The Mechanisms of “Incidental News Consumption”: an Eye Tracking Study of News Interaction on Facebook

Abstract

We thank Carolina Carazo, Amy Ross, the anonymous reviewers, and the journal's editors for their most helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank Brayan Rodríguez and Larissa Tristán for their help in conducting the research.

An Examination of Affiliate and Network Television Channels’ Facebook Use for Addressing Audiences’ Critical Information Needs

“…Long videos and use of background music were negatively associated with receiving likes and comments. This is possibly because audiences spend very little time—less than 6 s—on news they usually encounter versus seek on Facebook (Vergara et al, 2021). Long videos and background music require a level of engagement users aren’t usually prepared to provide when scrolling through their newsfeed.…”

“…In terms of video style, Kim and Yang (2017) found that posts with photos and videos positively predicted “shares” and posts with photos increased “likes” from audiences but not necessarily comments. A recent eye-tracking study found that videos and photos were the entry point to audiences’ engagement with a news-related Facebook post (Vergara et al, 2021). The study did not examine the kind of visual elements and imagery included in the posts which we accounted for in our research.…”

Nudging towards diversity: A theoretical framework for facilitating diverse news consumption through recommender design

“…Another core aspect of articles' presentation refers to heuristic cues such as headlines, teasers, source cues and visuals. Visuals usually serve as triggers for more indepth engagement with news (Vergara et al, 2020). But they can also drive clicks despite no significant interest in the topic (Groot Kormelink and Costera Meijer, 2018).…”

“Good morning, COVID!” the inertia of journalistic imaginaries in morning shows’ online comments

“…Over time, each of these shows’ Facebook pages became digital places (Gutsche and Hess, 2020a) for exploring and explaining medical and scientific meanings associated with the lockdown and their pages’ significant social value. And there, commenters – whether trolling (Wolfgang, 2018), interacting through incidental media use (Vergara et al, 2020), or commenting as regular contributors to the pages – recalled traditional and long-lasting normative standards of journalism with which they analyzed the journalistic aspects of these “soft news" -- programs. For example, on one BBC Breakfast’s Facebook page post featuring “person-on-the-street” videos about their opinions on government regulations, users commented that the reporting lacked depth: “Very disappointed with BBC breakfast … can’t help feeling disappointed with your flower power news and little questioning of the government extremely sad” (BBC, 2020a).…”