I decided to approach some high level questions about my media diet. I tracked my activity in RescueTime and ManicTime and also took notes of what I read. My main points will focus on when I get my news diet, how it differs through the day, and what outside factors interfere with it. I organized my diet by how I might consume content differently at different times of day.
When do I read my news?
I wish Rescue Time could break down my activity by time of day.
Morning – I usually read the overall news and what has been happening in the past day. Mornings are either NPR time or Flipboard (twitter feed) time. One of them wakes me up.
Afternoon – during breaks in between work and meetings. I often read links that caught my eye from social networks or that people recommend during meetings
Evening – I have an end of the day catch up on what whether something significant is happening in the breaking news. I read international news, particularly about Romania. The last one is clearly triggered by my late night conversations I have with my dad about news that is local to him.
This makes me wonder how the context of the day affects how people consume news, and how different of a user we are at different times of day. Is there a way to customize the news experience to the different contexts and need that we might have at different time? Are there certain triggers that make us read particular type of news?
Where do I get my news content from?
Most of my reading comes from social network outlets. I look through my twitter feed daily. I chose to use Flipboard on my iPad which gives me a headline and a couple of paragraphs from an article. Every day I visit the main page of a mainstream media news outlet. I really enjoy using the iPad interface for doing that and I have a set of news apps installed that I check. When I don’t use Flipboard I listen to NPR on my iPad. The iPad is my main source of news consumption.
I am of course wondering what I am missing on by my selection of news sources and mode of consuming news. I wish there was an easy way to find out how different sources present the same topic, or what other articles would be of interest that I never get to read.
What kind of news articles do I read?
Over 50% or my read is technology related articles, strong professional bias. The rest cover sparsely topics of health and wellness, work space, design, international news.
I am still exploring how the different news producers we use can get users to engage with more diversity.
Who are my discussion partners about news
Mostly online through chat with friends, over dinner with friends. Attending a talk sparks at least 30 minutes of discussion around the information gained. My dad.
I think discussion partners are a great way to actively engage with content through discussion. Unfortunately very few of my reading (or headline browsing) results in discussion. I wonder how much of the news get disseminated though word of mouth and how that plays a role in the information processing process of a certain topic.
How long do I spend reading one article?
I captured a snapshot of two hours of browsing. On average the span of attention on each article can be seen below. The amount of continuous time I spent on one task is between a few seconds to 10 minutes. In a 60 minute session of deep dive into news I clicked on 10 articles on average. I didn’t finish reading them all.
I wonder how many articles I fully read and what am I missing by not finishing the reads? Is there a different way the same content can be delivered that would make me engage with it more easily? can we have different versions of the same article for a different context of the user, different time availability or attention level? How do users allocate their attention to navigating their news content. What keeps one engaged with a reading? how much information do we acquire from browsing headlines? Is there a better way to organize a news feed to help the user gain more from the content than they are currently?
