Active Audience and Automatic Usage: A Test of Rival Hypotheses on Automaticity of Internet Use

Active audience is a prevailing view in media research, which implies rational (i.e., non-automatic) use of media. However, the relationship between active audience and automatic usage has been rarely examined in communication research. The study makes the first attempt to unravel the mechanism behind habitual/automatic Internet use and to answer a research question that is generalizable to the use of other media: will automatic use reduce or improve audience activeness? The research question is operationalized as a comparison of two competing sets of hypotheses on automaticity: replacement perspective and coexistence perspective. A test based on three annual surveys of Internet use in Hong Kong shows that the degree of activeness by Internet users does not go down as their Internet use becomes increasingly automatic, which supports the coexistence hypothesis. The findings can be interpreted by instance theory of automaticity (Logan, 1988).