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Master Dissertation Project 

Title: Exploring News Engagement among Young Adults
through Motivational Core Drives

The focus of this dissertation was to investigate how the core drives presented in the Octalysis framework impacted the news engagement of young adults. Through a qualitative methodological approach that involved conducting semi-structured interviews and participatory design sessions, the study aimed to identify the key drivers and attitudes that influenced young adults' engagement with news content. By doing so, it aimed to explore the potential of gamification in enhancing news engagement among young adults. The study results highlighted that a clear understanding of the core drivers that affected young adults' motivation facilitated the implementation of gamification techniques to boost their engagement with news. The research question guiding this study was: How can core drives influence news engagement among young adults?

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Note! This portfolio case only outlines the research methods utilized in the study.

This project case outlines the research methods utilized in this study.

For the full Master Dissertation, please refer to the link below.

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Full Text: http://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1715154&dswid=7063

The Following Research Methods Were Used:

 

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  • Pre-Interview with a Journalist
to gain some general insights into news media attitudes towards exploring new strategies in order to attract younger audiences.
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  • Semi-Structured Interviews
with the goal of identifying the core drives and attitudes that influence young adults’ motivation to engage in news, followed by a thematic analysis with the goal of identifying common themes or patterns from the interviews.​
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  • Participatory Design Sessions
to explore gamification opportunities that could benefit the participants motivation to engage in news; using the Octalysis framework as a structure as it can be used to “analyse and build gamification strategies.

Pre-Interview with a Journalist

I conducted an interview with a journalist to gain general insights into news media attitudes towards exploring various strategies to increase news engagement among younger audiences. Based on the findings, I discovered that users' news demands, journalistic practices, and approaches were significantly influenced by social media. Social media had become a strong competitor for generating and distributing news content, and it had put pressure on journalists to be faster and more entertaining in their news reporting. However, as social media lacked information verification and impartiality, it could not replace professional journalism as it was at that time. Still, social media had become an essential tool for journalists to reach out and engage with their audience, especially younger generations who primarily used social media for news consumption. The findings also indicated that news media were open to new strategies, including gamification, for engaging younger audiences.

Semi-Structured Interviews

I conducted a study with a total of 12 participants, 6 men and 6 women, ranging in age from 22-30 years old. All of the participants were from Stockholm and primarily relied on social media as their main source of news due to personal preference. To identify the motives that influence young adults’ news engagement, I conducted 12 semi-structured interviews. The interviews followed a theme or topic while allowing me to deepen and expand the answers with open-ended questions. The questions were structured around the Octalysis framework, which categorizes motivation into eight core drives. I used a combination of open-ended semi-structured questions and follow-up questions to identify the core drives that influenced the participants' motivation to engage in news, as well as their attitudes towards news engagement. Prior to the interviews, I conducted two pilot interviews to test their effectiveness. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The respondents answered eight interview questions regarding the core drives, as well as follow-up questions.

Thematic Analysis

I audio-recorded and transcribed the semi-structured interviews, and prepared them for thematic analysis, using both semantic and latent coding to analyze both explicit data content and underlying meaning. I was aware that identifying common trends throughout interviews runs the danger of overlooking one participant’s behavior and feelings. The purpose of the thematic analysis was to interpret the interview data and make sense of it. I aimed to identify the motives and additional aspects that influence young adults’ current news engagement, and the thematic analysis revealed three themes: Experiences & Goals, which refers to the respondents’ encounters and expectations of news, Identities & Social Status, which refers to respondents’ self-image and relation to other people in the context of news, and Choice of Source and Engagement, which refers to how the respondents view different news sources and choose to engage in them.

Participatory Design Sessions

For this study, two participatory design sessions were held with six participants in each group, all of whom had previously taken part in semi-structured interviews about their motivation and attitudes towards news engagement. The purpose of the participatory design sessions was to brainstorm innovative ideas and explore gamification opportunities that could increase participants' motivation to engage in news, using the Octalysis framework as a structure.

 

The sessions began with a recap of the eight core drives, after which the participants were presented with two general questions to set the agenda for the session: "How can we make people feel motivated to engage in news?" and "How can news media make people feel motivated to engage in news?" Each participant was given an A3 piece of paper with one of the eight core drives written on it, and they had approximately 5-10 minutes to write or draw ideas that could enhance the motivation for each specific core drive.

 

The participants were encouraged to also ideate "Dark horse" ideas which are crazy and risky for the purpose of letting go of their limiting beliefs about what is achievable, reasonable and realistic, and for the purpose of being more innovative and creative. When a round of all eight core drives was completed, each paper was discussed separately, and each person presented the ideas they had written down. Next, the participants had 5-10 minutes to brainstorm new ideas by potentially combining the ideas that had been presented. The new combining ideas were then presented, and the participants were given 3 positive dots, 3 negative dots, and 3 neutral dots to distribute among the presented ideas. The pros and cons of the ideas that stood out were then discussed.

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LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
 

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​I conducted a study on news engagement and gamification, and chose participants from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations within Stockholm. However, I did not consider their news-engaging behavior and attitudes during childhood, which could have influenced their motivation as adults. While my qualitative research approach provided a deeper understanding of participants' attitudes and perspectives, it did not provide numerical values to measure or compare the strength of each core drive. Although the Octalysis framework I used is unique in defining eight core drives that influence motivation, it may not capture all aspects of motivation, and using another framework could provide different insights. While I suggested gamification techniques and combinations to motivate news engagement, they were not tested or proven to be successful in my study.
 
In future research, it would be interesting to explore how aging and responsibilities affect news engagement, conduct diary studies to investigate changes in preferences for game design elements over time, and conduct a quantitative study to identify the strength of each core drive. Finally, I recommend testing the recommendations and findings from my study in future research.
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