News and Democratic Citizens in the Mobile Era

Book excerpt: "People increasingly use mobile phones for many tasks including consuming news, which affects what they pay attention to and learn. Using mobile devices as a case, this book argues that by differentiating between physical and cognitive access to content we can better understand how technology structures information delivery and presentation. Moreover, a model for post-exposure processing offers a means to generate and test for communication technology's effects on cognitive access. This book helps to reconcile accounts that paint smartphones as either the democratic leveler or divider and offers a researcher an approach to understanding media effects as situated in the context of changing information communication technology. The authors argue that this approach adds to our understanding of how communication technology changes what we know about media effects, with consequences for the informed citizenry a democracy requires"--