Eye-Tracking Analysis: Examining the Impact of Fan Culture and Entertainment News on Engagement with Social Justice Information

Abstract

Celebrity culture and idolatry are prevalent nowadays. The development of online social media facilitates the distribution of entertainment news, fan culture has become increasingly prevalent. On the other hand, the extreme fan culture brought negative impacts to people which affects their psychological and physical status. This also leads to a negative stereotype of fan culture, i.e. addicted to entertainment news and not concern themselves of public affairs. This study aims to investigate the impact of fan culture on individuals’ attention to public affairs. Social justice news refers to news that reports and reveals inequality, injustice and oppression in society. Public attention to social justice news can help promote fairness and justice, social progress and change. This study utilized eye-tracking to collect data to investigate the effect of idolatry on social justice news attention. In the experiment, subjects were randomly divided into two groups; Group A subjects would view images of news web pages containing entertainment news and social justice news, while Group B subjects’ material consisted of social justice news and other types of news. Subjects were asked if they are a fan of any celebrity after the trial. The entire browsing process was recorded by an eye-tracker. The eye-tracking data revealed that, generally, people paid less attention to social justice news than to entertainment news and other unrelated topics. This is evidenced by shorter total fixation duration (TFD), fewer fixation counts (FC), and longer times to first fixation (TFF) for social justice news. Analysis of the two categories of subjects’ gender and whether or not they were stargazers revealed that, contrary to the stereotypes commonly perceived by the general public, fans and females would pay more attention to social justice information, exhibiting more TFD and FC. The present study’s use in this area of research. The public to abandon stereotypes and view fans and females in a fair and rational way. At the same time, the media should increase the exposure and weight of social justice news and direct viewers to pay more attention to social news.