This study investigated how infographics may affect individuals’ news processing, focusing on multimodality and interactivity as its signature characteristics. News readers’ prior knowledge and issue involvement, which affect their ability and motivation to process information, were considered as potential moderators. In a 3 (text vs graphic vs text + graphic) × 2 (hyperlinks vs no hyperlinks) between-subjects experiment ( N = 360), participants read a news article concerning economic issues. Adding graphics to the news heightened the extent to which they engaged in news elaboration, albeit only among those with higher issue involvement. However, in-text hyperlinks hindered information recall among those with less prior knowledge, creating an information acquisition gap between more and less resourceful individuals. The graphical representation of news appeared to have heuristic appeals to those less involved in and less knowledgeable about the news topic, leading to more favorable news evaluation.

a b s t r a c tAn online survey (N = 461) investigated how individuals' interpersonal need and ability affect their motivations of Twitter use and how different motivations predict specific usage behavior. Based on the two competing views concerning the antecedents and consequences of online communication (social enhancement vs. social compensation), the joint effect of affiliative tendency and communication competence was hypothesized. For those high on affiliative tendency, communication competence positively predicted Twitter use for network expansion and negatively predicted more self-focused, intrapersonal Twitter use, but no such effect was found for less affiliative individuals. Those using Twitter for surveillance spent more time on Twitter and maintained a larger Twitter network, while those using Twitter for network expansion posted tweets and retweeted others' posts more frequently.