Florida Tomorrow is a belief...
that effective communication is essential in a global society.
Eyes of the Beholder
It’s a question that’s plagued editors and designers almost since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440: How can ink on paper be crafted to draw an audience and keep it reading from the first word to the last?
Six centuries later, there still isn’t a complete answer. But it’s clearer in part because of UF Journalism and Communications public relations professor Mary Ann Ferguson and her students.
The Poynter Institute — famous for its media studies and programs for professional journalists — commissioned Ferguson to help figure out how people read and absorb news, both in print and online. She and eight graduate students spent more than 2,000 hours over six months extracting detailed data on more than 500 variables from footage of people in Denver, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and St. Petersburg reading print and online newspapers.
Among their discoveries is that people read deeper into stories than anticipated, especially online; that most readers stick with a story that jumps to another page; that graphics help readers grasp and retain information; that color ads attract twice as much attention as black-and-white ones; and that ads surrounded by news copy can elicit a better response than full page ads.
Pegie Stark Adam, EyeTrack07’s co-director, says The Poynter Institute plans to continue studying the data and working with Ferguson and her group.
“We couldn’t have done this without the college,” she says.
Besides overseeing the coding part of the study, Ferguson assisted in designing the research and analyzing the data. One of her team members, doctoral student David Stanton, is doing his dissertation around EyeTrack07, focusing on the online side.
“The project gave our graduate students a chance to work on applied research and real-world experience,” Ferguson says.
Other research at the college ranges from a National Institutes of Health grant to look into the accuracy of media information on breast cancer to a Department of State grant for the creation of the United States Institute on Journalism and Media.
