Interstices news on mobile media: A comparison between the United States and China

Abstract

This study investigates how news agencies in different cultures (United States and China) use push notifications or "interstices news" on different platforms (social media and official news app). By doing a content analysis of 3,838 pieces of interstices news collected from the social media accounts and official news apps of the Associated Press (hereafter AP) and Xinhua News Agency (hereafter Xinhua) for a month, this study examines the timing, platform differences, as well as the content features of their interstices news. The findings indicate that the two news agencies have different preference in push notification timing, as AP was more active during school or work hours, while Xinhua pushed more notifications before and after school or work hours. The analysis reveals that the social media accounts of the news agencies are preferred for interstices news over the official news apps, and the interstices news pushed by their social media accounts has a more comprehensive and diversified structure than official news apps. Differences in news values between the two countries are also discussed.