News consumption in an age of mobile media: Patterns, people, place, and participation

Having a mobile device continuously within an arm’s reach has changed everyday life. A retrospective glance shows that the mobile phone has enjoyed a broad diffusion around the globe during the 1990s and 2000s. This development has made possible mobile communication at any time and any place. Functioning as a tool for interpersonal communication—via voice calls and texting—it has become a taken-for-granted part of everyday life (Ling, 2012). Until recently the diffusion of mobile phones was twice as high as the diffusion of Internet access, but with mobile phones having become equipped with Internet functionality this gap is losing its relevance. Feature phones have increasingly been displaced by more and more smart mobile devices equipped with advanced hardware and software that facilitate not only communication but also the production and consumption of media. These personal and portable mobile devices provide ubiquitous connectedness through computer-like functionalities. Facilitated by developments of computing and hardware, they offer a touchscreen interface to a mobile ecosystem loaded with customized applications and responsive sites. Alongside these we also find that tablets have gained significance, offering largely similar affordances (although typically not traditional voice calls), but with slightly larger screen sizes. Situated betwixt smartphones and tablets one finds phablets offering affordances from each category that thus blurs the boundaries further. All of these mobile devices offer instant and personalized access to search engines, social networking sites, games, news, etcetera. Ultimately there has been a tremendous shift from mobile handsets designed primarily for communication toward more versatile media and communication functionalities. Legacy telecommunication equipment suppliers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola have struggled in making the shift, and have all suffered market share losses before being taken over by competitors. It is not only the telecommunications industry that has seen