Do Multimedia Matter? Cognitive and Affective Effects of Embedded Multimedia Journalism

Abstract

With the increase of online journalism, embedded multimedia stories have become more popular. Yet, little is known about the cognitive and affective effects this journalistic format may have on the audience. This experimental study compares the effects of embedded multimedia, traditional multimedia, and text-only format on readers’ knowledge gain, emotional reactions, and narrative transportation. Overall, the effects are substantially less pronounced than expected. The audiences’ emotional reactions and narrative transportation do not depend on modality, whereas knowledge gain is slightly decreased by multimodality. The theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of these limited effects are discussed.