Evolution of user navigation behavior for online news

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of the study is to use web serer logs in analyzing the changes of user behavior in reading online news, in terms of desktop and mobile users. Advances in mobile technology and social media have paved the way for online news consumption to evolve. There is an absence of research into the changes of user behavior in terms of desktop versus mobile users, particularly by analyzing the server logs. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors investigate the evolution of user behavior using logs from the Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian Online in April 2012 and April 2017. Web usage mining techniques were used for pre-processing the logs and identifying user sessions. A Markov model is used to analyze navigation flows, and association rule mining is used to analyze user behavior within sessions. Findings It was found that page accesses have increased tremendously, particularly from Android phones, and about half of the requests in 2017 are referred from Facebook. Navigation flow between the main page, articles and section pages has changed from 2012 to 2017; while most users started navigation with the main page in 2012, readers often started with an article in 2017. Based on association rules, National and Sports are the most frequent section pages in 2012 and 2017 for desktop and mobile. However, based on the lift and conviction, these two sections are not read together in the same session as frequently as might be expected. Other less popular items have higher probability of being read together in a session. Research limitations/implications The localized data set is from Berita Harian Online; although unique to this particular newspaper, the findings and the methodology for investigating user behavior can be applied to other online news. On another note, the data set could be extended to be more than a month. Although initially data for the year 2012 was collected, unfortunately only the data for April 2012 is complete. Other months have missing days. Therefore, to make an impartial comparison for the evolution of user behavior in five years, the Web server logs for April 2017 were used. Originality/value The user behavior in 2012 and 2017 was compared using association rules and Markov flow. Different from existing studies analyzing online newspaper Web server logs, this paper uniquely investigates changes in user behavior as a result of mobile phones becoming a mainstream technology for accessing the Web.