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Experience and Internet News:  The Real Reason for the
Online News Reading Gender Gap
by
Amy Schmitz Weiss, Master's Student
Sharon Meraz, Master's Student
Nilo Figur, Doctoral Student
Paula M. Poindexter, Associate Professor

School of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
Summer contact:
Amy Schmitz Weiss
8701 Bluffstone Cove, Apt. 8205
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 342-2536 or <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0310A%26L%3DAEJMC%26E%3D8bit%26P%3D1186638%26B%3D--%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" >[log in to unmask]</a>





Submitted to:
Newspaper Division
2003 AEJMC Annual Convention
Kansas City, MO







 Abstract
This study highlights that gender disparities with reading Internet news is
not directly related to gender, as has been previously asserted, but due to
years reading Internet news online. When years of reading Internet news
online is held constant and placed as an intervening variable between
gender and frequency of reading Internet news, the significant relationship
between gender and frequency of reading Internet news disappears at every
level. Through this three variable model, these results highlight that
males are significantly more likely to read news on the Internet than
females not because of gender but because they have more experience reading
news online.

 Introduction
Reading news is now the third most popular activity on the Internet behind
e-mailing and Web browsing.  According to the most recent UCLA Internet
Report1[1], 52% of the U.S. population now reads news online.   After the
development of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s and the Netscape
Navigator Web browser in 1994, the Internet became attractive to consumers
and media companies as a viable new medium for communication,
entertainment, and news and information. The dramatic increase of news Web
sites from 60 newspapers online in 1994[2] to more than 3,300 newspaper,
television and cable news Web sites[3] by 2003 as well as the
cross-promotion from traditional newspapers and television and cable
newscasts have contributed to the popularity of news on the Internet.
Although reading news online is among the top three activities on the
Internet, statistics continue to show that men and women do not read
Internet news equally.  In fact, the most recent Pew Research Center study
reported that 57% of men read news online while only 43% of women read news
on the Internet.[4] This gender disparity in attention to news is unique to
the Internet; for other news media use, there is no difference between men
and women.
Although previous research studies have found differences in how men and
women read newspapers and what content in the newspaper they pay attention
to,[5] no significant differences have been found in regular newspaper
reading.[6] Similarly, no significant gender differences have been found in
newsmagazine reading and regular attention paid to television news, cable
news, and radio news.[7] If there is no gender difference in regular use of
traditional and cable news, why is there a gender disparity in Internet
news reading?[8]  Is this difference in reading news on the Internet due to
gender or is it due to other factors?  This study seeks to answer that
question by exploring the real reason for the gender gap in reading news on
the Internet.


Theoretical Links
Diffusion of Innovation.  The Internet has spread more rapidly than any
other electronic technology, taking only 7 years to reach 30 percent of
households, in comparison to 38 years for the telephone and 17 years for
television. Diffusion of innovation theory provides insight into how and
why new media and technologies such as the Internet, the telephone, and
television are adopted into society. Rogers identified five characteristics
that determine the acceptance of a technology by an individual: relative
advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and
observability.[9]  Fidler[10] added a sixth
attribute—familiarity—explicating that new media technology essentially
emerge or evolve from the metamorphosis of older media. Lin[11] emphasized
the importance of resources or the high financial cost to the individual
adoption of computer technology, which makes computers the most
discontinuous of media technologies. Atkins and Jeffres[12] noted that no
discussion of Internet adoption would be complete without recognition of
the requirement of computer ownership and skills. Before adopting a
technology, Rogers said that an individual goes through a decision
framework, which includes knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation
and reinforcement.[13]
Rogers also identified five groups based on the time it took to adopt
technology: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and
laggards.[14] Early adopters were high risk takers with higher technical
skills and higher education and income, while later adopters tended to have
lower technical skills and socioeconomic status. Rogers found that
demographic characteristics such as age[15], race, and gender were
irrelevant to when individuals adopted an innovation.
Although the theory suggests there should not be a relationship between
gender and adoption, a gender difference in Internet news reading continues
to be found.  The question is:
Is the difference due to gender or to some other factors?  This study will
answer that question.

