoretical point of departure to understand the influence of time allocation on media use (Robinson, 2011; Vilhelmson et al, 2017; Zhang & Ha, 2016). Accordingly, daily time-use is a zero-sum phenomenon in which different media and nonmedia activities compete within a limited 24-hr time frame (Jäckel & Wollscheid, 2004; Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2019).…”

“…Accordingly, daily time-use is a zero-sum phenomenon in which different media and nonmedia activities compete within a limited 24-hr time frame (Jäckel & Wollscheid, 2004; Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2019). The amount of free disposable time and individual time constraints determine a person’s time-richness, that is, having ample time available to devote to various activities (Zhang & Ha, 2016).…”