An Analysis of Motivation of Passive Newsletter Readers

Summary

The charm of the Internet is far-reaching. The development of the Internet can be said to be changing with each passing day. Many new affairs may have been replaced by new things that we have not yet learned. Everyone in the Internet train wants to catch it. Even the four traditional media want to develop on the Internet. At present, we can find that many print publishers are moving toward publishing in the Internet. The traditional newspaper industry is also It began to set up websites on the Internet, like the China Times Newsletter is one of the most familiar homes. While more and more people attach importance to online publishing, many new ways of dissemination also develop at the same time. The theme-transporting newsletter to be studied in this research is to use the Internet to send actions. Readers only have to choose The type of subscription you want to subscribe to. This type of newsletter will be mailed to your e-mail box on a regular basis. You can receive the information you need as soon as you receive it. The purpose of this study is to explore the motivation for readers to subscribe to this type of newsletter. Questionnaires are used to explore the factors that influence the acceptance of e-newspapers for readers, the readers' views on the type of e-newspapers, and the motives for subscriptions.

Preface

Internet media has been popular all over the world in recent years and has been enthusiastically discussed. From the websites, ISPs, newsletters, and even e-commerce that are currently in post-trends are constantly being hyped up. Taiwan’s Internet media is short After several years of rapid development, the major domestic print media, such as the China Times and United Daily News, have competed in this field, launched e-newsletters, and even had about one-half of the sites more or less. All of them have business newsletters. This wave of network phenomena, in addition to the battlefields that symbolize the traditional press competition, has spread from the print media to the Internet. Even the website's dispatch center has joined the ranks.

Today's e-newsletters can be found everywhere on the Internet. Each e-newsletter is organized in different ways, each with its own characteristics and many different kinds. However, what type of newsletter is the most popular and what readers are motivated to subscribe is the direction that this study is going to explore. In the following, we will collate the characteristics of the newsletter and the theory of the research audience to discuss readers' subscription motives so as to provide suggestions for the industry's future development in the development of newsletters.

I. Research motivation and purpose

With the constant progress of society, people’s demand for knowledge has also increased relatively, and the way to obtain knowledge has also been continuously improved. Therefore, the spread of information has also undergone great changes in technology and methods, of which the Internet is the most Obvious example. With the development of computer communication networks over the past several decades, computers have been converted from minicomputers to central computers and then to personal computers and workstations. The number of users of personal computers has increased. The real cause is the rise of the Internet. Today, the Internet The development of the road has been a topic of common concern in different areas of communication. Through the Internet, a borderless, non-regional barrier has been formed. It combines the multimedia expressions of text, images, pictures, and sounds. It has changed the path of corporate marketing, the relationship between consumers, and subverted past communication. mode. Although scholars (Newhagen and Rafaeli, 1996) discussed various characteristics of the Internet, they believe that computer networks take the form of the media to a new level, but the new media does not completely replace the original media. For newspapers, paper sources are facing many unfavorable predicaments, and new competitors continue to invest in the battlefield. As a result, the competition in the newspaper industry is becoming increasingly fierce. On the other hand, the newspaper industry is also facing With the strong competition of electronic media, newspapers and electronic media competed for the leisure time of the audience, resulting in the newspaper's reading rate, reading time, and household subscription rate falling simultaneously (Zeng Jinli, 1998).

After becoming aware of this global trend, the newspapers have joined the ranks of electronic media in print media. Web-based electronic newspapers were born at this time. However, subscription-based e-newspapers also grew quietly. Judging from the current development situation, many printed newspapers and Internet information providers (ICPs) have provided many different types of electronic newspapers, both domestically and abroad. With the new technology of electronic newspapers, readers only need to sit At home, you can get the information you need through computer terminals and the Internet. The scholar (Marshall McLuhan) once said: "The media is the message." He believes that "communication technology can not only change people's perceptions and attitudes, but also can unconsciously change people's understanding and way of thinking. The major change in communication technology is to promote The decisive power of social change, so the characteristics of every era of mankind are caused by the media.” (McLuhan, 1946) (Note 1) Although the newsletter is a trend, the readers of the newsletter will not change the past. Is there a habit of reading news, reducing the time spent on print media, and accepting this new medium? What are the motivations for people who subscribe and read the newsletters? These are the topics to be studied and understood in this study.

Second, research structure

This research room designs questionnaires based on the literature discussion and the characteristics of the newsletter, and finally analyzes and collates them to find readers' motivation factors.

flow chart

Third, research restrictions

The e-newsletter defined by this research refers to the self-subscription of readers, and the e-mail received through the e-mail transmission method. Here we call it a telex newsletter. Therefore, in the design of the questionnaire, we have arranged for readers who have subscribed to such a telegram to do questionnaire surveys. Considering the time and efficiency of data collection, the mothers we selected were students of Indian and fourth grade students because they considered that students of this department often had many opportunities for contact with the Internet because of their academic needs. The information is well-understood and therefore selected as the parent group for this study. We will take surveys of questionnaires conducted by each class in class. Readers who subscribe to this type of telegram are required to investigate.