Literature Review
Adoption of Technology.  Most studies on the adoption of technology have
focused on the role of demographic variables and experience.  James and
Wotring[16] examined the adoption of electronic bulletin boards and found
that users had better occupations, higher education, and higher incomes;
however, it was not found that users were younger than the general
population. The authors also found that more males than females used the
technology and concluded, "the information empowered are imbalanced towards
males."[17]
Jeffres and Atkin[18] examined the adoption of ISDN (Integrated Systems
Digital Networks) technology, a technology that incorporates the merger of
television, telephone, and the computer, and found a negative relationship
between education and income and interest in the technology as a
communication medium as well as a negative relationship between education
and the use of technology for consumer purposes. Gender was unrelated to
the communication variables.
Age and income were related to personal computer adoption in Lin's[19]
study of adoption rate and adopter types (adopters, potential adopters, and
non-adopters). Early adopters of personal computers tended to be younger
(mean age of 35) and more affluent (mean annual income of $50,000).
Education and gender did not predict adoption rates.
Age was inversely related to Internet access in an adoption study by Atkin
and Jeffres[20] but education and income were positively related. The
authors found no support for the hypotheses that communication needs drive
higher rates of adoption or that Internet adopters are more cosmopolite
than non-adopters.
After studying early adopters of the electronic newspaper, Weir[21]
suggested that the usage of the electronic newspaper is purposeful to the
fulfillment of certain uses and gratifications and concluded that
individuals seek out the electronic newspaper more for the benefits it
could afford them and less because of their experience and skill with
computers and the Internet.
Howard et al.[22] found significant gender gaps in Internet usage, as well
as differences in Internet usage between different age groups and
socioeconomic groups. Women were considered more likely to seek health and
religious information, research new jobs and play games online, while men
used the Internet more to get news, sports, financial information, and
access to government Web sites.  The authors noted that variations in
online behavior were a product of different levels of experience with the
Internet.  They said veteran Internet users whom they labeled "netizens"
had been online for more than three years while newcomers had gained
Internet access a year ago or less. Men were significantly more likely than
women to be netizens and access news.
Gender and Internet Usage.   In an effort to understand gender differences
in adoption and usage of technology, many authors cited the uneasy
relationship between females and computer technology. Commenting on the
female technophobia, Turkle stated that "The computer has no inherent
gender bias. But computer culture is not equally neutral."[23] Other
authors also highlight the social construction of the computer as a male
domain, which has contributed towards the socialization of females away
from the adoption of computer technology.
Many studies find differences in usage of the Internet between men and
women. Yet none concentrate analysis solely on Internet news reading. If
gender disparities in news reading are mentioned, experience is hardly
cited as a reason, and if it is, it is not afforded much attention. Sherman
et al.[24] found that college men expressed more positive attitudes and
hence reported higher levels of participation than college women in World
Wide Web, newsgroups, MUDs, and chat rooms. Odell et al.[25] found that
though the gender gap had disappeared in terms of time spent online,
differences existed in the way that male and female undergraduates used the
Internet. Males used the Internet significantly more to check news, play
games, and listen to or copy music while women used the Internet more for
e-mail and school research. Teo[26] found support for gender differences in
Internet usage, in that males were more likely to browse, download, and
purchase over the Internet. In measuring the gender gap on the Internet,
Anandarajan et al.[27] attached no importance to gender as an antecedent
factor to the Internet skills and activities of male and female MBA
students. Though these authors concluded that gender differences in
specific uses of the Internet were due more to differences in Internet
experience, they do not explore experience as a variable. Similarly,
Weiser[28] found differences between men and women in usage of the
Internet, with men using the Internet more for entertainment and leisure
while women use it for interpersonal communication and educational
research. Many of the differences found between men and women disappeared
when data from the separate online sample of research respondents were
compared. These findings led the authors to conclude that differences in
specific uses of the Internet stemmed primarily from differences in
Internet experience. But once again, experience is offered as a conclusion
and afforded no direct analysis within the study.
Other authors have found gender disparities in terms of intensity and
frequency of Internet use, but few have attributed this directly to the
male's greater level of experience. Bimber[29] found that gender affected
frequency of use, as 25 percent of women versus 38 percent of men were
frequent users. The study found that women outnumbered men in moderate use
by 12 percent. The author concluded that gender effects did exist, and that
women tended to be less intensive users of the Internet. Like Bimber, Ono
and Zavodny[30] found that the gender gap in terms of being online had
disappeared, but that gender gaps in the number of uses of the Internet and
the frequency of Internet use persisted over time.
While past studies have not found a relationship between gender and
adoption of technology, they have identified gender differences in Internet
news use.  But is that difference due to gender or some other factors?  The
present study looks at the real reason for this gender gap by exploring a
three-variable model that posits that the differential Internet news
reading pattern is not due to gender differences but to an intervening
variable.
Intervening Variables.  According to Rosenberg, the purpose of introducing
an intervening or other third variable, which he calls a test factor, is to
aid in the "meaningful interpretation of the relationship between two
variables."[31] Furthermore, test factors such as intervening and
antecedent variables "enable one to trace out causal sequences"[32] By
testing for intervening variables between the two-variable relationship of
gender and Internet news reading, this study seeks to identify the real
reason for the gender gap in Internet news reading while simultaneously
specifying an intervening variable that may serve in the role that
Rosenberg called "...a landmark on the intellectual journey from cause to
effect."[33]
Specifically, this study suggests that reading news on the Internet is a
consequence of the intervening variable, number of years reading news
online, which is related to an individual's gender.

