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At the International Symposium
on Online Journalism,
Professor Alberto Cairo from
the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill presented
examples of how databases
linked to interactive Flash
graphics—ones that users
can manipulate—significantly
enhance user involvement and
engagement with the story.
Designing the right interactive
graphic, therefore, can be an
art in itself.
Involvement
By involvement, we mean the
degree to which users input choices
and/or content. Education research
tells us that more interactivity breeds
more involvement. And more involvement
means greater attention paid to
content. But the level of involvement
varies. Clicking a “play” button for a
one-minute video represents much
less involvement than reading a few
sentences, choosing steps in a related
animation, selecting a 10-second video,
and then posting comments about the
story. The problem is that too much
involvement inhibits comprehension
when interactivity overwhelms a user’s
cognition, a complaint we hear often
from the current online audience.
More research will identify the point at
which too much interactivity becomes
counterproductive.
Contiguity
A Web page might look appealing, but
research in the United Kingdom tells
us that users take approximately 50
milliseconds to form an opinion about
a page. Contiguity in multimedia is
how the elements of hypertext, photos,
animation, slides, links, blogs, video
and audio, all combine to communicate
one coherent message. Our published
studies show that even subtle variations
in the structures of news text and
links produce significant differences
in audience interest ratings and their
understanding of stories. Researchers
at the University of California, Santa
Barbara found that users generate
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nearly 50 percent more creative solutions
to problems when different forms
of explanations are fully integrated.
Without coherence in multimedia
content, users do what most content
producers hope to avoid—they terminate
their engagement. The PICK
model calls this terminated engagement
a “kick-out.”
Kick-Outs
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The goal is nothing new. Grab the
audience with effective headlines,
photos, video and formats. The PICK
model argues that the attention-deficit
digital world—with its overwhelming
amount of information—requires communicators
to now be more aware of
things that frequently terminate audience
attention. These are controllable
“kick-outs.” The most obvious kick-out
is a broken link, but others include
too much text, lengthy video, pop-up
windows, unfamiliar terms, confusing
graphics, or interactive animation that’s
too complex. Of course, it’s impossible
to eliminate every potential kick-out
but, as the grazing digital audience
continues to grow, so will the need
for critical assessment of how news is
presented online and ways to eliminate
avoidable kick-outs.
Where Does This Path Lead?
Ultimately, the challenge is how to
simultaneously combine effective
techniques of personalization, involve-
Digital Road
ment, contiguity and minimal
kick-outs with clear, accurate,
ethical journalism. Addressing
this complexity when producing
and delivering news will
actually simplify how the audience
will then engage with the
content. But to do this well
will require that news reporters,
editors and videographers
join with producers, educators
and students to more clearly
understand how digital natives
process information differently
than any previous audience
has. Does a slideshow or video
need to be that long? What
is too long? Is the video or
graphic redundant with information
already in the accompanying text?
How does one person’s interest lead
to engagement with a community that
shares that interest?
These questions—and so many
more—frame the mission of our exploration.
It might be reasonable to conclude
that the PICK model is still too abstract
for immediate application. To
some extent, the technology needed
to support NewsSEEN has yet to be
developed. In the interim, indications
are that those avoiding exploration
of the new territory risk being abandoned
by a restless audience of digital
natives—an audience that appears to
already know the territory into which
all of us are headed. �
Ronald A. Yaros is an assistant professor
in the Philip Merrill College
of Journalism at the University of
Maryland and director of the Lab for
Communicating Complexity With
Multimedia. A former president of an
educational software corporation for
10 years, he combines nearly 20 years
in electronic journalism, a PhD from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and a Master’s in education to research
news audiences and new media.
Details of this research can be viewed
at: www.merrill.umd.edu/ronyaros/.
Nieman Reports | Winter 2008 15