Effects of infographics on news elaboration, acquisition, and evaluation: Prior knowledge and issue involvement as moderators

Abstract

This study investigated how infographics may affect individuals’ news processing, focusing on multimodality and interactivity as its signature characteristics. News readers’ prior knowledge and issue involvement, which affect their ability and motivation to process information, were considered as potential moderators. In a 3 (text vs graphic vs text + graphic) × 2 (hyperlinks vs no hyperlinks) between-subjects experiment ( N = 360), participants read a news article concerning economic issues. Adding graphics to the news heightened the extent to which they engaged in news elaboration, albeit only among those with higher issue involvement. However, in-text hyperlinks hindered information recall among those with less prior knowledge, creating an information acquisition gap between more and less resourceful individuals. The graphical representation of news appeared to have heuristic appeals to those less involved in and less knowledgeable about the news topic, leading to more favorable news evaluation.

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