ABSTRACT
The development of social media has given rise to digital social reading, an activity characterized by interactivity and social presence. Drawing upon the literature on interactivity and the Theory of Interactive Media Effects, this study developed a conceptual model to better understand the effect of interactivity on users’ reading satisfaction through the mediating effect of social presence. An online survey was used to collect data, and structural equation modeling was adopted to assess the fitness of the model and investigate the hypothesized relationships. The findings basically support our hypotheses. Specifically, human-to-human interactivity was found to be affected by human-to-text interactivity, and both types of interactivity significantly predicted social presence. Social presence fully mediated the relationship between human-to-human interactivity and satisfaction, whereas it partially mediated the relationship between human-to-text interactivity and satisfaction. The study fills a gap in the literature on digital social reading, specifically on the influence of interactivity upon user experience, as well as its underlying working mechanism.
Acknowledgments
Michael Suman of the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School commented on and helped revise an earlier draft. The authors would like to thank him for his help. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Wu Li
Wu Li is Professor at the School of Media and Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. He received his PhD degree in Communication Studies from Peking University in China. His research focuses primarily on behavior of new media users and reading in the digital age.
Yuanyi Mao
Yuanyi Mao received his master’s degree from the School of Media and Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. His research interests focus on new media user behavior and psychological effects of communication technology.
Liuning Zhou
Liuning Zhou holds a doctoral degree in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on international telecommunications, new communication technologies, and effects of new media.