IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v10y2021i12p463-d695487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gamifying Online News in a Senior Online Community: Insights from Designing and Assessing the Readers’ Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco Regalado

    (DigiMedia, Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal)

  • Liliana Vale Costa

    (DigiMedia, Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal)

  • Fernanda Martins

    (CITCEM, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, 4150-564 Porto, Portugal)

  • Ana Isabel Veloso

    (DigiMedia, Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal)

Abstract

Aging audiences and the shift of news consumption to an online paradigm have led to the need of finding strategies to engage aging readers with online news by assessing their news consumption habits and identifying the potential for digital platforms to assist the reader’s journey, i.e., the activities performed from access to the information to the relatedness and shareability of the news content. It is well established that the use of game elements and game thinking within the context of a community can capture the user’s attention and lead to behavioral engagement toward repetitive tasks. However, information about the design implications of socially gamified news to the aging reader’s experience is still lacking. Using a development research approach, we implemented a prototype that socially gamifies news to support the aging reader experience based on a pre-assessment survey with 248 participants about their news consumption habits and motivations. We then validated the prototype with six market-oriented representatives of Portuguese newspapers and eleven adults aged 50 and over. A model for onboarding a reader’s 6-step journey (read, react, discuss, share, relate and experience) within the context of a Senior Online Community using gamification is proposed. The game elements used can inform the design of a much more personalized experience of consuming news and news behavioral engagement.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco Regalado & Liliana Vale Costa & Fernanda Martins & Ana Isabel Veloso, 2021. "Gamifying Online News in a Senior Online Community: Insights from Designing and Assessing the Readers’ Experience," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-22, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:12:p:463-:d:695487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/12/463/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/12/463/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:12:p:463-:d:695487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.