All the news that's fit to read: a study of social annotations for news reading
Venue
In Proc. of CHI2013, ACM, pp. 2407-2416
Publication Year
2013
Authors
Chinmay Kulkarni, Ed H. Chi
BibTeX
Abstract
As news reading becomes more social, how do different types of annotations affect
people's selection of news articles? This paper reports on results from two
experiments looking at social annotations in two different news reading contexts.
The first experiment simulates a logged-out experience with annotations from
strangers, a computer agent, and a branded company. Results indicate that, perhaps
unsurprisingly, annotations by strangers have no persuasive effects. However,
surprisingly, unknown branded companies still had a persuasive effect. The second
experiment simulates a logged-in experience with annotations from friends, finding
that friend annotations are both persuasive and improve user satisfaction over
their article selections. In post-experiment interviews, we found that this
increased satisfaction is due partly because of the context that annotations add.
That is, friend annotations both help people decide what to read, and provide
social context that improves engagement. Interviews also suggest subtle expertise
effects. We discuss implications for design of social annotation systems and
suggestions for future research.
