Though people frequently use mobile technologies for news consumption, evidence from several fields shows that smaller screens and slower connection speeds pose major limitations for meaningful reading. In News and Democratic Citizens in the Mobile Era, Johanna Dunaway and Kathleen Searles demonstrate the effects of mobile devices on news attention, engagement, and recall, and identify a key cognitive mechanism underlying these effects: cognitive effort. They advance a theory that is both old and new: the costs of information-seeking curb participatory behaviors unless the benefits outweigh them. For news consumers in the mobile era, for example, mobile devices increase the time, economic, and cognitive costs associated with information-seeking. Only for a small few do the benefits of attending to the news on mobile devices outweigh the costs. Building on economic theories of news, media choice, and the ways audience demand shapes news craft and production, Dunaway and Searles argue that attention, engagement, and recall suffer when people consume news on mobile devices. They then investigate the implications of these effects for the news industry and for an informed democratic citizenry. Drawing on both laboratory and real-world studies, Dunaway and Searles bring the psychophysiology of news consumption to bear on the question of what we could lose in an information environment characterized by a dramatic shift in reliance on mobile devices.

Expert news sources offer context and act as translators, communicating complex policy issues to the public. Therefore, these sources have implications for who, and what is elevated and legitimized by news coverage. This element considers patterns in expert sources, focusing on a particular area of expertise: politics. As a starting point, it conducts a content analysis tracking which types of political experts are most likely to be interviewed, using this analysis to explain patterns in expert sourcing. Building on the source data, it next conducts experiments and surveys of journalists to consider demand for expert sources. Finally, shifting the analysis to the supply of expert sources, it turns to a survey of faculty to track expert experiences with journalists. Jointly, the results suggest underlying patterns in expert sourcing is a tension between journalists' preferences, the time constraints of producing news, and the preferences of the experts themselves.

Though people frequently use mobile technologies for news consumption, evidence from several fields shows that smaller screens and slower connection speeds pose major limitations for meaningful reading. In News and Democratic Citizens in the Mobile Era, Johanna Dunaway and Kathleen Searles demonstrate the effects of mobile devices on news attention, engagement, and recall, and identify a key cognitive mechanism underlying these effects: cognitive effort. They advance a theory that is both old and new: the costs of information-seeking curb participatory behaviors unless the benefits outweigh them. For news consumers in the mobile era, for example, mobile devices increase the time, economic, and cognitive costs associated with information-seeking. Only for a small few do the benefits of attending to the news on mobile devices outweigh the costs. Building on economic theories of news, media choice, and the ways audience demand shapes news craft and production, Dunaway and Searles argue that attention, engagement, and recall suffer when people consume news on mobile devices. They then investigate the implications of these effects for the news industry and for an informed democratic citizenry. Drawing on both laboratory and real-world studies, Dunaway and Searles bring the psychophysiology of news consumption to bear on the question of what we could lose in an information environment characterized by a dramatic shift in reliance on mobile devices.