Methodology
During September 2002, a telephone survey was conducted with 417 randomly
selected adults in a southwestern metropolitan area, population
approximately one million.  Adults were randomly selected using a two-part
procedure.[34] First, phone numbers were selected using systematic random
sampling from the most recent metropolitan phone directory; secondly, a one
was added to the last digit of the telephone number to ensure reaching new
residents and unlisted numbers.  Interviews were conducted by graduate and
undergraduate journalism and communication students at a southwestern
university and supervised by the fourth author who also designed the survey
and trained the interviewers.
Respondents were asked a variety of questions including their opinions
about the 2002 election, use of news media, and access to the
Internet.  Respondents who said they had access to the Internet were asked
follow-up questions about the number of years using the Internet, frequency
of reading news on the Internet as well as the number of years reading news
on the Internet. In order to profile online activity, survey respondents
were also asked reasons for reading news on the Internet, where Internet
news was read, and types of Internet news read, ranging from local to
international.
Analysis.   In order to test the proposition that the gender gap in
Internet news reading is due to number of years reading Internet news, the
authors used SPSS, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, to conduct
the analysis in three stages. First, the analysis will determine if, as
previous literature has found, there is a significant relationship between
gender and Internet news reading.  Second, the number of years reading
Internet news will be examined for its relationship with gender and
Internet news reading. This study will then test whether years reading
Internet news is an intervening variable between gender and Internet news
reading. The three-variable relationship is displayed in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Gender_Years reading Internet News_Internet News Reading

Results

Sample Profile.  More than half of the 417 randomly selected adults were
over 35 years of age, 60% had college degrees and 60% had household incomes
of $60,000 or more. Seventy  percent of respondents were white, 15% were
Hispanic, and 7% were African-American. Women represented 52% of the
respondents.
        Newspapers were read daily by 35% of the respondents.  Thirty percent of
the respondents said they watched cable news every day, 24% watched local
TV news, and 15% watched network news every day.  Internet access was high
with 85% of the respondents reporting they had access to the
Internet.  Among respondents with Internet access, 31% read news on the
Internet daily.

