Mobile Internet News Consumption: An Analysis of News Preferences and News Values

Abstract

Internet news consumption is rapidly growing in Korea, and majority of that is being done through Naver, Korea’s primary search engine. Naver is also the go-to search engine for smartphone use. This study analyzed 824 most popular news accessed via mobile gears; the news items were selected from Naver’s ‘Daily Top 10 Stories,’ dating from March 2016 to December 2016. The results indicate that entertainment news were the most viewed, while political and social issue news were the most liked and commented by mobile users. With regard to news value, ‘prominence’ and ‘impact’ were the two most important factors that influenced a user’s news selection process in a mobile environment. The degree of a news’ ‘prominence’ was the most important factor that determined the number of views, while ‘impact’ was critical to determining “the most commented-upon” and “the most liked” news. The results also indicate that mobile news consumers prefer more dramatic storylines and events that incite public anger or grief, threaten the safety of citizens, or evoke emotional sympathy rather than ‘hard news’ about such subjects as politics and economics.