"Byproducts Of Online Activity":A Study On The Phenomenon Of Incidental News Encounters In The Digital Environment

Mobile terminals and social media have deeply rooted in the daily lives of users,and news consumption is gradually becoming a "incidental exposure" with news.This study aims to use empirical research to restore the contextual factors,channels,and content elements of users’ "incidental exposure" with news,and explore the characteristics and patterns of this type of news consumption.To achieve this,the author used the method of spatiotemporal diary and selected 50 volunteers as the research objects.A pre-test questionnaire was distributed to outline the characteristics of the research subjects.Then,a 21-day spatiotemporal diary survey was conducted,and the data collected from a total of 1050 spatiotemporal diary cards were coded and analyzed using Nvivo12 software.The results of the study showed that the essence of incidental news exposure is the news consumption that the audience uses their own news channels and content preferences as filtering mechanism,under the influence of a series of contextual factors,and the effect of algorithm mechanisms.This behavior is random but also has inevitability and predictability.The main factors that affect users’ incidental news exposure are self-control,algorithm mechanisms,and news disseminators.