The article I reviewed is “Accidentally Informed: Incidental News Exposure on the World Wide Web” from 2001 Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
This article argued that even though acquiring current affairs information is rarely a primary goal for people to use Internet, the prevalence of news on the web provides opportunities for people to encounter news in an incidental way. Therefore, the article assumed that “the frequency of web use will be positively associated with incidental exposure to news on the web” (H1). In addition, the article pointed out the goals people have for surfing the web could impact incidental exposure from the uses and gratifications perspective leading to the first research questions: “Do different uses of the Web result in differences in incidental exposure news?” Then, the second hypothesis “Incidental exposure to news on the Web will be positively associated with knowledge of current events.” was proposed.
This article mentioned in the literature review that more news are published online right now due to the popularity of portal sites and the information services provided by search engines. Since the online news is getting more and more, it would be obvious to see that people are more likely to expose to online news unintentionally. For the research question, it is also quite obvious that different purpose of using the Internet can lead to different patterns of using the Internet. I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the “differences in incidental exposure news” is. It seems pretty vague to me. Lastly, when previous literature indicates that learning can be active or passive, it seems clear that the more online news people expose to (whether intentional or unintentional), the more knowledge of current events people would have.
The measure of knowledge here is an issue (Similar to SungWoo mentioned). Surveys relevant to the present research questions were taken in Autumn (21 through 31 Octobor) 1996, Spring (24 April through 11 May) 1998, and Autumn (26 October through 1 December) 1998. I would think that participants who took the survey later (for example the one took the survey on Dec. 1st comparing to the one did it on Oct. 26), might have more knowledge in terms of current events because people’s knowledge of current events is accumulated and they can acquire those information from different media.
In addition, this article mentions that the Internet is often an addition to rather than a replacement of traditional media, so the authors believe that web use will increase incidental learning about current events in part because of the complementary nature of contemporary media. I would consider that for certain groups such as young adults, the Internet might be a replacement of traditional media. Also, the incidental online news exposure was measured by a self-reported yes/no questions which is not persuasive to me. There should be a better way to measure people’s attention to information when the contents and media are competing with each other under the condition of information surplus.
Similar to Sandra’s feeling, I wonder if it is because I am not familiar with or interested in some area, I couldn’t get the meaning of those hypotheses or research questions. Would it be possible that those hypotheses or research questions which seem meaningless or boring to us might be important for theory testing or theory building?
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