The Impact of News Customisation on News Enjoyment

The final speaker in this session at ICA 2018 is Di Zhu, who explores the effects of personal news customisation on user enjoyment. Customisation here is seen as different from personalisation, which is algorithmically driven: customisation involves active, deliberate user choices, for example by choosing specific topics or indicating their interest in the stories they encounter.

Making choices satisfies a basic human need to be in control of our own lives. But having too many choices can be overwhelming and demotivating, as studies of Website and game customisation options have shown. News customisation could similarly enhance users’ enjoyment of their newsfeed, but constant appeals for further customisation might be exhausting and disenchanting.

The present study examined users’ need for autonomy, news customisation, and news enjoyment in an experimental setting. Basic customisation resulted in greater satisfaction of their needs, while complex customisation had a negligible effect on satisfaction. News enjoyment, in turn was not affected by basic customisation, but negatively affected by complex customisation. Basic customisation also led to longer reading times, while complex customisation showed no effects.

In a second experiment, the locus of control and users’ intrinsic motivation to read news stories were also incorporated into the study. Here, need satisfaction and enjoyment were enhanced by customisation, and basic customisation increased intrinsic motivation while complex customisation decreased it. Users who had a high internal locus of control (who believed strongly that they are in control of their environment) benefitted especially strongly from basic customisation.

This has clear implications for the range and complexity of news customisation choices that should be offered to news users.