Promises and Pitfalls: Taking a Closer Look at How Interactive Infographics Affect Learning From News.
- Author(s)
- Esther Greußing, Hajo Boomgaarden
- Abstract
This study investigates how interactive infographics affect individuals’ understanding of news. We conducted a survey experiment (N = 293) to isolate the effects of a clickable graph and a slider graph on memory of the interactive graphical content and the surrounding text-based content, respectively. Moreover, to shed light on the underlying mechanisms linking interactive infographics with individuals’ cognitive responses en route to learning, we test a model with interface assessment, absorption, and elaboration as key mediators of information acquisition. Overall, the findings point to a negative impact
of interactive infographics on news consumers’ memory. However, allowing users to interact with information displayed in graphics cannot be expected to uniformly affect the learning process; instead, the impact of interactive visual content depends on how the use of specific interactive modalities initiates both affective and cognitive processes in audiences when reading online news.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication
- Journal
- International Journal of Communication (IJoC)
- Volume
- 15
- Pages
- 3336–3357
- ISSN
- 1932-8036
- Publication date
- 2021
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508012 Media impact studies
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/promises-and-pitfalls-taking-a-closer-look-at-how-interactive-infographics-affect-learning-from-news(896378ee-7786-4b2c-b877-9a0a68090bc3).html