Motivations

News consumption requires motivation. This chapter aims to understand user needs and expectancies as motivational factors behind the consumption of mobile news. The three identified motivations of mobile phone use—sociability, entertainment, and surveillance—reveal the underlying reasoning of Asian college students about the mobile phone as an all-in-one media choice that is essential to socialize, entertain, and stay informed. Moreover, surveillance as a civic motivation is positively related to expectancies of mobile news as being interactive and personally valuable. These motivations sought from mobile phone use and usability attributes of mobile news, both civic and practical, manifest the desire of Asian college students to access news on their phones for intentional and active consumption.

Engagement

How do Asian college students keep track of and interact with news on their phone? Using data from the two waves of surveys, this chapter examines the behavior and patterns of engagement with mobile news by virtue of following and sharing. It also explores the differences in news engagement attributed to demographics, motivation, and city of residence. Findings show that following and sharing mobile news are prevalent, especially in the 4G era, making consuming news on the smartphone different from that of traditional news media. The chapter concludes that engagement with mobile news results from both user motivation and the empowering tools afforded by the Internet-enabled smartphone.

Consumption

This chapter traces the evolution of the mobile phone as a viable channel to disseminate news by news organizations and as a portable device to access and consume news for users in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei. It also explores the gap in regulations concerning mobile news in the four aforementioned Asian cities and documents the growing trend in consuming mobile news among the mobile phone-savvy college students. The chapter then identifies predictors of patterns in mobile news consumption. Significant differences in consumption exist across the four studied cities due to different levels of press freedom.

Conclusions

This chapter draws conclusions based on empirical evidence concerning the why, how, and effects of mobile news consumption. A new type of news consumer emerges—one who prefers to seek news over the phone rather than the PC, who tends to engage with the news, and who learns something about currents affairs from it. The increased consumption of news via the mobile phone reveals a process in which Asia’s civically motivated young generations seek to be informed. Our findings offer insights into the debate over technological determinism in that technological innovations matter in early stages of a technology’s diffusion. However, as the technology matures and its use becomes routinized, it is increasingly subject to societal constraints and impositions of political power. Consumption of mobile news among college students in the four studied Asian cities represents an illuminating case of social shaping of technology.

Who Learns from Mobile News?

Does consumption of mobile news make a difference in acquiring knowledge of public affairs? Focusing on news regarding the relationship between North Korea and the United States, this chapter examines the learning effect of mobile news among the surveyed college students in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei. Results reveal that male respondents are more politically knowledgeable than are female respondents; need for orientation is a significant predictor of political knowledge. In addition, societal factors such as information accessibility also affect Asian college students’ acquisition of political knowledge—respondents living in a highly accessible city tend to know more about the North Korea and U.S. relations than do their peers living in a city with restricted access to digital information. In learning from mobile news, both the hardware (4G networks and smartphones) and software (global outlook, access, and openness) are equally important in producing informed and engaged young citizens in Asia.

Motivation, Perception, and Engagement

Mobile news as the focal concept of study is explicated as a multidimensional construct. This chapter elaborates on the attributes of mobile media and implications of these attributes for mobile news consumption. The chapter then presents the analytical framework with five dependent variables of mobile news consumption and predictors of the consumption at individual and societal levels. Finally, to achieve a systematic study of mobile news consumption in Asia, a comparative model is proposed; it highlights the similarities of the four Asian cities with different social political systems for cross-societal comparisons.

Modeling with Mediation Analysis

Building on multiple regression results, this chapter examines the direct and indirect effects of societal-level factors as exogenous variables on the studied endogenous variables to better understand the mediation effects of individual-level variables. Six structural equation modeling (SEM) models were proposed and tested. The findings clarify the role of surveillance motivation and expectancies of mobile of personal value as key mediators in affecting the behavior of mobile news consumption when societal influences (e.g., city of residence and smartphone ownership) are present in structural relationships. Similarly, level of freedom of the press as a societal factor first influences perceived utility and perceived appeal of mobile news and then indirectly influences mobile news credibility, while the effects of perceived utility and perceived appeal are derived from press freedom. Finally, information accessibility at the societal level was found to enhance learning from mobile news by directly and indirectly influencing motivations, consumption behavior, and engaged consumption.

News Gone Mobile

Accessing news from the ubiquitous mobile phone accelerated following the debut of the iPhone in 2007. As news has become more readily available than ever, the mobile phone serves as a popular gateway to access and consume it. Asian countries are at the forefront of adopting the mobile phone, where consumption of mobile news is on the rise. This chapter outlines diffusion trends in mobile telephony and increased consumption of mobile news, thus situating the cross-societal comparative analysis of mobile news consumption in Asia in a digital and global context. The focus of study is defined, and the promise of emerging mobile media to bring about positive social change is proposed.

Perceptions

Consuming mobile news can be risky business. How do Asian college students view the quality and credibility of news content they consume via the mobile phone? This chapter assesses their perceptions of the credibility of news created and delivered to the mobile screen in the four selected Asian cities. Findings indicate an ambivalence toward mobile news held by college students in Asia, especially those in Shanghai and Singapore—mobile news is reliable but lacks diversity in perspectives (e.g., alternative to the official stance or government point of view). Comparative analyses further reveal that Shanghai and Singapore respondents rated mobile news credibility more highly than did their counterparts in Hong Kong and especially in Taipei, where evaluation of mobile news credibility was the lowest. Perceptions of mobile news credibility also vary by gender, level of consuming mobile news, reliance on traditional media as news sources, perceived utility of mobile news, and appeal of presentation.