Rethinking the Generational Gap in Online News Use: An Infrastructural Perspective

📝 Abstract

Our study investigates the role of infrastructures in shaping online news usage by contrasting use patterns of two social groups,millennials and boomers,that are specifically located in news infrastructures. Typically based on self reported data, popular press and academics tend to highlight the generational gap in news usage and link it to divergence in values and preferences of the two age cohorts. In contrast, we conduct relational analyses of shared usage obtained from passively metered usage data across a vast range of online news outlets for millennials and boomers. We compare each cohort’s usage networks comprising various types of news websites. Our analyses reveal a smaller than commonly assumed generational gap in online news usage, with characteristics that manifest the multifarious effects of the infrastructural aspect of the media environment, alongside those of preferences.

💡 Analysis

Our study investigates the role of infrastructures in shaping online news usage by contrasting use patterns of two social groups,millennials and boomers,that are specifically located in news infrastructures. Typically based on self reported data, popular press and academics tend to highlight the generational gap in news usage and link it to divergence in values and preferences of the two age cohorts. In contrast, we conduct relational analyses of shared usage obtained from passively metered usage data across a vast range of online news outlets for millennials and boomers. We compare each cohort’s usage networks comprising various types of news websites. Our analyses reveal a smaller than commonly assumed generational gap in online news usage, with characteristics that manifest the multifarious effects of the infrastructural aspect of the media environment, alongside those of preferences.

📄 Content

An Infrastructural Perspective on Online News Use

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To cite: Taneja, H., Wu, A. X., & Edgerly, S. (Forthcoming). Rethinking the Generational Gap in Online News Use: An Infrastructural Perspective. New Media & Society.

Rethinking the Generational Gap in Online News Use:
An Infrastructural Perspective

Harsh Taneja (University of Missouri) E Angela Xiao Wu (Chinese University of Hong Kong) E *Stephanie Edgerly (Northwestern University)

Abstract Our study investigates the role of infrastructures in shaping online news usage by contrasting use patterns of two social groups—millennials and boomers—that are specifically located in news infrastructures. Typically based on self-reported data, popular press and academics tend to highlight the generational gap in news usage and link it to divergence in values and preferences of the two age cohorts.
In contrast, we conduct relational analyses of shared usage obtained from passively metered usage data across a vast range of online news outlets for millennials and boomers. We compare each cohort’s usage networks comprising various types of news websites. Our analyses reveal a smaller-than-commonly- assumed generational gap in online news usage, with characteristics that manifest the multifarious

E Equal contributors (names in alphabetical order). An Infrastructural Perspective on Online News Use

2 effects of the infrastructural aspect of the media environment, alongside those of preferences.

Keywords Millennials, boomers, infrastructure, online news, news preferences, social media, legacy media, political polarization

An Infrastructural Perspective on Online News Use

3 Rethinking the Generational Gap in Online News Use:
An Infrastructural Perspective

This study explores the understudied role of infrastructures in shaping digital media use. Drawing heavily on self-reported survey data focusing on the preferences of various social groups, most existing literature assumes that, in a high choice media environment, content preferences are the principal determinant of media use. Our study differs from the norm both theoretically and methodologically. Theoretically, we explore the potential effects of the larger infrastructure of the online environment on people’s web usage. We recognize that for users, infrastructural aspects remain largely invisible or taken-for-granted (Sandvig, 2013). Hence, to factor the infrastructural dimensions likely obscured in survey-based methods, our study takes a comparative approach to analyze passively collected metered usage data of social groups with distinct locations in the digital infrastructural environment. We compare two groups known for their particular content preferences that best enable us to discern the imprints of infrastructures on usage patterns. Specifically, we use comScore data on shared usage between the 781 most popular news websites (along with two leading social network sites) for millennials (adults born after 1981), and boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) (Taylor, 2014). These two groups generally report vastly divergent news preferences and usage (Mitchell, Gottfried, & Matsa, 2015). Beyond comparing their aggregate usage of news websites, we employ a network approach to determine how each cohort actually uses various news websites in relation to one another. We compare online news use of the two cohorts on a variety of aspects that imply the role of content preference vis-a-vis that of news infrastructures. In particular, we An Infrastructural Perspective on Online News Use

4 focus on the infrastructural tendency for media consumption to display a power-law distribution, as well as the infrastructural legacy of media offerings. Our study reveals a generational gap in using online news much smaller than commonly assumed, and the generational differences and commonalities point to the understudied connections between digital media infrastructures and news usage. Our conceptualization about infrastructural effects, as well as our empirical approach to infrastructure through contrasting usage data, extends scholarship on media choice. Digital Infrastructures and Online News Usage

Broadly speaking, the literature on media use has traditionally been divided into what we call the preference perspective and the infrastructural perspective. As a useful but rough guideline, the former focuses on meaning-making and the symbolic, with an emphasis on articulated pursuits of media, while the latter highlights to the format and materiality of the media system, regardless of content (Siles & Boczkowski, 2012).
The preference perspective, within which most existing mainstream understandings about news usage are situated, is rooted in the assumption that audiences are rational agents whose preferences— that is, enduring and self-conscious leaning toward specific types of media content—driv

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