News on the Move: Predictors of Mobile News Consumption and Engagement Among Chinese Mobile Phone Users

This study examines smartphones as a platform for mobile news consumption by identifying key antecedents and consequential behavioral patterns. A causal model was proposed for empirically testing the interrelationships. A sample of 719 randomly selected young adults in China, which boasts the world’s largest mobile phone population, was used in the testing the model. Findings suggest that respondents who owned a smartphone with a higher level of surveillance gratification were more likely to read mobile news and further be engaged in mobile news. That is, reading mobile news was positively related to involvement in mobile news by following a variety of digital news sources such as tweets, blogs, and bloggers. The study concludes that mobile news consumption is an engaging and participative behavior. The theoretical and social implications of the results are discussed in relation to China’s current predicament of being media-rich but information-poor.