Testing Years of Online News Reading as an Intervening Variable in the
Gender and Internet News Reading Relationship.  To determine if years of
reading news on the Internet is a consequence of gender and a determinant
of frequency of reading news on the Internet, one must first establish that
significant relationships exist between each two-variable pair:  gender and
Internet news reading frequency, gender and years reading news online;
Internet news reading frequency and years reading news online. If
significant relationships are found, the variable that is hypothesized as
intervening must be held constant and the statistical relationship between
gender and Internet news reading frequency must vanish.  The first pair of
significant relationships can be found in Table 1 which shows that males
(49%) are significantly more likely than females (31%) to read news on the
Internet five days or more.




TABLE  1    A Comparison of Male and Female Internet News Reading Frequency


Read Internet News
Male (%)
Female (%)
Never or Seldom
30
49
1 to 4 Days a Week
22
21
5 or More Days
49
31
(Valid Cases)
(166)
(173)












x2=14.923, d.f.=2, p<.001


Gender and Years Reading Internet News.   Table 2 which displays the second
pair of variables, shows that males are significantly more likely than
females to have been reading Internet news longer. Over half of men have
been reading Internet news five years or more in comparison to slightly
over one quarter of females. Also, females are almost three times as likely
to have begun reading Internet news within the past one or two years.
Almost half of women have been reading Internet news for one to two years
in comparison to 16 percent of men.

TABLE  2    A Comparison of Male and Female on Years Reading Internet News

Years Reading
Internet News
Male (%)
Female (%)
1-2 Years
16
47
3-4 Years
31
26
5 Years or More
53
27
(Valid Cases)
(118)
(85)

x2=24.748, d.f.=2, p<.001


Years of Reading Internet News and Internet News Reading Frequency.    The
final pair of variables can be found in Table 3 which shows that years
reading news online is related to frequency of reading news on the
Internet.  Seventy-two percent of readers with five or more years
experience read Internet news five days or more in comparison to half of
readers with one to two years experience of reading Internet news.

TABLE  3    Years Reading Internet News by Internet News Reading

      Years Reading Internet News
Internet News Reading
1-2 Years
3-4 Years
5 Years or More
Never or Seldom
1
2
1
1 to 4 Days a Week
49
27
26
5 or More Days
50
71
72
(Valid Cases)
(60)
(59)
(87)
tau-b=.17, p<.01;  gamma=.29, p<.01
Years Reading Internet News as an Intervening Variable.  To determine if
the gender gap in reading news on the Internet is real or if it is due to
number of years reading Internet news, years reading Internet news is
tested as an intervening variable. When years reading Internet news is held
constant, the significant relationship between gender and Internet news
reading that is displayed in Table 1, disappears.  At each interval, 1-2
years, 3-4 years, and 5 years or more, there is no gender gap in reading
news online: men and women read news at the same frequency.  In other
words, years reading news online is a consequence of gender and a
determinant of Internet news reading.  This finding suggests that reading
Internet news is not related directly to gender but to number of years
reading Internet news. Males are significantly more likely to read Internet
news due to the fact that they have been reading Internet news for more
years than females. More experience with reading news online leads to more
frequent reading of news online.
Gender and Internet Activities.  A look at Table 4 shows how little
difference there is between males and females on the Internet.  Only three
of 13 Internet activities showed gender differences.  In addition to length
of time reading news on the Internet, men were also significantly more
likely to be on the Internet longer than women: over 50 percent of men were
on the Internet five years or more in comparison to slightly over one
quarter of women. Women and men also differed on where they read
news.  Women (59%) were significantly more likely then men (32%) to read
Internet news at home.

TABLE  4         Male and Female Activity on the Internet

                                        Males           Females Significance
Activities
Access to Internet                      86%             86%             n.s.
5-plus years on Internet                73%             60%             p<.05
5-plus years reading Internet news      53%             27%             p<.001

Use other news sources the same 64%             68%             n.s.
Read Internet news for convenience      34%             39%             n.s.
Read Internet news at home              32%             59%             p<.001

Read local news often                   25%             37%             n.s.
Read state news often                   26%             30%             n.s.
Read election news on governor's race   13%             14%             n.s.
   often

Read election news on senate race       13%               8%            n.s.
  often
Read national news often                75%             66%             n.s.
Read international news often           64%             50%             n.s.
Go to candidate Web sites often          3%               1%            n.s.



