Report: With the eyes of the readers: A comparison of the broadsheet and compact formats – An eye-tracking study on reader-newspaper interaction

The study presented here was conducted between September 2006 and March 2007 at the Media Science Faculty of Trier University. The research project was realised with the support of Ifra and the Axel Springer publishing corporation.

by Anton Jolkovski anton.jolkovski@wan-ifra.org | July 25, 2007

WAN-IFRA_Eyes_Readers

The objective of the study was to investigate the reception of the two newspaper formats. The focus was on the following questions:

  • How do readers use the two newspapers?
  • How is attention distributed throughout the newspaper? How is it distributed through individual newspaper pages?
  • How do readers evaluate the two newspapers – their contents, presentation and format?
  • How do readers use topic clusters, brief texts and referral texts in both formats?
  • Which reading strategies and reader types can be identified?
  • Which reading paths and reading patterns can be detected on the newspaper pages?