A Descriptive Study on Contents Being Generalized in News Apps and Smartphone Users’ Attitude towards Them

Abstract

We are in an era where the emerging technologies play an important role in our routine life. Smartphones are one of those gifts of technology which made us depend on it for almost every task starting from carrying a grocery list to learning about an open-heart surgery. One of the popular categories of apps that we users often install is ‘News’ apps. This study will intend to find the user’s perspective and preference towards how the news apps they have installed brings content to them. This study has also been set to find out how the users want their news app shows the content to them. There were many studies talked about the usability of mobile apps and one of them states that the mobile phone usability is usually measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. This study actually deals with the term ‘satisfaction’ in the usability of an app. Another study shows that majority of the mobile users are complaining about the privacy and ethical issues in apps. A research conducted by Eunice Kim has discovered that most of the branded app developers are concentrating on factors like entertainment, multiplatform, feedback, novelty and control. So, in the case of news apps, what do the users want? The responses show that majority of the users wants to receive their own customized news according to their location. It also shows that 65% of the respondents want their news app to allow toggling between local and international news. 35% of the respondents felt that the news apps they use do not have adequate news filtering capability and 15% of the crowd said that theirs does not even have the capability to filter news. Though it might be challenging for the app developers, is it the way the users want it. There were many privacy and security issues in social networking apps were once considered “unsolvable” but people eventually found a workaround way.

Keywords: Smartphones, usability, content analysis, communication, news apps, user preferences

Cite this Article

Surendheran Kaliyaperumal, Kamalanarayanan. A Descriptive Study on Contents Being Generalized in News Apps and Smartphone Users’ Attitude Towards Them. OmniScience: A Multi-disciplinary Journal. 2018; 8(1): 1–7p.