Checking, Sharing, Clicking and Linking: Changing patterns of news use between 2004 and 2014

This paper challenges the generally taken-for-granted automatic link between media platforms, media technology and news user practices. It explores what has changed in people’s news consumption by comparing patterns in news use between 2004–2005 and 2011–2014. While new, social and mobile media technologies did not unleash a revolution in people’s dealings with news, they have facilitated, deepened and broadened user practices we already found in 2004–2005: monitoring, checking, snacking, scanning, watching, viewing, reading, listening, searching and clicking. In addition, these forms of news usage appear to increasingly order, control, organize and anchor other practices and the experience of time and environment in which they occur. Meanwhile, new and mobile news practices like linking, sharing, liking, recommending, commenting and voting have not become as central to news consumption as often assumed.