è´°, literature discussion

First, the definition and development of electronic newspapers

(a) Definition of electronic newsletter

1. The so-called electronic newspaper (electronic newspaper) broadly refers to any media that uses electronic signals to transmit text-based news articles. In the narrow sense, it refers to the use of computer networks to transmit newspaper content, and its contents can be classified as 叁: 1) Completely replace newspaper content with electronic signals; (2) Replace newspaper content abstracts with electronic ones; (3) Build newspaper content into electronic databases. (Note 2)

2. The Misc Research Center in the United States defines the e-newspaper as a news information service published on the computer information network that will update data within one to seven days. At present, there are two types of services. One is to provide pure text information, which is published on the Internet under the Bulletin Board System (BBS) or Gopher function; the second is to use multimedia presentation methods. Texts, pictures, and motion pictures are published under similar functions on the World Wide Web or general business network in the Internet. (Note 3)

3. Hong Wei (1997) considered the development of domestic e-newsletters and defined “e-newspaper” as an “electronic newsletter” that provides news and information services based on a specific set of units and editors using the computer network's text or graphical interface. The news content is updated in principle from one to seven days." The “specific units” to which they refer are limited to newspapers and news agencies whose production is dominated by news. (Note 4)

From the above research and scholars' definition, it can be found that whether it is using telephone, fax, teletext, or mobile phone and other different transmission methods, as long as the news report content can be transmitted, it can be defined as a broad-based newsletter. The narrow sense of the e-newsletter refers to the e-news of the Internet, such as the China Times e-newsletter, but there is now another form of injecting new annotations for this definition, that is, the user's initiative to subscribe to, through E-mail Network resource services for messaging (Hou Jun, Min 87). The scope of this article is to explore the new annotations for this newsletter.

(b) Types of electronic newspapers

The e-newspaper offers a completely different way from the past. Traditional print publications such as newspapers and magazines can be accessed through various channels such as bookstores, supermarkets, etc., while e-newspapers are accessed via the Internet. That is, uploading and reading information on the Internet. Among them, the biggest feature is the peer-to-peer approach, that is, “decentralization.” This “two-way interaction” high-level communication model breaks through the previous one-way mode of mass communication. In addition to this, the audience can also control the dissemination of content, can choose the type of newsletter subscription for their own interests and needs, so that the newsletter has a personal, different from the newspaper.

1.Netnews Internet News: Although this is still dominated by print newspapers, the e-newsletter combines the link of a database or website, that is, hyperlink features, and is no longer just text, it is a combination of animation, Voice, etc., also known as hypertext, allows listeners to no longer just read, but to absorb information in a variety of ways.

2. Community Services: To achieve contact or disclosure through e-newsletters, many human resources can be saved and real-time.

3. E-shopping: After introducing the e-newsletter, we can learn more about the product's related information and then shop online.

4. News Forum: In addition to telling the readers the latest news, the e-newsletter also provides opportunities for dialogue with celebrities or editors on the Internet.

(III) Development of Newsletters

Nowadays, information processed through computerized digitization is sent directly to readers' homes instead of using paper. In this way, it is called "paperless". This complete digital-to-point propagation process, with the completion of network technology and the establishment of the National Information Highway (NII), will become a new type of information dissemination in the 21st century. However, as early as the late 1970s, the Knight-Ridder Newspaper Group had done the report's Viewtron system; San Jose Mercury News launched the world’s first generation of digital newspaper services in 1983, but After the announcement of the failure of the entire project, the company lost 50 million U.S. dollars. In 1993, the Knight-Ridder Business Group of the San Jose Mercury News set up a research center to re-evaluate the future prospects of the e-newspaper; in May 1994, Knight- The Ridder Business Group launched its second-generation e-newsletter service called Mercury Center News on the American Online business network; on January 18, 1995, the newspaper set up the World Wide Web site and became the first An e-newsletter that provides full-text printed newspapers on the Internet. (Note 5)

Vincent E. Giuliano of the Electronic Publishing Group pointed out that the circulation of newspapers has been declining since 1990, (Note 6) and the growth rate of electronic media services is increasing. At present, the most flourishing area of ​​the e-newspaper is the United States, whose growth has increased by multiples. In 1995, the number of U.S. WWW version e-newspapers was about 750 (Glen and Patricia, 1995) (Note 7). From 1970 to now, the e-newsletter has undergone many changes in form, whether it is Mailing L or not.