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News in the interstices: The niches of mobile media in space and time John Dimmick, John Christian Feaster and Gregory J. Hoplamazian New Media Society 2011 13: 23 originally published online 18 May 2010 DOI: 10.1177/1461444810363452 The online version of this article can be found at: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/13/1/23

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Article

News in the interstices:The niches of mobile media in space and time

new media & society 13(1) 23–39 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461444810363452 nms.sagepub.com

John Dimmick

Ohio State University, USA

John Christian Feaster Rowan University, USA

Gregory J. Hoplamazian Ohio State University, USA

Abstract The recent growth of mobile channels has provided steadily increasing opportunities for individuals to access news and other mass-mediated content. Media ecological perspectives argue that the introduction of such new technologies can shift the existing biases in prevailing social systems. According to one ecological perspective, the theory of the niche, when new media technologies are successfully introduced into a domain, displacement may occur unless some alteration is made to the resource base. Interstices are conceptualized as the gaps in the routines of media users between scheduled activities. Through the use of a diary method, participants logged access to news using a variety of communication technologies, including mobile channels. Results indicated that traditional media occupied traditional niches with little evidence of displacement, while mobile channels occupied a new niche: access in the interstices. Keywords communication technology, media ecology, mobility, news access, niche theory

The late 19th century to the late 20th century has been described as the age of mass communication (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1989). Throughout most of this phase, media Corresponding author: John Dimmick, School of Communication, Ohio State University, 3045A Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1339, USA. Email: [email protected]


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use was restricted in time and space. Newspapers as well as magazines were delivered to the household, and radio and television in their years of dominance were wired to the household. The radio, beginning in the 1950s, along with the portable music players of later decades, were the exceptions to the pattern of immobile media (Hemment, 2005). Cable and satellite TV reception continued the pattern of media wired to the household. Although there was some use of the newspaper by commuters on the mass transit systems of large cities, most media use continued to take place in the space of the household and the evening hours were ‘prime time’ for media consumption. In short, constraints due to time and space greatly restricted when and where individuals may access information or entertainment throughout this period. As has always been the case, however, new communication technologies are introduced and with them come changes in the patterns of everyday communication routines; new ages of communication emerge. Ecological approaches to mediated communication argue that shifts in communication technology alter the human experience and, to an extent, alter reality (Barnes, 2008; Ishii and Wu, 2006). Such changes have been argued to have both positive (McLuhan, 1964) and negative (Postman, 1992) effects on society. Taking an ecological view, Innis (1964) argued that throughout history, the communication technologies of an age both affect and are affected by the biases existing in the prevailing social structure, including perspectives regarding time and space. For example, he noted that complex systems of writing and virtually immovable media such as clay and stone, as used by the ancient Egyptians, generated what Innis referred to as a ‘monopoly of knowledge’ (1964: 35). In short, only a select few were privy to recorded information and only at specific times and places. The introduction of papyrus represented a shift towards lighter portable media that would ultimately contribute to change in these biases. Presently, the constraints of time and space on media use by information consumers are loosening further than the ancient Egyptians or many who followed could have imagined. In combination with the steadily growing complexity of society, new opportunities to connect with information have created an enhanced degree of dependence on new channels of communication for information (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1989). The information environment is shifting and potentially forming new, perhaps unrealized, biases. Consumers increasingly want and expect constant access to entertainment and news content regardless of their position in time or space. Whether a cause or a symptom of this information-hungry environment, small portable communication devices or mobile media such as the cellphone are playing a key role in serving these emerging biases. These mobile devices allow people to exploit gaps in their daily routines when/where other more traditional channels of communication are unavailable, inappropriate or inconvenient in order to garner news and information. The diffusion of these mobile channels during the 1990s was dramatic (Arceneaux, 2005) and has grown exponentially since then, particularly for the young (Kvavik et al., 2004). As more consumers are becoming connected through these channels, concurrently, the technologies that support them are growing significantly in sophistication with regard to speed, reliability, accessibility and affordability (Bohlin et al., 2007). Although research into mobile communication channel use has grown considerably in recent years to understand the effects of this growth, there is a conceptual gap in present theory to study any ecological changes in a systematic way. Older conceptions that framed media use as


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primarily occurring in traditional locations are ill-equipped to explain patterns of mobile media use, and with those patterns, the emergent biases in the communication and information environment. Below, the concept of interstices shall be introduced to address this gap.

