How to design digital news environments that not only generate more clicks, but also contribute to democratic societies.
Nicolas Mattis shows that news providers, if they want to, have plenty of opportunities to create digital news environments that promote engagement with diverse and/or socially relevant news. At the same time, he finds that sometimes nudges can also cause unintended side effects.
Some nudges work better than others
Nicolas Mattis tested different nudges such as firstly changes to the structure of news aggregators/websites (e.g. ranking), secondly changes to the content of news (e.g. catchy writing style) or thirdly changes to the way news is presented in a user interface (e.g. labels). Of these nudges, changes to the structure of digital news environments have the strongest effect. Other nudges affect certain individuals more than others (and are most effective when they respond to what readers themselves want). Also because not everyone likes to be nudged.
'Through a nuanced comparison of the risks and opportunities of different nudges, my results can help news professionals make better-informed decisions. To some extent, this should also apply to social media feeds, which obviously also play an important societal role. While the results align with broader literature on nudging that shows that a single nudge has a limited impact on human behavior, these small effects can still add up over time’, Nicolas Mattis explains.
Redesigning digital news environments
News is an essential part of well-functioning democratic societies. News helps people learn more about important issues and participate in society. However, changes in the way news is disseminated and consumed (e.g., online, through social media and/or news aggregators) combined with fierce competition for readers' attention can cause people to read news that is less diverse and/or socially relevant.
At the same time, however, digital news environments offer ample opportunities for designing so-called “democratic news recommenders,” which is a concept where users are guided not only by consumption but also by societal relevance.
Nicolas Mattis explored different paths to such designs and tested whether their implementation would actually lead to the desired outcomes.
Mattis explains: ‘I used a wide range of methods, including a literature review, qualitative interviews and various forms of experiments. In particular, I tried to test different nudges in realistic-looking news environments with real news. For this, I built my own experimental websites that allowed me to measure people's online behaviour on these interactive mock-up news sites. For my last study, I worked with a computer scientist who had developed a complete news app that people could download from the app store. By populating this app with real and current news stories over a week, I was able to test my hypotheses in a real-life environment.’