Motivations and habits of micro-news consumption on mobile social media

Abstract

Micro-news are abbreviated summaries or teasers of news content that are often accompanied with links to longer articles. We investigated motivations and habits of micro-news consumption through mobile social media platforms and how these variables relate to continuation intention. We surveyed 250 U.S. adults and identified six motivations using a uses and gratifications approach: social utility, pass time, entertainment, local information-seeking, salient information-seeking, and financial information-seeking. We found that habits add significant explanatory power on top of motivation in explaining users’ continuance intention. Context stability of time and situation, but not location, was correlated with habit.