Print or digital? Critical thinking in reading news in the information era: Learning in the Technological Era: Proceedings of the Chais 2006 Conference

The expansion of information resources in recent years challenges consumers with the need to employ
critical thinking skills in reading news. Moreover, the co-existence of both printed and digital resources
poses questions as to the ability of users to read news critically in multiple representation formats: the
traditional printed and the digital, hypermedia-based newspaper formats. This research compares the
critical ability of reading news in a print and a digital format, by two age-groups: high-school and college students. A variety of significant differences was found and is discussed in the paper. The most important finding is the better performance of the young participants (high school students) in reading digital news formats, and the better performance of the older participants (college students) in reading news in a print format. The paper discusses approaches for interpreting the results and for future studies. The Findings may provide designers, researchers and educators with useful guidelines for designing effective messages in the information age.