Diversity of exposure on the World Wide Web [electronic resource]
說明
185 p
附註
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-05, Section: A, page: 1582
Director: James G. Webster
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2004
The World Wide Web may provide diverse types of content from a variety of sources. Diversity of exposure, in terms of the Web audience's exposure to a variety of online content, may have implications for the marketplace of ideas model that has served as a foundation for much communication policy. Based on previous studies of audience behavior, it was predicted that actual diversity of exposure was low relative to the number of content options available on the Web. Behaviors examined in the context of Web usage included audience concentration and fragmentation, audience polarization and the development of site repertoires. In order to perform this evaluation, the household online activity of a representative sample of U.S. Web users was recorded for one month and subjected to analysis. Results indicate many Web users concentrate usage around the most popular sites and visit a very limited portion of available content
