News in the interstices: The niches of mobile media in space and time

The recent growth of mobile channels has provided steadily increasing opportunities for individuals to access news and other mass-mediated content. Media ecological perspectives argue that the introduction of such new technologies can shift the existing biases in prevailing social systems. According to one ecological perspective, the theory of the niche, when new media technologies are successfully introduced into a domain, displacement may occur unless some alteration is made to the resource base. Interstices are conceptualized as the gaps in the routines of media users between scheduled activities. Through the use of a diary method, participants logged access to news using a variety of communication technologies, including mobile channels. Results indicated that traditional media occupied traditional niches with little evidence of displacement, while mobile channels occupied a new niche: access in the interstices.