THE STUDY
Two years ago Stanford University and The Poynter Institute researchers began collaborating to learn how frequent Internet news readers went about perusing news online. Key to the research would be tracking eye movement. Eyetracking tells us more precisely what the eyes take in than do survey questions that depend on recall. Exactly where do Internet news readers go to catch their news? Which stories do they read, which skim, which ignore? Do they read only headlines and briefs, or full articles? If they hyperlink to a related story, do they return to the original site? Learning the answers to questions such as these would, we hoped, begin to give us clues to Internet news reading behavior that could subsequently be correlated with civic action.
 Demographic Data |
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Beginning in December 1998 we ran a pilot study in the San Francisco-San Jose Bay Area to test the technical feasibility of recording eyetracking data while persons read Internet news online in real time. They used their own bookmarked sites in normal fashion, scrolling screens as they read, switching from site to site, entering forums if they liked, and so forth. After the bugs were worked out, we proceeded to Chicago and St. Petersburg, Fla., where we collected valid data on 34 and 33 subjects respectively for a total of 67. (We gathered data from 10 additional subjects, but they could not be calibrated.)
Subjects wore a lightweight SMI EyeLink eye tracking system that recorded all eye tracking data in a computer. This is a minimally intrusive, lightweight, head-mounted device. Small cameras attached to a mounting device illuminate eyes with very low levels of infrared light. They collect images 60 times per second. In addition to measuring the gaze-location of each eye, the EyeLink measures head position from a small camera attached to the computer's monitor. This camera determines where the subject is looking on the screen even as the head moves slightly. This ability was crucial to the study since subjects read news for long periods of time.
Specially written software developed by Stanford permanentaly captured both eyetracking movements and screen content to a computer for later viewing. Eye fixations were overlaid against the content. The length of time for each fixation and the order in which each occurred was also recorded.
Each screen viewed was subsequently coded in many different ways:
| By format |
• Headlines boxes and
individual headlines |
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| By topics | • Crime &
Disaster • Science & Medicine • Local • State • National • International • War • Lifestyle • Sports • Business & Technology • Opinions, Editorials, and Columns • Other |
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| By action | • Keyboard events (clicks, arrows, typing) | ||
| By
visits and time spent |
• Providers • Sections • Pages (Urls) |
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Here are some of the numbers we collected:
| Total number of subjects: | 67 |
| Total number of unique providers called up: | 211 |
| Total number of unique visits to providers: | 426 |
| Total visits to providers including revisits: | 610 |
| Total pages viewed: | 5,963 |
| Total unique pages viewed: | 4,542 |
| Total session hours during research: | 40 |
| Total eye fixations: | 608,063 |
| Total mouse clicks | 24,530 |
| Total boxes coded of all types: | 9,441 |
We recruited our subjects through promo pieces in online newspapers local to the research sites. These ran in the Chicago Sun-Times in Chicago and the St. Petersburg Times in St. Petersburg. For the pilot test in the San Francisco Bay Area, they ran in the San Jose Mercury News.
Reading online news at least three times a week was the chief criterion in selecting subjects from those who responded to the promos. "Reading news" was defined as "reading a formatted news site similar to those provided by online newspapers or online broadcast sites. Beyond that, reading news is whatever you believe it to be."
Subjects were asked to bring their own news-provider bookmarks with them to the research site. These were uploaded to the site computer to recreate the user's own computer screen. Although a PC Windows based platform was used, some Mac users declared familiarity with Windows and were members of the subject group.
After fitting and calibrating the eyetracker, subjects were asked to read normally whichever news providers they usually read in the manner in which they usually read, for as long a session as was typical for them.
At the end of reading sessions, subjects were interviewed about their experiences during the session, as well as about their general media habits. By and large, subjects reported that reading news at the research site was substantially similar to their normal habits. Session times ranged from a minimum of 7 minutes to a maximum of 65. The average was 34 minutes.