Discussion

The difference between men and women and reading news on the Internet is
not due to their gender as previous studies have shown; the difference is
due to an intervening variable, length of time reading news online.  Once
length of time reading news online is held constant, the gender gap in
reading news online disappears suggesting that there is no direct
relationship between gender and frequency of reading news on the
Internet.  This finding suggests that once women have the same amount of
experience reading news on the Internet as men, there will be no gender
difference in reading online news.  In other words, women are not less
interested or less comfortable with reading news online.  The intervening
variable suggests that because women have spent less time reading news on
the Internet, they read less frequently. This study suggests that once
women catch up with men in the length of time reading news online, the
gender difference will likely disappear.
These findings are significant on a number of levels. First, this study
emphasized that when discussing usage of the Internet, particularly as a
news medium, time of adoption is significant. Second, this study made an
important contribution to a discussion of gendering of the Internet by
providing evidence that no discussion of male and female activities,
particularly news reading habits, is complete without taking into account
the fact that men have greater experience than women with the Internet. As
this study found, gender differences in reading news on the Internet are a
direct consequence of the male's earlier adoption of online news mediums.
Third, this study recognizes the importance of examining Internet
technology as a distinct medium from prior mass media innovations. As a
workplace tool before a home technology, the adoption of the Internet
favored those who had access to the computer and the Internet at work. As
such, females were later adopters to both the computer and the Internet
than men, a circumstance that has affected the frequency in the usage of
the Internet as a news medium among the genders.
Finally, the results of this study should be important to newspaper and
television news executives who may have thought that women were not a
significant part of the readership of their news Web sites.  Although women
may now be reading less than men, that will change in the future when women
have more experience reading news on the Internet.  Once women have more
experience reading news on the Internet, they will become as viable a
market segment as men.
 Notes
[1]  "Surveying the Digital Future," UCLA Internet Report 2003
(ccp.ucla.edu/pdf/UCLA-Internet-Report-Year-Three.pdf)
[2]  Sandra Sabo, "Online: The Arrival of Electronic Newspapers Means New
Opportunities in Campus PR," Case Currents (January 1995): 42
[3]  Yahoo Internet News Directory (dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/)
[4]  "Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience," The Pew Research Center
for the People & The Press, June 11, 2000
[5]  Chilton R. Bush, ed., "Morning, Evening Paper:  Men Readers Read
Differently," News Research for Better Newspapers, 1 (1966): 13-14;  Leo
Bogart, "Changing News Interests and the News Media," Public Opinion
Quarterly 32 (winter 1968-69): 560-74; Hillier Krieghbaum, "Newspaper is
Main Channel for News for Most People," Editor & Publisher, 91:35, p. 11,
August 23, 1958.
[6]  Newspaper Advertising Bureau, "Identifying Prospects for the
Newspaper: Frequent Readers, Infrequent Readers and Nonreaders," (1978);
Bruce H. Westley and Werner J. Severin, "A Profile of the Daily Newspaper
Non-Reader," Journalism Quarterly 41 (winter 1964): 45-50, 156; Jeanne
Penrose, David H. Weaver, Richard R. Cole and Donald Lewis Shaw, "The
Newspaper Nonreader 10 Years Later: A Partial Replication of
Westley-Severin," Journalism Quarterly 51 (winter 1974): 631-638;  John P.
Robinson and Leo W. Jeffres, "The Changing Role of Newspapers in the Age of
Television," Journalism Monographs, no. 63, 1979; The Pew Research Center
for the People & The Press "Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience," June
11, 2000
[7]  Paula M. Poindexter, "Non-News Viewers," Journal of Communication 30,
no.4 (autumn 1980):58-65; The Pew Research Center for the People & The
Press "Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience," June 11, 2000
[8]  "The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary," The Pew Research Center
