Mobile news service adoption

Abstract

Media freedom encourages development of society, leading to growing and sustainable democracies and healthy social, political, and economic engagement Mobile news services (MNSs) are one means to reach out to citizens to share news and provide citizens with a forum to critique and voice opinion. Current findings suggest that there is minimal research and understanding of the adoption of these mobile news services. The purpose of this study was to propose and validate a theoretical framework that articulates factors influencing the adoption of mobile news services in South Africa. A review of the literature on mobile news services and technology adoption helped to identify potential factors. Multiple interpretive case studies were conducted to understand the adoption of mobile news services within the local context. Thematic analysis supported the identification of key influencing factors of MNS adoption. The resultant MNS adoption model offers new insight in the adoption of mobile news services in terms of social factors, attributes of adopters and attributes of innovation. The results are also useful to mobile news service providers, designers, and developers, in their endeavour to satisfy distinct news consumer's needs.