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Abstract
The rise of news aggregator sites is a notable phenomenon in the contemporary media landscape. Outperforming traditional news outlets, online news aggregators, such as Yahoo News, Google News, and the Huffington Post, have become major sources of news for American audiences. Facing economic hardships, some news organizations cast blame on news aggregators for stealing their content and audiences. However, the relationship between news aggregators and traditional media outlets on the demand side has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Through a national survey of 1,143 U.S. Internet users, this study integrates the uses and gratifications paradigm and an economic approach to predict aggregator consumption and examine market competition. In terms of consumption, among demographic factors, age and ethnicity are the two major predictors of aggregator use. Among psychological factors, opinion motivations is the only non-predictor of aggregator use, suggesting that users do not seek opinion-driven content when they visit aggregator sites. In terms of competition, this study uncovers non-competitive relationships between three major news aggregators and 13 major TV, print, and social media news outlets. Such findings are at odds with industry sentiment and the proposed model serves as a basis for further theorizing news aggregator consumption.
Notes
1. Consistent with the uses and gratifications literature, this study uses gratifications and motivations interchangeably (Kink & Hess, Citation2008; Lee, Citation2013; McGuire, Citation1974; Rubin & Step, Citation2000).
2. Office of Survey Research is a member of the Association of Academic Survey Research Organizations (AASRO) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). OSR and has offered expert survey research services to academics, professionals and the government since 1986.
3. Completion rate is number of survey respondents who provided usable responses divided by the total number of respondents who clicked into the survey.
4. They are local newspapers, national newspapers (e.g., NYT, USA Today, The Daily, CSM), CNN, MSNBC, FOX, local TV newscasts, network national news (e.g., Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News), cable Sunday talk shows (e.g., FOX News Sunday; State of the Union), Drudge Report, other political blogs (e.g., Dailykos, Redstate, The Daily Beast, Hot Air, etc.), Facebook, and Twitter. In operationalizing news outlets, traditional media and their online counterparts are counted as the same thing. For example, The New York Times in print is counted as the same thing as http://www.nytimes.com
5. e.g., NYT, USA Today, The Daily, CSM
6. e.g., Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News
7. e.g., This Week, Meet the Press, Face the Nation
8. e.g., FOX News Sunday, State of the Union
9. e.g., Dailykos, Redstate, The Daily Beast, Hot Air, etc.