Interstices in time and space As suggested above by Innis (1964), an important consideration in the study of communication environments and issues of mobility is the impact of biases regarding time and space. Speaking of time and space, Hemment (2005: 32–3) argues that: [Mobile technologies] might be said to be a place out of space and time, a placeless place, where the user is taken to be disconnected from the world around them, and connectivity and mobility to be independent variables, experienced not so much elsewhere as anywhere.

Concordantly, Caronia (2005) notes that mobile technologies extend media use to ‘nowhere-places’ and ‘no-when-times’. To better understand these shifting (and potentially confusing) ideas regarding time and space, we propose the concept of interstices to gain a more concrete understanding of mobile media use and, in particular, mobile media use for information seeking, such as that for news consumption. By definition, interstices refer to intervening spaces between things or narrow or small spaces or, sometimes, an interval of time. What we mean by news use in the interstices can be explained using daily schedules as an example. Daily schedules consist of substantial blocks or segments of time devoted to necessary activities such as working, sleeping and eating. Substantial amounts of leisure time, for many people, are available only in the evening hours and on weekends. These periods are commonly when most media use occurs, such as watching movies or television or listening to a symphony. Traditionally, these media activities are tied to the home or movie theaters – the spatial locations where the relevant media technology is available. Media use is often integrated into daily activities such as reading the newspaper during breakfast or listening to radio during the morning commute, but the traditional newspaper cannot be updated during the day and the car radio is place-bound. As discussed above, mobile media, however, free the consumer from the space-time constraints of traditional media use (Hemment, 2005). This freedom allows for the utilization of media in the interstices of people’s schedules, those odd crevices of time/space that routinely occur in our daily lives where no common assumptions or norms exist with regard to how to spend time (Caronia, 2005). For example, having finished lunch at a restaurant or a sandwich in the park, we might have some free time to be spent in any way we choose. With needs present for information, we may spend the remainder of the lunch hour checking the latest news stories via a mobile communication device. The new mobile media may thus create new opportunities for news consumption in the interstices of our lives, and use in these interstices may become normative cultural patterns (Ishii and Wu, 2006). The concept of interstices will be investigated in this study from the perspective of the theory of the niche, a bio-ecological theory of competition and coexistence. Interstices in the daily routine of media users will be conceptualized as a key component in the niches of the new mobile channels relative to more traditional news channels. What follows is


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a brief review of the theory of the niche, followed by a discussion of the role of time and space in the theory and a report on an empirical investigation assessing the role of interstices for news access.

Theory of the niche The theory of the niche was first applied to media studies by Dimmick and Rothenbuhler (1984). They argued that, like plants and animals in nature, communication media and media firms depend on resources for survival and must compete to occupy a niche in a relevant resource domain such as the news industry. From the perspective of audiences, the niche of a communication technology is determined by the patterns of consumption on specifically defined resource dimensions within the domain. For example, in the news media domain, the patterns of access to information provided from professional news sources may define the niche of a medium.1 In order to occupy a unique niche in any domain from the perspective of an audience, a communication medium must differentiate itself from other media with regard to the resources to which it provides access (e.g. news and entertainment) or with regard to the time and space locations to which it allows access. Competitive superiority refers to a medium’s capacity to outcompete other media with regard to one or more of those dimensions. If a medium cannot differentiate itself through some form of competitive superiority, it will not be able to survive or compete/coexist with other media for serving an audience (Dimmick, 2003). Since a variety of communication media provide access to news information, competition is keen. Thus, the role of differentiation in time and space opportunities for audience access is crucial for news media channels.

Time, space and the niche In an earlier work, Dimmick et al. (2007) used the work of Swedish time-space geographers Hägerstrand (1983) and his student Carlstein (1982) to conceptualize the use of interpersonal media in time and space. Time and space, however, have not been central to research and theory in the social sciences and, with some exceptions (such as Innis, 1964), most of the work on time and space is of recent origin (Gershuny and Sullivan, 1998; Kim and Kwon, 2003; Muralidhar et al., 2006). The diffusion of mobile technologies, such as the cellphone and iPod, has given rise to a number of studies of mobile media in time and/ or space (Farnsworth and Austin, 2005; Ishii, 2006; Leung and Wei, 1998; Nilsson et al., 2001; Wei and Lo, 2006). However, the use of the time-space diary, which is the methodological base of the present article, seems to have been limited to the fields of geography and transportation (see, for example, Dimmick et al., 2007; Muralidhar et al., 2006). Dimmick et al. (2007) conceptualized people’s use of interpersonal media in terms of each medium’s niche in time-space. However, notions of time and space are not new additions to the theory of the niche. Time and space were originally incorporated into the theory in the form of what Dimmick and Albarran (1994) termed gratification opportunities. Gratification opportunities represent the intersection, as in a Venn diagram, of needs or gratifications, media characteristics (e.g. portability) and the time-space location of the media consumer. Examples of time and space items on a scale of gratification opportunities (Dimmick, 2003) can be found in a study of email and the telephone: an item pertaining


