TY - JOUR
T1 - Imagery effects on the selective reading of internet newsmagazines
AU - Knobloch, Silvia
AU - Hastall, Matthias
AU - Zillmann, Dolf
AU - Callison, Coy
PY - 2003/2
Y1 - 2003/2
N2 - An Internet newsmagazine was created, involving all features of online interactivity. The text of all available reports was held constant. The imagery of a subset of articles was manipulated, however. The manipulated articles were presented either without images, with text-related innocuous images, or with text-related threatening images in both their headline displays and their text bodies. During a fixed period of time, readers were free to sample articles and to read as much of them as they pleased. Unbeknownst to them, their selective exposure behavior was automatically recorded. It was observed that the incorporation of threatening images fostered more frequent selection of the associated articles and markedly increased reading times of the corresponding texts. The incorporation of innocuous images had similar but more moderate effects. Retrospective accounts of reading were consistent with the recorded exposure behavior.
AB - An Internet newsmagazine was created, involving all features of online interactivity. The text of all available reports was held constant. The imagery of a subset of articles was manipulated, however. The manipulated articles were presented either without images, with text-related innocuous images, or with text-related threatening images in both their headline displays and their text bodies. During a fixed period of time, readers were free to sample articles and to read as much of them as they pleased. Unbeknownst to them, their selective exposure behavior was automatically recorded. It was observed that the incorporation of threatening images fostered more frequent selection of the associated articles and markedly increased reading times of the corresponding texts. The incorporation of innocuous images had similar but more moderate effects. Retrospective accounts of reading were consistent with the recorded exposure behavior.
KW - Images
KW - Online news
KW - Photos
KW - Selective exposure
KW - Web-based experiment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037256264&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0093650202239023
DO - 10.1177/0093650202239023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0037256264
SN - 0093-6502
VL - 30
SP - 3
EP - 29
JO - Communication Research
JF - Communication Research
IS - 1
ER -