Nudging News Readers: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding When and How Interface Nudges Affect News Selection

Building on research on nudging as well as democratic news recommender design, this preregistered study employed a mixed-methods design to explore how interface nudges and article positioning affect news selection. Specifically, we tested whether a position nudge as well as three different types of interface nudges (e.g., popularity cues and social norm interventions) can facilitate readers’ engagement with current affairs news over other genres. To better understand how users processed and perceived the nudges, we further substantiated the experimental results with qualitative insights from a think-aloud protocol and semi-structured interviews. Our experimental results revealed strong effects of the position nudge, but no significant effects of interface nudges. Exploratory analyses indicated that interface nudges must be noticed to affect news selection, while our qualitative insights point to considerable individual-level differences in how nudges are perceived and evaluated. Thus, our study suggests that effective nudging requires carefully pre-tested design and a nuanced understanding of individual preferences.