Value Emergence in the Usage of Mobile News Alerts

Abstract

Mobile news alerts have become an important means for news organizations to develop their relationship with growing mobile audiences. Yet, there is a lack of knowledge about the way audiences experience mobile news alerts and how newsrooms should measure the success of news alerts. This article presents an ethnographic study of the consumption of mobile news alerts. For analyzing the consumption, a value creation approach is introduced as an alternative model that does not address audiences solely as citizens that need information for public good, nor as market-driven entities. Instead, the focus is on understanding audiences as individual customers who create the value of news alerts while using the news services. Furthermore, this article reflects the results of a study of the alert sending practices of a regional newspaper. The findings indicate that while news media still tend to think of customers as a unified group of “readers”, the receivers of news alerts treat their mobile screens as an individual sphere whose information flow should match their personal context and needs. This article brings forth the need among news media for a broader understanding of the consumption of news alerts including developing co-creation activities with customers.