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to ‘fit my busy schedule’ clearly denotes time use, while another item pertaining to ‘different time zones’ relates to the spatial locations of media users. A medium high in gratification opportunities yields a higher probability that a consumer will be able to gratify a need in a particular time-space location. Portable or mobile media are particularly high in gratification opportunities. Cellphones, for example, occupy an ‘in transit’ niche among interpersonal media (Dimmick et al., 2007). Based on the previous study of interpersonal media in time and space, mobile media, new media and traditional media should occupy specialized niches in time and space as channels of news content. As stated above, the theory of the niche posits that for media within a domain such as news and information to coexist, there must be distinct differences in their niches. If consumers find that two media are highly similar, there would be no need for both, and one of the media would be displaced from use. In other words, each medium must play a distinct and somewhat different role in the lives of its users (Dimmick, 2003). One way of defining a niche is that area within the resource space where one media form outcompetes or is superior to other media forms. The goal of this article is to study the use of news and information by adopters of portable or mobile technologies and to portray the use of the news media in time and space utilizing a time-space diary. In an earlier article, Dimmick et al. (2007) measured the use of interpersonal media (cellphone, instant messaging, text messaging and email) via a time-space diary. The present article extends the theory and the method developed in the previous work to the domain of news and information. Since each channel in a resource environment should occupy some unique niche, the general expectation of this study is that each medium will be superior in some content resource, such as news, sport and/or weather, or, alternatively, superior in some timespace location(s). Given this logic, the following research questions (RQs) shall guide the analyses presented below: RQ1: Within the resource niche dimension of time, which news media are superior to others for use at different times of day? RQ2: Within the resource niche dimension of space, which news media are superior to others for use in different locations? RQ3: Within the resource niche dimension of content, which news media are superior to others for access to different forms of news content? Within the theory of the niche, measures of competitive superiority have been utilized for gratifications and advertising (Dimmick, 2003). In this article, we interpret the likelihood of use in a news access event as a measure of competitive superiority for the time and space dimensions because media that are most likely to be used in specific times and places are the best in those circumstances and, hence, competitively superior.

Method Rationale In order to address the research questions posed in this study, it was necessary to assess individuals’ use of mobile and non-mobile technologies to access news, weather and sport content; specifically, the time when access began, the medium used (e.g. television,


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mobile media, newspaper), type of content (e.g. general news, weather, sport) and location (e.g. home, work, car) of news access. A time-space diary method was chosen for its ability to efficiently and accurately capture this information (Neimi, 1993). The approach borrows methods from time-use diaries (American Time Use Survey, 2007; Mattingly and Bianchi, 2003) by guiding participants through closed- and openended questions about their activity during an assigned 24-hour time period, while additionally recording the participant’s location (space). While the time-space diary is a more recent development, this method has been used successfully in both transportation engineering (Muralidhar et al., 2006) and time geography (Robinson and Godbey, 1997; Thornton and Williams, 1997) to track individuals’ movement during a specified time period.

