News consumption in a changing media ecology: An MESM-study on mobile news

• Situational characteristics influence device choice for news consumption.
• PC/notebook access, location, and time of use are most influential.
• Mobile devices serve as an extension of PC or notebook use for news consumption.

News consumption across all sorts of media has been researched by communication scholars for decades; analyzing its effects, and describing shifts in news consumption behavior – mostly regarding changes in the media ecology. These days, we are witnessing another major change in the media ecology: the rise of mobile (online) media. The fast and wide-spread diffusion of smartphones, tablets, and the likes is influencing news media consumption—being able to bring news consumption into ‘niches in time and space’. In this paper, we will concentrate on the interplay of those niches, i.e., usage situations and the actual news consumption, therefore analyzing the influence of situational characteristics on communication device choice for news consumption.