Nudges for news recommenders: prominent article positioning increases selection, engagement, and recall of environmental news, but reducing complexity does not

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Journal of Communication Pub Date : 2025-08-25 DOI:10.1093/joc/jqaf019

Nicolas Mattis, Lucien Heitz, Philipp K Masur, Judith Moeller, Wouter van Atteveldt

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

News aggregators inherently constitute choice architectures in which placement and presentation of news articles in the user interface affect how people perceive and engage with them. Accordingly, deliberate changes of a news aggregators’ choice architecture may nudge engagement. Against this background, our study aims to test the effects of 2 nudges, namely a position and an accessibility nudge, on (a) the selection of, (b) the engagement with, and (c) learning from environmental news articles by means of a 7-day field experiment using a news aggregator app in the United Kingdom. Results suggest that prominent article positioning coupled with visual highlighting significantly increases the selection of environmental news, its reading time and recall of information. In contrast, automated rewriting of environmental articles for lower text complexity had no significant effects. Additional analyses indicate that neither nudge backfired by decreasing user satisfaction, thus suggesting the practical usability of our approach.

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推动新闻推荐：突出的文章定位增加了环境新闻的选择、参与和回忆，但降低复杂性却没有

新闻聚合器本质上构成了选择架构，在这个架构中，新闻文章在用户界面中的位置和呈现会影响人们对新闻的感知和参与。因此，有意改变新闻聚合器的选择架构可能会推动用户参与。在此背景下，我们的研究旨在通过在英国使用新闻聚合应用程序进行为期7天的现场实验，测试两种推动（即位置推动和可访问性推动）对(a)选择、(b)参与和(c)从环境新闻文章中学习的影响。结果表明，突出的文章定位加上视觉高亮显著增加了环境新闻的选择、阅读时间和信息回忆。相比之下，自动重写环境文章以降低文本复杂性没有显著影响。额外的分析表明，这两种推动都没有降低用户满意度，从而表明我们的方法的实际可用性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Communication COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

11.60

自引率

5.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Communication, the flagship journal of the International Communication Association, is a vital publication for communication specialists and policymakers alike. Focusing on communication research, practice, policy, and theory, it delivers the latest and most significant findings in communication studies. The journal also includes an extensive book review section and symposia of selected studies on current issues. JoC publishes top-quality scholarship on all aspects of communication, with a particular interest in research that transcends disciplinary and sub-field boundaries.