Online Readership Popularity and Media-embedded Characteristics

Readership popularity has been an important proxy for the success of many online interactive media. Given the exponential growth of new web properties and the hype of competition among them, attaining and retaining popularity is difficult. One possible approach to this problem is to enhance the competitiveness of web presence by using appropriate web design mechanisms. So far, research in this area has been focused on technological issues or usability studies. Few studies have recognized the importance of media-embedded social scripts or environmental cues in influencing online communication. Drawing on social cognition theories, we identified two important media-embedded characteristics: source credibility and content freshness; and tested their impact to readership popularity in online interactive media. The content analysis result from 100 very popular weblog sites strongly supported our hypotheses. Our findings highlight key web design principles, which may serve to guide the practice of millions of online users and practitioners

A Techno-Social Approach for Achieving Online Readership Popularity

Understanding what drives readership popularity in online interactive media has important implications to individual practitioners and net-enabled organizations. For instance, it helps generate a success “formula” for designing potentially popular websites in the increasingly competitive online world. So far, research in this area lacks a unified approach in guiding the design of online interactive media as well as in predicting their successful adoption and use, from both technological and social orientations. Drawing upon the media success literature and related social cognition theories, we establish a techno-social model for achieving online readership popularity, accounting for the impacts of technology-dependent and media-embedded characteristics. The proposed model and hypotheses will be tested by a content analysis of 100+ very popular weblogs and survey of 2000+ active weblog readers. This research carries significant value for sustaining community- and firm-based user networks that have been recognized as an important source of social and knowledge capitals

Illuminating an Ecosystem of Partisan Websites

This paper aims to shed light on alternative news media ecosystems that are believed to have influenced opinions and beliefs by false and/or biased news reporting during the 2016 US Presidential Elections. We examine a large, professionally curated list of 668 hyper-partisan websites and their corresponding Facebook pages, and identify key characteristics that mediate the traffic flow within this ecosystem. We uncover a pattern of new websites being established in the run up to the elections, and abandoned after. Such websites form an ecosystem, creating links from one website to another, and by `liking' each others' Facebook pages. These practices are highly effective in directing user traffic internally within the ecosystem in a highly partisan manner, with right-leaning sites linking to and liking other right-leaning sites and similarly left-leaning sites linking to other sites on the left, thus forming a filter bubble amongst news producers similar to the filter bubble which has been widely observed among consumers of partisan news. Whereas there is activity along both left- and right-leaning sites, right-leaning sites are more evolved, accounting for a disproportionate number of abandoned websites and partisan internal links. We also examine demographic characteristics of consumers of hyper-partisan news and find that some of the more populous demographic groups in the US tend to be consumers of more right-leaning sites.Comment: Published at The Web Conference 2018 (WWW 2018). Please cite the WWW versio

Pressed into Party Support? : Media Influence on Partisan Attitudes during the 2005 UK General Election Campaign

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Wikipedia in the eyes of its beholders: A systematic review of scholarly research on wikipedia readers and readership

Hundreds of scholarly studies have investigated various aspects of the immensely popular Wikipedia. Although a number of literature reviews have provided overviews of this vast body of research, none of them has specifically focused on the readers of Wikipedia and issues concerning its readership. In this systematic literature review, we review 99 studies to synthesize current knowledge regarding the readership of Wikipedia and also provide an analysis of research methods employed. The scholarly research has found that Wikipedia is popular not only for lighter topics such as entertainment, but also for more serious topics such as health information and legal background. Scholars, librarians and students are common users of Wikipedia, and it provides a unique opportunity for educating students in digital literacy. We conclude with a summary of key findings, implications for researchers, and implications for the Wikipedia community

Jane Austen fan fiction and the situated fantext: the example of Pamela Aidan's Fitzwilliam darcy, gentleman

Building on recent findings in the field of fan fiction studies, I claim that Pamela Aidan’s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman is indirectly influenced by three cultural phenomena which centre around Jane Austen and her work. Aidan’s fan fiction text stays close to the spirit of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice because she “reimagines” the novel according to the interpretive conventions of the Republic of Pemberley, a fan community. These conventions demand respect for Austen and her novels because they are shaped by the broader, cultural conventions of Janeitism and Austen criticism. Similarly, Aidan’s text is more individualistic and “Harlequinesque” than Austen’s novel, because the Republic allows writers to reproduce the cultural reading which underlies BBC / A&E’s adaptation of Austen’s novel

'Preditors': Making citizen journalism work

Although there is great interest in citizen journalism services that harness user-generated content, the continuing contribution of professional staff who coordinate such efforts is often overlooked. This paper offers a typology of the work of the professional "preditors" who continue to operate at the heart of "pro-am" journalism initiatives. It shows that their work takes place along four dimensions – content work, networking, community work and tech work. It suggests that this is a structural change in journalistic practice, which has implications for journalists' professional identity and journalism education

Profiling the Sport Blogosphere

The purpose of this study is to provide primary research regarding how sports blogs utilize the social media and generate revenue for their blog. This study begins with a literature review of the blogging world with a special emphasis on the sports sector of the blogosphere. The literature review is followed by a discussion of the research method of content analysis, which was employed to examine the selected sports blogs. Furthermore, recommendations are made concerning sampling methods and how future statistical sampling of the sports blogosphere could proceed to improve the representativeness of samples and data collection in this research topic