Participants The sample used in this study was a non-probability judgement sample, where participants were recruited through a private survey firm that had access to a nationwide population. The aim of the recruitment procedure was to obtain a sample composed of individuals who used mobile communication technology at least once a day to access news. Additionally, it was desirable for participants in this study to have a daily routine in order to identify how mobile media are used to satisfy news access needs given time and space constraints. As a result, one goal of the recruitment process was to eliminate college students from the sample because their daily schedules tend to be filled with breaks and interstices, as opposed to routine and structure. This type of participant would likely report data quite different from working professionals dealing with the constraints of families and fulltime jobs. Using a proprietary selection process, the survey firm contracted for this project issued invitations by sending a link to a screener questionnaire via email. Using information obtained through this questionnaire, respondents were invited to take part in the study if they: 1) used at least one mobile communication technology (from a list provided) to access news, weather and/or sport at least once a day; 2) had received at least some college education; and, 3) were not a full-time student. These selection criteria were used for two reasons. First, non-students with greater than a high school education and higher income tend to be more interested in news (NAA, 2008). Additionally, we expect that those with greater income are more likely to utilize a wider variety of mobile technologies because they have the money to afford them. Of the 2132 individuals who responded to the screener questionnaire, 746 fit the above criteria and were invited to participate in the main study in exchange for a $15 reward. Of those who were invited, 208 (27.9%) completed the main study procedure. Several cases were removed due to problems matching data to screener responses and/or concern about duplicates. A portion of the sample (11.4%) declined to report demographic information beyond that requested in the screener questionnaire. The final sample used for analysis included 166 respondents made up of males (40.4%) and females (47.0%). Participants ranged in age from 19–68 years old (M = 35.5, SD = 9.5). A large portion of the sample (41.1%) reported that they traveled at least once a week as part of their job. The sample was made up primarily of Caucasians (63.9%), followed by Asians (12.6%), Latinos (4.8%), African Americans (3.6%) and other ethnic


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backgrounds (2.4%). The income level for the sample was rather high, with 65.1 per cent having an independent income greater than $50,000.

Procedure The main study procedure utilized a time-space diary method as explained earlier. Via the email invitation, participants were asked to carry a media use recording booklet (printed from an email attachment) for one weekday assigned at random. All recording occurred within the same week. A roughly equal number of participants were assigned to each of the five weekdays. This was done to account for behavioral differences that have been shown to occur depending on when observations are made throughout the week (Duck et al., 1991). For up to 20 media use sessions, participants were asked to record their access to news, sport and/or weather content. A session was defined as a period of time using a single medium that may involve access to one or more types of content (news, sport or weather) from one or more content sources (i.e. multiple websites or multiple channels). For clarity, participants were told that news was defined as any piece of information commonly found in newspapers or evening news programs, which includes entertainment, stocks, business and lifestyle information. More specifically, participants were told to only report news obtained from formal news sources. We defined formal news sources as those that provide news content reported by professionals as part of their formal job duties. This excludes informal news sources such as blogs, newsgroups, privately produced podcasts or news commentary programs such as The Daily Show. People come across news information in countless ways, including not only blogs and news commentary programs, but also interpersonal discussion, school and work functions or computermediated channels. These types of information sources were excluded because this study was concerned only with identifying the niches of media use within the professional news domain and not with all the means by which populations become informed. As a result, these rules were implemented in the interest of obtaining data based on the use of formal news sources. In order to account for accessing multiple media at the same time, one session could be interrupted by another session and then resumed if the participants believed this was a continuation of the first session. This situation was explained in the instructions by stating: ‘If during the same sitting, your attention returns to the first technology after being interrupted, this could be considered continuing your original session if you feel that you are resuming use with the same interest and purpose in mind as before.’ For example, a television session may be interrupted by checking for further information on the internet. After the internet session, if respondents returned their attention to the television with the same purpose, this was to be considered a continuation of the original session. For each session, the participants recorded: 1) the technology used; 2) all sources accessed; 3) the type of content accessed; 4) the location of the access; and, 5) the time of day when the access occurred. The source of the news was recorded by the participants writing in a source (such as CNN, ESPN, and so on) in a space provided. Each of the other variables was reported by respondents selecting from a list of options. For the options included for each recorded variable, see the sample diary page in Appendix A.


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At the conclusion of their recording day, participants accessed an online session entry website where they were first asked to provide the demographic information described above. They then transcribed their session information from the recording booklets to online entry forms. These online entry forms matched the format of the booklets used to record the sessions throughout the focal day.

Results A total of 1843 media use sessions were reported. Before primary analysis was performed, proportions were calculated for the reported media used in the sessions as well as the categories within the time, space and content dimensions to determine if any should be collapsed. A category was collapsed if it occurred in less than 5 per cent of the total reported use sessions. For example, 2.7 per cent of the reported sessions occurred in the ‘home of a friend’. Due to this low proportion, the category was collapsed with the ‘home’ category into a new ‘residence’ category. No collapsing was required for the content categories. Given that multiple forms of content could be reported in a single session, the categories were not mutually exclusive and their proportions added up to more than 100 per cent. The proportions of the sessions that contained ‘general news’, ‘sport’ and ‘weather’ content were 81.1, 32.7 and 42.5 per cent, respectively. The proportions for the other measured dimensions required adjustment via collapsing.2 Table 1 shows the proportions of each time and space category after collapsing as well as the proportions of total uses involving the different analyzed media.

