MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM AND NARRATIVE FLOW
median length of a local TV news story but shorter than the most common length for a network evening news package (Pew Research Center 2014). These two studies indicate that in order to maintain the reader’s engagement and interaction, both the quality and the proportions of the news content must be considered. In this study, the participants closed the window of video 1.1B after watching about 2 minutes and 30 seconds of the more than 5-minute-long video, and two of the three methodical readers became scanners after reading about halfway through the body text. This participant behaviour cannot be explained only by the length or duration of the story elements; one must also take into consideration the actual form and content of each element and how the substance is organised and constructed. The rhythm (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) of the whole narrative is also important when creating narrative flow between heterogeneous story elements. However, it should be noted that the structure and content of each story segment probably has an additional effect on narrative flow; each story element must present engaging content and an internal vehicle that drives the sub-story forward. The method of using an eye-tracking experiment obviously has a drawback here. This methodology alone does not reveal what content the participants actually perceive. The test participants’ fixations and saccades indicate which elements attract their attention, but not whether the participants actually understood the substance of that content or why their attention would fade, disappear or increase. I have used a questionnaire and exit interviews to supplement the eye-tracking experiment and thus attempted to redress this limitation, but the experimental setting in itself may have influenced the participants’ actions and attention. First, the experimental setting, with attached eyetracking equipment and researcher surveillance, might have influenced participants’ behaviour. Second, the participants were asked to read a story with a subject matter and form that might not interest them in the first place, and hence their behaviour may have been affected by these circumstances. These factors might have influenced the participants in various ways. The participants might have acted as more thorough readers than they would have been in a non-experimental setting. This might result in one receiving a classification as a methodical reader that might not be the case in another setting. The participants may also have been acting as scanners in the test 174