Simply Bells and Whistles? Cognitive Effects of Visual Aesthetics in Digital Longforms

Autor(en)

Esther Greussing, Hajo Boomgaarden

Abstrakt

The success of digital longforms in terms of readership and viral spread promotes an optimistic perspective on innovative web journalism with regard to the attention, engagement, and subsequent knowledge acquisition of citizens when consuming news. Since empirical evidence for such effects is scant, this experimental study focuses on visual aesthetics as a signature element of novel news formats that are designed to attract attention in a highly competitive media landscape. Specifically, it draws on the theoretical framework of user engagement and shows that the presence of visual aesthetics contributes to meaningful learning from the news by initiating positive attitudes towards the interface, which in turn leads to deeper involvement with the content. However, when the presence of visual aesthetics fails to affect interface evaluation, the opposite effect occurs. Surprisingly, these effects are not found to be contingent upon individual differences such as issue involvement or issue-specific prior knowledge. Overall, our results suggest that for news organizations, it is worth investing financial and personal resources in innovative news formats in order to support knowledge gain, although they need to be carefully designed as the first encounter with the interface decides about the subsequent engagement with and processing of the news.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Journal

Digital Journalism

Band

7

Seiten

273-293

Anzahl der Seiten

21

ISSN

2167-0811

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1488598

Publikationsdatum

08-2018

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508005 Journalistik, 508012 Medienwirkungsforschung

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/6df42e50-73e3-41f9-b820-79e7a00c0342