Analysis To answer the three research questions, three separate multilevel logistic regression models were analyzed for each medium – one for each dimension. The categories for each dimension were dummy coded and entered exclusively as predictors in each model. For example, only the dummy variables for the time dimension were entered into the models for the time dimension research question. Logistic regression was used because it specifically analyzes changes in the likelihood of an event given the occurrence of another event in the recorded data. As noted above, competitive superiority for one channel over another was interpreted Table 1. Proportions of technology, time and location categories as measured and after collapse Technology Category

Time %

Multimedia mobile 6.8 Cellphone 5.2 Television 28.9 Newspaper 9.2 Desktop 24.1 Laptop 14.5 Radio 9.1 Other 2.2

Category

Location %

6–11a.m. 22.2 11–12p.m. 8.8 12–1p.m. 7.4 1–2p.m. 6.9 2–3p.m. 6.3 3–6p.m. 14.5 6–9p.m. 15.5 9p.m.–12a.m. 12.2 12a.m.–6a.m. 6.1

Category

%

Residence 58 Work 21.4 Vehicle 10.1 Transit 3.7 Active location 6 Other location 0.9


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as increasing the likelihood of a channel being reported in a media use session. If a medium is outcompeting another on a factor, there should be an increase in the likelihood of that medium being the one used when that factor arises. For example, if television has superiority over others in a residence, reports of use in a residence should significantly increase the likelihood that television was reported as the one used. Conversely, there may be a decrease in the likelihood of using other channels at the occurrence of this event if the superiority is strong enough. Given this, significant beta coefficients (positive to suggest increased likelihood or negative to suggest decreased likelihood) of dummy-coded media use event categories were used to assess patterns of competitive superiority. When a single categorical variable is dummy coded into multiple dichotomous dummy variables, any one of these variables within a single case when reported as positive can perfectly predict the values for the others. Including all dummy variables from one categorical dimension such as time or location in a regression analysis would in effect create a singularity and collapse the analysis. To avoid this, the use event categories that made up the smallest 5 per cent of the total uses were left out of the model and used as the reference category within the logistic regression models. When necessary, multiple categories were used as the reference category until the 5 per cent criterion was met to avoid singularity or near-singularity problems. Using these smallest categories as the reference categories allowed the changes in likelihood due to events that were entered into the model to be interpreted relative to the events where they were used the least. Changing the reference category among media based on this category was the most liberal way to determine if any superiority is present within the time and space dimension. Since the categories within content dimension were not mutually exclusive, there was no risk for singularity in including all three dichotomous categories in each analysis. Given this, the content dimension was analyzed by entering all three dichotomous content variables (e.g. weather/not weather) as predictors in the model for each medium. Multilevel procedures were used because participants could report as many or as few sessions as they chose. This method of data collection allowed for a greater representation of each participant’s news access and technology use routines, but created a violation of the independence of observations assumption within normal regression procedures. Multilevel procedures allow parameters (e.g. the intercept) to vary according to group-wise means (participants, in this case) in the outcome variables such that the independence of observations assumption may be relaxed (Luke, 2004). HLM version 5.05 was used to perform the analyses with the optional specifications set to the multinomial non-linear analysis option with two category outcomes. All other options (e.g. the number of iterations, changes required to stop iterating, restricted maximum likelihood estimation, and so on) were set to the default. For all tested models, the random effects for the intercept were left unsuppressed to overcome the abovementioned violation of independence of observations. Although no problems arose with near singularities, the significance levels were interpreted using the robust standard error portions of the output.

Research questions RQ1 asked which news media are superior to others for use at different times of the day. To answer this question, the time range categories that made up the 95 per cent majority of the uses for each medium were entered as predictors in the multilevel logistic regression models with the dichotomous outcome variable (use/did not use) for each


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Table 2. Beta coefficients for the reported use of multimedia mobile, cellphone, newspaper, desktop computer, laptop computer and radio technologies regressed on news access events, based on time spans during the day using multilevel modeling logistic regression procedures

Multimedia Cellphone Television Newspaper Desktop Laptop mobile

6–11a.m. 11–12p.m. 12–1p.m. 1–2p.m. 2–3p.m. 3–6p.m. 6–9p.m. 9p.m.–12a.m. 12a.m.–6a.m.

