Nudgit-Reducing Online News Consumption by Digital Nudges

Abstract

Users are increasingly feeling the desire to break free from digital restraints, whether it is the never-ending feeds of social media, the need to always be online, or the flood of breaking real-Time news. Without assistance, achieving this goal appears practically unattainable. We developed a prototype application to let users self-regulate their online news consumption to better understand and support them. We investigated whether the prototypical nudges had an effect on how much time the participants (N=5) spent consuming digital news, how frequently they opened the prototype application and their awareness of their news consumption behavior. We demonstrated the potential of employing opening-counter, interceptor-view, and, content filter to help users reduce and become more conscious of their news consumption using the prototype application for two weeks. These insights may aid in the development of future use cases.