Online news consumption research: An assessment of past work and an agenda for the future

Abstract

This article assesses the main findings and dominant modes of inquiry in recent scholarship on online news consumption. The findings suggest that the consumption of news on the internet has not yet differed drastically from the consumption of news in traditional media. The assessment shows that the dominant modes of inquiry have also been characterized by stability rather than change (because research has usually drawn on traditional theoretical and methodological approaches). In addition, these modes of inquiry exhibit three systematic limitations: the assumption of a division between print, broadcast, and online media; the notion that the analysis should treat media features and social practices separately; and the inclination to focus on ordinary or extraordinary patterns of phenomena but not on both at the same time. On the basis of this assessment, this article proposes an integrative research agenda that builds on this scholarship but also contributes to solve some of its main limitations.