Noteworthy Research:

You can reach us by e-mail at stempel@ohio.edu, by phone at 740-593-8665 and by fax at 740-593-2592.To get started, we reviewed our own publication record and note that five of the 33 articles in this journal to date deal with web-related mass communication research. As we shift our focus to such research, we think it would be useful to take a quick look at those five articles. We plan to use this column to provide summaries of web-related research from other publications. We will welcome information from authors and publications about such articles.

Online Advertising: Hit Rates for Jumps from Banner Ads, by David R. Thompson and Brigit Wassmuth (WJMCR 4:2 March 2001): This is a study of the extent to which online newspapers match the content of a banner ad to the content on the page to which the banner is linked. Examining a systematic sample of online papers, the authors found that 88.6 percent of all jumps from banner ads were targeted to jump links. That usually meant that clicking on a banner ad resulted in landing on a jump page with content elated to the ad.

Motivation for Content Selection: An Application of Open-ended Questions in an On-Line Environment, by Salma J. Ghanem and Dixie Shipp Evatt (WJMCR 5:4 September 2002): Polls tell us what people think, but seldom tell us why. In this study open-ended questions were used in a study of news interest to find out why respondents were interested in a given story. The most frequently given reason was some form of ethnocentric self interest.

Online Communication Research in 33 Mass Communication Journals, 1993-2003, by Thomas Gould (WJMCR 7:2 March 2004): This study documents the growth of research about online communication in 33 mass communication journals over a decade. Articles on online communication constituted 0.9 percent of the total articles in these journals in 1993. By 2003, such articles constituted 11.4 percent of the total.

Determinants of Internet News Use: A Structural Equation Model Approach, by Jin Yang and Padmini Patwardhan (WJMCR 8:1 December 2004): Study finds age and education have no direct impact on use of Internet news use. Younger people and less educated people access Internet new more frequently because their relationship with Internet appears stronger. Those who use the Internet more frequently consider it more credible than those who use it less.

Consumer Responses to Creative Platform of the Internet Advertising, by ChangHyun Jin and Jongwoon Jun (WJMCR 9 April 2007): The purpose of this study was to identify how creative factors and interactivity influence attitude toward target ads. The study found that creative factors play not only the role of leverage as causal effect when consumers form their attitudes toward banner advertising, but also indirectly influence click-through intention.