Journal
COMMUNICATION RESEARCH
Volume 30, Issue 1, Pages 30-59Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0093650202239025
Keywords
interactivity; human-computer interaction; technology effects; dual-process models; political Web sites; impression formation effects; media effects
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This study identifies two distinct conceptualizations of interactivity in the communication literature-the functional view and the contingency view. Although the functional view has predominated academic research on interactivity, this study operationalizes the contingency view in the context of an experiment designed to investigate the impression formation effects of interactivity in Web-based mass communication. A third of the participants in a between-participants experiment (N = 60) were exposed to the low-nteractivity version (no hyperlinks) of a political candidate's Web site, another third to the medium-interactivity version (a single layer of related links), and the remaining third to the high-interactivity version (two hierarchical layers of related links). The results indicate that the level of Web site interactivity influenced participants' perceptions of the candidate as well as their levels of agreement with his policy positions. Implications for conceptual development of interactivity are discussed.
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