Essay
Ways audience or users interact with online news
- Institution
- WJEC
QUESTION: Explain the ways in which audiences / users interact with online news. [10]
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Explain the ways in which audiences / users interact with online news. [10]Audiences of online news and internet users interact with their sources of news in ways that
can be considered to be vastly different to how audiences of radio and print news platforms
would have interacted with their news.
In comparison to audiences of print platforms, audiences of online news and related online
media, such as websites or social media platforms, are able to interact to a greater extent.
The wide range of interaction is mostly due to the fact that digital media platforms have
granted audiences the ability to respond to news. This can mostly be done through
comments and discussions on websites via Facebook or Twitter. Audiences have become
more active as a result, being able to think for themselves and to offer their opinions on the
news or topic rather than simply accepting it the way that audiences of print platforms would
have. They may also demonstrate a preferred, oppositional or negotiated reading in
response to online news, and are more than capable of interpreting news and challenging
the ideas encoded within it. It is also important to mention that one of the reasons as to why
audiences have become more interactive with online news is because online news offers
them gratification, for example, information, personal identity and integration and social
interaction. Online news is able to satisfy the audiences’ curiosity in knowing about the world
surrounding them. It allows audiences to identify with certain characters who show up on the
news, such as audiences who are mothers seeing mother figures in news or young adults
seeing other young adults similar to them. The audiences therefore may feel the need to
interact, through comments perhaps, because the act of interacting will further gratify or
satisfy their needs. A few reasons as to why could be because audiences want to show their
sympathy or because they want to show their disapproval of how other people similar to
them are acting.
Stuart Hall’s Reception theory describes that communication between the media and
audiences is a process which involves encoding by producers and decoding by audiences.
Decoding engages the audiences mentally and thus allows them to interact with the news
more. This theory has always been prevalent in print and radio news, and has continued
onto online media platforms in an attempt to further engage audiences.
Due to the development of online platforms, the nature of audiences and internet users and
their relationship with news has changed massively. Users in the present times do not only
consume and comment the news given to them but also, frequently, share the news that
they find interesting through share buttons and copying links, then distributing them to other
social media apps for discussion purposes. This contributes to the distribution of news,
reflecting the idea of interactive audience. The act of sharing even allows audiences to
interact with one another through digital platforms. In comparison to audiences of print news,
whilst they may be able to discuss it with other people, the extent of that is not as great as
the discussions or interactions of audiences of online news. A notable method of interacting
with news is through like buttons on social media posts, such as Instagram or Facebook,
which many internet users tend to do when they do not want to waste time writing out
comments or their opinions. Like buttons can hold value as if a social media post receives a
substantial amount of likes, it can show up on the front page of the social media app and be
viewed by many people, receiving up to millions of views. This therefore allows audiences to
become more active, compared to audiences of print news or radio news, due to the
expansive usability of digital media platforms. Audiences have the agency to decide when to
consume news and deciding to only consume news that are relevant to them, which can be
done through following certain pages or hashtags on Instagram or Facebook. Unlike older
platform users, whose sources of news offered fewer opportunities for audience interaction.
Clay Shirky, a theorist of the media, deduced that audiences are no longer passive due to
digital platforms. He also believed that these digital platforms have granted audiences the
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