for the People & The Press, January 14, 1999.  Paula M. Poindexter and Don
Heider, "Non-Users of Internet News:  Who are They and Why Do They Avoid TV
News and Newspaper Web Sites?, Radio-Television Journalism Division for the
AEJMC Annual Convention, Washington DC, August 2001; "Internet Sapping
Broadcast News Audience," The Pew Research Center for the People & The
Press, June 11, 2000; Philip E.N. Howard, Lee Rainie, Steve Jones, "Days
and Nights on the Internet, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 45, no. 3,
2001, 383-404
[9]  Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (NY: The Free Press, 1995), 15-16
[10]  Fidler Roger, Mediamorphosis: understanding new media (Thousand Oaks,
Calif. : Pine Forge Press, 1997)
[11]  Lin Carolyn, "Exploring personal computer adoption and dynamics,"
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 42, no. 1, 1995, 95-113
[12]  Atkin David & Leo Jeffres, "Understanding Internet Adoption as
Telecommunications Behavior," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media,
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[13]  Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (NY: The Free Press, 1995), 20
[14]  Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (NY: The Free Press, 1995),
263-265
[15]  Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (NY: The Free Press, 1995), 269
[16]  James Michael & Edward Wotring, "An Exploratory Study of the
Perceived Benefits of Electronic Bulletin Board Use and Their Impact on
Other Communication Activities," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
Media, 39 vol. 39, no. 1, 1995, 30-51
[17]  James Michael & Edward Wotring, "An Exploratory Study of the
Perceived Benefits of Electronic Bulletin Board Use and Their Impact on
Other Communication Activities," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
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[18]  Jeffres Leo and David Atkin, "Predicting Use of Technologies for
Communication and Consumer Needs," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
Media, vol. 40, no. 3, 1995, 318-331
[19]  Lin Carolyn, "Exploring personal computer adoption and dynamics,"
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 42, no. 1, 1995, 95-113
[20]  Atkin David & Leo Jeffres, "Understanding Internet Adoption as
Telecommunications Behavior," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media,
vol. 42, no. 4, 1998, 75-91
[21]  Weir Tom, "Innovators or News Hounds," Newspaper Research Journal,
vol. 20, no. 4, 1999, 62-82
[22]  Howard Phillip, Lee Rainie, Steve Jones, "Days and Nights on the
Internet, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 45, no. 3, 2001, 383-404
[23]  Turkle Sherry, "Computational reticence: why women fear the intimate
machine," in Cheris Kramarea ed. Technology and Women's Voices (NY:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), 41
[24]  Sherman Richard, Christian End, Ergon Kraan, Alison Cole, Jamoon
Campbell, Zachery Birchmeier & Jaime Klausner, "The Internet Gender Gap
Among College Students: Forgotten But Not Gone," CyberPsychology &
Behavior, vol. 3, no. 5, 2000, 885-894
[25]  Odell Patricia, Kathleen Korgen, Phyllis Schumacher, & Mchael
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[26]  Teo Thompson, "Demographic and motivation variables associated with
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Applications and Policy, vol. 11, no. 2, 2001, 125-137
[27]  Anandarajan Murugan, Claire Simmers, and Magid Igbaria, "An
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an individual perspective," Behavior & Information Technology, vol. 19, no.
1, 2000, 69-85
[28]  Weiser Eric, "Gender Differences in Internet Use Patterns and
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& Behavior, vol. 3, no. 2, 2000, 167-177
[29]  Bimber Bruce, "Measuring the gender gap on the Internet," Social
Science Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 3, 2000, 868-877
[30]  Ono Hiroshi & Madeline Zavodny, "Gender and the Internet,"  Social
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[31]  Rosenberg Morris, The Logic of Survey Analysis, (NY: Basic Books,
1968), 54
[32]  Rosenberg, The Logic of Survey Analysis, 54
[33]  Rosenberg, The Logic of Survey Analysis, 65
[34]  Poindexter Paula M., & Maxwell E. McCombs, Research in Mass
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45, no. 3, 2001, 383-404