News and Affordances, Action Potential and Cognitive Support

Tuesday, 9 November 2021, 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. on Zoom

Each medium of news delivery has a unique set of attributes that facilitate or impede consumption and learning. In this presentation, Zhou examined the affordances provided by print newspapers and digital news sites based on the perspectives of Gibson’s ecological psychology and his conceptualizations of affordances. He reported two exploratory studies with tenured print readers and loyal digital news users, which queried their reliance on a number of affordances. He compared the findings and argues that many signals supporting sense-making of the print news are attenuated in digital. Zhou also discussed the implications of the same.

SHUHUA ZHOU is the Leonard H. Goldenson Professor in Radio and Television Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. He is former President of the Chinese Communication Association (2017-2019) and Vice president of the Asia-Pacific Communication Alliance (2018-2021). He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, associate editor of Communication & Society and Computer in Human Behavior, as well as a member of the editorial board of several SSCI journals. He was recognized as one of the 100 best TV Hosts for his professional work as anchor and director of the English News program on GDTV. His primary research areas are television news and human cognition of mediated messages.

For enquiries: mkcheung@hkbu.edu.hk

Organized by Centre for Media and Communication Research and Research Postgraduate Studies Program, School of Communication and Film