0.76 1.88*** 1.35** 1.77** 1.93*** 1.85*** 0.66 Reference Reference

0.89+ 1.62* 1.41** 1.27** 0.81 0.79+ 0.65 Reference 1.06+

0.84*** Reference 0.40 0.31 Reference 0.71** 2.08*** 2.02*** 1.24***

1.57*** 0.49 -0.18 0.51 1.14+ 0.72+ 0.91 1.00+ Reference 0.99* 0.99 0.13 1.29** 1.04+ 0.14 0.60 0.52 0.24 0.70 -0.34 -0.04 Reference 0.33 0.08 0.92 Reference 0.36

Radio 1.17** Reference 0.92* 0.69 0.89* 1.30*** 0.30 0.21 Reference

Positive coefficients are to be interpreted as an increase in the likelihood that a medium was reported for a session when the respective category was reported in the same session. Cells labeled ‘Reference’ denote time categories that were part of the smallest 5 per cent portion of the total uses for each respective medium. All significance levels interpreted from the robust standard errors portion of the HLM outputs. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, *p < .05, + p < .1

medium. The beta coefficients and significance levels are reported in Table 2. From these results, it appears that mobile channels (multimedia mobile and cellphone) have a degree of competitive superiority over the other media under analysis in the time dimension. Within certain parts of the day, however, other channels demonstrate some specialty. Television, for example, demonstrates strong competitive superiority over all the other channels for news access later in the day. RQ2 asked which news media are superior to others for use in different locations. To answer this question, the space location categories that made up the 95 per cent majority of the uses for each medium were entered as predictors in the multilevel logistic regression models with the dichotomous outcome variable (use/did not use) for each medium. The beta coefficients and significance levels are reported in Table 3. From these results, it appears that there is little evidence to suggest competitive superiority on the part of any of the analyzed channels for the space dimension as a whole, but some points of specialty can be interpreted. Multimedia mobile channels appear to have competitive superiority over the other channels while participants were on the move. In vehicles, the radio appears to have competitive superiority over the other channels (presumably during morning and evening commutes when cross compared with the results for the time dimension). Computer channels (desktop and laptop) seem to have competitive superiority over news access in work locations. Television appears to have some competitive superiority over the other channels in residences and active locations. RQ3 asked which news media are superior to others for access to different forms of news content. To answer this question, the three dichotomous content categorical variables were entered as predictors in the multilevel logistic regression models with the dichotomous outcome variable (use/did not use) for each medium. The beta coefficients and significance levels are reported in Table 4. These results indicate evidence for the competitive superiority of television and newspaper over the other channels in the


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Dimmick et al. Table 3. Beta coefficients for the reported use of multimedia mobile, cellphone, newspaper, desktop computer, laptop computer and radio technologies regressed on news access events, based on space locations using multilevel modeling logistic regression procedures

Multimedia Cellphone Television Newspaper Desktop mobile

Transit 0.23** -0.02 Residence -0.09+ -0.10+ Work -0.03 -0.09 Vehicle 0.00 0.02 Active 0.09 0.06 location Other Reference Reference location

Laptop

Radio

Reference -0.02 0.44*** 0.37*** 0.03 -0.05 Reference -0.11+ 0.18*** 0.11

Reference 0.23*** 0.45*** Reference Reference

Reference -0.01 0.11*** -.10 0.15*** -.09 Reference 0.45*** Reference -.06

Reference Reference

Reference Reference Reference

Positive coefficients are to be interpreted as an increase in the likelihood that a medium was reported for a session when the respective category was reported in the same session. Cells labeled ‘Reference’ denote location categories that were part of the smallest 5 per cent portion of the total uses for each respective medium. All significance levels interpreted from the robust standard errors portion of the HLM outputs. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, *p < .05, + p < .1

resource dimension of content. Television appears to have competitive superiority over all the other analyzed channels for weather content specifically and the same appears to be true for the newspaper for sports content.

