What Is News? Audiences May Have Their Own Ideas

Somebody Google a Doctor! Urgent Health Information Seeking Habits of Young Adults

“…Yet, differences between communication students and students with other majors were discovered in terms of consuming media messages in some studies. For instance, in a study focused on young adults' perception about news, Armstrong, McAdams and Cain (2015) found out that news about consumer product and governmental issues were more appealing to communication students, while other students were more interested in sports, crime and weather news. Non-communication students were also more likely to seek and share opinion-laden media messages.…”

“…Past research has indicated that for general health information seeking, credibility has played a role in media choice selection (Phua & Tinkham, Carpenter et al, 2011;Rains & Karmikel, 2009). Additionally, past research has also indicated media literacy plays a role in perceptions of credibility and selection of information sources (Armstrong, McAdams, & Cain, 2015;Phang & Schaefer, 2009). As such, the following hypotheses are proposed:…”

“…Based on prior research (Armstrong, McAdams, & Cain, 2015;Phang & Schaefer, 2009), whether a student was a mass communication or other major was used as an independent variable for a series of t-tests to determine if there are any differences in attitude toward the credibility and use of various media outlets based on media literacy.…”

What’s news? Encounters with news in everyday life: a study of behaviours and attitudes

“…Harcup and O'Neill [13] provided an updated framework of ten items including the power elite, celebrity, entertainment, magnitude and surprise. Summarising these news frameworks, Arm strong, McAdams and Cain [3] claim that the "consensus within journalism education is that newsworthiness is demonstrated by the intensity and frequency (e.g., more is better) of these values in news content". However, in their survey of university students "it appears that two traditional news values-timeliness and proximity-are not as im portant to audiences as they are to journalists" [3].…”

“…Summarising these news frameworks, Arm strong, McAdams and Cain [3] claim that the "consensus within journalism education is that newsworthiness is demonstrated by the intensity and frequency (e.g., more is better) of these values in news content". However, in their survey of university students "it appears that two traditional news values-timeliness and proximity-are not as im portant to audiences as they are to journalists" [3]. Their result is reflective of a larger shift in conceptions of news to include audience-driven preferences and the growth of social media as a channel for news discovery, discussion, and sharing.…”