This study looked at how different formats of online news story can affect the way users read and understand it.The researcher formatted one story taken off the wire into two different ways: simple text story and a story customized for Web presentation. As an example the researcher used the style of MSNBC.com, one of nation's leading providers of original online news content.One hundred and sixty subjects who participated in the study were split into two different groups reflecting their online reading habits: the users who read news in full (or slow readers) and the users who scan and/or skim online information (fast readers). Both groups were exposed to each type of online story presentation.With the help of an online instrument created for the purpose of this study the researcher monitored subjects' reading speeds and recall of different types of story.The data collected in the experiment were analyzed through two-way Analysis of Variance, or ANOVA, with equal sample sizes.Initial analysis of the data revealed no significant difference between the way both types of readers recalled the two stories. Further analysis, however, showed that the type of story presentation had an effect on the speed with which certain categories of subjects read the stories. Subsequent analysis revealed that it was fast readers who took statistically significant less amounts of time to read the story formatted for online presentation. / Department of Journalism

Thesis (Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Design)--University of Baltimore, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 4).