Summarized findings and niche interpretations The combined results reported in the previous section demonstrate patterns of superiority in the ways in which each of the analyzed media are used. These patterns of superiority are indicative of different niches occupied by the analyzed media within the news domain: • The niche of multimedia mobile technologies appears to be for access during the workday while on the move. • The cellphone appears to fulfill the same niche as the multimedia mobile technologies (see Note 2 for further discussion). Table 4. Beta coefficients for the reported use of multimedia mobile, cellphone, newspaper, desktop computer, laptop computer and radio technologies regressed on news access events, based on content using multilevel modeling logistic regression procedures

Multimedia Cellphone Television Newspaper Desktop Laptop Radio mobile

General news -0.01 -0.10*** Sport -0.03 -0.01* Weather -0.01 0.00

0.14*** 0.08*** 0.03+ 0.07*** 0.10*** -0.03

-0.014 -0.03 -0.01 -0.06+ 0.00 0.02 -0.01 0.02 -0.03

Positive coefficients are to be interpreted as an increase in the likelihood that a medium was reported for a session when the respective category was reported in the same session. All significance levels interpreted from the robust standard errors portion of the HLM outputs. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, *p < .05, + p < .1


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• The niche of the television for news access appears to be in the home during late evening and night hours for general news and weather content. • The clearest niche for the newspaper appeared to be for use in the home in the early morning hours for sport and general news content. • The desktop and laptop computers appeared to both fill the niche for use at work. • The niche of the radio appears to be for news access during the morning and evening vehicle commute.

Discussion The emergence of the above patterns of superiority or niche is consistent with the claims of the theory of the niche (Dimmick, 2003) regarding coexisting media. In short, no two channels (if they are indeed two separate channels) may occupy the same niche and both survive. The results reported in the previous section suggest a clear pattern of superiority in the data, which indicates that the newer mobile media and traditional news media occupy different niches within the news domain. With regard to the dimension of content, television and newspapers appear to have a firm pattern of superiority in providing different forms of that resource. General news and weather appear to be the niche of television, while general news and sport are the province of newspapers. The other media under investigation, particularly the mobile channels, appear to compete to provide opportunities for news access in unique time and space locations. The mobile media seem to be occupying a niche that is clearly differentiated from traditional news media on these dimensions. The traditional media exhibit a familiar time-space pattern – newspapers in the morning, radio during morning and afternoon drive time and television or cable news in the evening. The evidence suggests that the mobile media, on the other hand, appear to provide news access during times and in places when traditional media are unavailable or inconvenient to utilize: the interstices of the daily routine. The competitive superiority of the mobile channels in the time dimension and the specialized superiority within the transit category within the space dimension reflect this. The mobile media are, in this study, interstitial media which occupy a ‘transit’ niche, serving consumer needs for news and information when they are on the move in space and time. In the language of the theory of the niche, the mobile media are providing new gratification opportunities (Dimmick and Albarran, 1994). Gratification opportunities represent the intersection between media characteristics and attributes/needs of consumers. One attribute of the consumers appears to be the interstices within their daily routines. The mobile media travel with the consumer in pocket, purse or briefcase and may be used where the traditional media are inaccessible. In summary, these media characteristics intersect with the interstices within the consumers’ routines to generate the gratification opportunities that allow the mobile media to occupy niches in their coexistence with more traditional channels.

Future research Although the evidence found in this study has provided some important insights, there are questions that remain. For example, this study has supported the conclusion that


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people use the interstices for mobile media. However, questions remain with regard to how this domain is used. One could ask, for example, are there differences in the goals or motivations behind news access in the interstices relative to the more traditional domains? Are there differences in the logistics of the news access events such as the duration of the use sessions? These and other empirical questions will need to be investigated in future research. Such studies could make significant contributions to current research regarding uses and gratifications (Kaye and Johnson, 2002; Wei, 2008) as well as media systems dependency theory (Kim et al., 2004) in the news domain. Aside from the general questions posed in the last paragraph, there are at least four additional opportunities for future research. First, future diary studies will need to use a greater number of categories of news content. Both television and newspapers seemed to have a firm hold on providing ‘general news’, but the category may not be specific enough to be meaningful for niche interpretation. Future diary studies of this phenomenon will need to use more specific categories of news access. Second, an aim of this study was to obtain a snapshot in an early period of the diffusion of mobile media. Two characteristics of the sample, relatively high income and a high degree of education (see Rogers, 2003) suggest that the sample may be composed largely of innovators. Innovators, the first to adopt an innovation, are often not representative of later adopters. Future studies will need to assess if the niches of the mobile media differ for other populations. Third, also regarding the sample, this study did not assess where the respondents lived. Although a majority of them traveled as part of their work responsibilities, the times and places they accessed news were likely affected by whether they lived in urban or rural areas. Future research will need to investigate if the mobile news media channels as well as the traditional news media channels occupy different niches for audiences living in different geographic regions. Fourth and finally, although a majority of the conclusions of this article are targeted towards mobile channels, the data in Table 1 make evident that the use of these channels did not make up a sizeable proportion of the total reported uses for the sample. As stated above, this is very early in the diffusion of mobile channels. It may be the case that, as this diffusion progresses, their use may make up a greater proportion and their roles for users may change. Hence, the study should be replicated at later points in time to ascertain if the early patterns in niches found in this study persist or change over time.

