Those using the Internet to read the news have a greater attention span than print readers, says a U.S. study that corrects the thought that Web surfers do more jumping around than reading.
In a survey taken by the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism school, the findings were that online readers would read 77 percent of what they chose, newspaper readers read 62 percent, and those reading tabloids around 57 percent.
Sara Quinn, director of the Poynter EyeTrack07 project, said "Nearly two-thirds of online readers, once they chose a particular item to read, read all of text." She added that this destroys the idea that Web readers have shorter attention spans, now confirmed as a myth.
Another important finding was that people spent more time on things that were written in a question and answer style or as lists. For photographs, they would rather see documentary news photographs versus studio or staged.
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