Abstract of the 2018 winning paper is posted below.
First Place
News Finds Them, and Then What? How Post-Millennials Engage with Social and Mobile Media News • Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, University of Connecticut; Preeti Srinivasan, University of Connecticut
Abstract: The reliance on social and mobile media for news is changing how young adults engage with and learn from news. Focus groups with current college students (N = 60) explore how they experience news via different media formats and how the content influences them. Results reveal social and mobile media as imperfect but unavoidable convenience, a general hesitation to engage publicly with news content, and a sense of awareness of but not learning from news.