Conclusion As society becomes more complex, individuals become more reliant on communication technologies to stay informed about the world around them (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1989). New communication technologies inevitably generate new biases in patterns of communication with regard to time and space (Innis, 1964). This study has argued that through exploiting gaps or interstices during daily routines when news access had previously been unfeasible, use of mobile channels by consumers has created a differentiated niche from other more traditional channels in the news domain. In doing so, needs and expectations (i.e. biases) for portability and constant news information updates by these audiences have been expanded. The interstitial domain of media use represents new opportunities for communication scholars. Future investigations of this domain will provide deeper insights into how new mobile communication channels intertwine with the lives of news audiences.


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Acknowledgements This study was supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation and the Harvard Center for the Press and Public Policy.

Notes 1 For a defined niche to be meaningful, it is necessary to identify the domain and associated resources dimensions within that domain with a reasonable degree of specificity. Although it is, at present, under debate as to whether media sources such as blogs or entertainment shows about news such as The Daily Show should be considered news, the use of the theory of the niche in this article necessitated that these sources be excluded. This is so because it is not yet determined if audiences are using these sources to access resources within the same domain as when accessing professional news sources. 2 A number of categories within each of the dimensions under analysis needed to be collapsed due to not meeting criterion proportions in the data. Within the recorded technologies, the multipurpose mobile, PDA and personal media player were collapsed into a single ‘multimedia mobile’ category. Although the cellphone barely made the criterion value, it was left as an individual category since it was the most established of the mobile channels analyzed. HD radio and satellite radio were merged with the AM/FM radio category to make a single ‘radio’ category. The ‘other’ category within the technologies recorded was excluded from further analysis. Within the proportions of the time categories, the two categories for the middle of the night (‘12–3a.m.’ and ‘3–6a.m.’) were collapsed into a single ‘12–6a.m.’ category. Within the location responses, the ‘home of friend’ category was collapsed with the ‘home’ category to become a ‘residence’ category. The ‘terminal’ and ‘walking’ categories were collapsed into a single ‘transit’ category. The ‘restaurant’, ‘recreation location’ and ‘store’ categories were collapsed into an ‘active location’ category. The ‘other location’ category was retained to be used as a default reference category.

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Appendix A

Sample Session Entry Page from Time-Space Diary Session 1 Media technology used during this session (Circle One) Multipurpose Mobile Device PDA Personal Media Player Cellphone Television Newspaper Stationary/Desktop Computer Laptop Computer AM/FM Radio HD Radio Satellite Radio Other Please write in the sources that were used during this session ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ What types of content were you seeking during this session? (Circle all that apply) General News Sports Weather Time of day when session took place(Circle One): 6:01A.M.–11:00A.M. 11:01A.M.–12:00P.M. 12:01P.M.–1:00P.M. 2:01P.M.–3:00P.M. 3:01P.M.–6:00P.M. 6:01P.M.–9:00P.M. 9:01P.M.–12:00A.M. 12:01A.M.–3:00A.M. 3:01A.M.–6:00A.M. Location at which the session began (Circle One): Home Transportation Terminal Walking-In between Locations Office/Work Location Recreation Location In a Vehicle Restaurant/Bar Exercise Location Store/Business Home of Friend/Acquaintance Other


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John Dimmick is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Ohio State University. His research interests include media economics and new media, primarily from the perspective of the theory of the niche. Address: School of Communication, Ohio State University, 3045A Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1339, USA. [email: [email protected]] John Christian Feaster is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Rowan University. His research focusses on the roles of communication technologies in interpersonal communication contexts. Address: 307 Hawthorn Hall, Communication Studies Department, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Rd, Glassboro, NJ 08028, USA. [email: [email protected]] Gregory J. Hoplamazian is a PhD student in the School of Communication at the Ohio State University. His research interests include social responses to advertising and the relationship between new and traditional media. Address: School of Communication, Ohio State University, 3142D Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1339, USA. [email: [email protected]]
