Should there be an app for that? An analysis of interactive applications within longform news stories

Abstract

The most-read story of 2014 on the website of The New York Times was an interactive news application called “How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk.” Interactive applications may provide value to the user experience of digital media, but they cost time and money to produce. In this study, we examined five multimedia news packages that include interactive applications as part of the story presentation and asked 18 millennial tablet computer users to evaluate them. Participants said the interactive applications that were most effective in attracting and retaining their interest maintained the flow of the narrative, provided a personalized or playful alternative to the representation of information in other media, and were produced by credible media organizations that designed their apps for use on mobile devices.