| Boxes:
Human coders outlined and labelled regions on the screen. There were 4 kinds of
boxes: article boxes, brief boxes, navigation boxes, and headlines boxes (lists
of hyperlinked headlines without any other text). Article and brief boxes were
categorized into 12 content types including national, international, lifestyle,
sports, and so on. Headlines boxes were categorized into 24 types based on the
heading they received in the paper. Navigation boxes were categorized into three
shapes: vertical, horizontal, and other. |
| Fixation:
There are two components to using our eyes to look at the world: 1) times when
the eye is still or "fixated," and 2) times when the eye is moving. We absorb
information only when the eye is still, that is, during "fixations." In everyday
activities, there are 2-5 fixations every second. The eyetracker records where
on the screen the eye was pointed during each fixation. We can draw a "fixation
box" around that spot on the screen to estimate what information was actually
in focus during that fixation. |
| Fixation
Box: An area on the screen that estimates the information in focus during
a fixation. |
| Fixation
Cluster: The area on the screen taken in by adjacent or overlapping fixation
boxes. |
| Flat
Right Fixations: A sequence of fixations moving from left to right across
the screen to form a rough horizontal line. We can draw a "flat right box" around
the line, estimating the information in focus during that series of flat right
fixations. Flat right behavior is the behavior we expect during reading. |
| Flat
Right Box: An area on the screen that estimates the information in focus during
a series of flat right fixations. |
|
Flat
Right Cluster: The area on the screen taken in by adjacent or overlapping
flat right boxes.
|
| Page:
The text and images that can be accessed by scrolling up and down in a web browser
window, without hyperlinking, hitting the back button, choosing a different bookmark,
or otherwise moving to a new web location. The information for each page is stored
at a different URL. Therefore, the terms URL and page are often used interchangeably. |
| Provider:
A web provider is the brand name for a site supplying content information. In
this study, the sites our subjects chose are considered by them to be news providers. |
| Read:
1) Reading is defined as flat right behavior. 2) Sometimes we like to talk about
how much of a box is read. By this we mean "how far down the box did they get."
Our metric to measure this is to find the bottom-most instance of a Flat Right
Behavior and call the distance from the top of the box to that point, the amount
read. |
| Screen:
The amount of a URL or page visible at one time via the web browser. |
| Top
Screen: The part of a URL or page visible via the web browser when the page
is scrolled up as far as it will go. (This is sometimes referred to as the "first
screen.") The top screen is analogous to the information "above the fold" in a
print newspaper. |