When: Thursday,May 16, 15.30 to 17.30 hours (followed by drinks)
This event is open for external attendees: To register, please send an email with your name and affiliation.

Today, most U.S. adults (89%) report using their mobile phones to access news. Recent gains in mobile news consumption raise questions about how news attention and engagement differ in the mobile setting. Using consumption data from the real world, we are able to characterize how Americans use their devices to consume news and entertainment, and the picture is bleak: most people spend significantly less time reading news on their mobile devices. To understand whether these patterns affect the way we process information, we field two lab studies utilizing eye-tracking technology to examine the extent to which people differ in attention and recall across computers, tablets and smartphones. In both studies, we find that consuming news on a mobile device exerts costs which result in poorer learning outcomes. Follow-up studies fielded 24 hours after exposure reveal and even more dramatic gap in recall performance between mobile and computer users. As the American public increasingly relies on mobile devices for news, these findings suggest the move to mobile has consequences for an informed electorate.

About dr. Searles:
Dr. Kathleen Searles is an Assistant Professor of Political Communication, holding a joint appointment in the Manship School of Mass Communication and the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. Her interests include news media, campaign advertising, and political psychology. Specifically, her research examines the content of partisan news, poll coverage, and the influence of emotional appeals in campaign ads. Most recently her work focuses on using bio-metrics to better understand the effects of political television ads and direct mail. She has published in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Political Communication, The Journal of Experimental Political Science, and Political Psychology. She also serves on the editorial board for #WomenAlsoKnowStuff, a site designed to amplify the voice of women political scientists in public discourse and decrease the gender imbalance in media representation of experts.