An Analysis of the Pareto Principle in Online News: A Study of the NCTU’s Electronic Newspaper

• Main Authors: Chang, Yun-Tzu, 張韻姿
• Other Authors: Huang, J. Sonia
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93933930678368248432

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 傳播研究所 === 98 === Content analysis and Google Analytics data from a student electronic newspaper in Taiwan were used to examine the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80-20 rule or the vital few and trivial many). Resutls show that most of the online traffic concentrated on a few news categories and pages, which proved an imbalanced distribution of the Pareto Principle. Howerver, the imbalanced distribution between traffic and content demonstrated a 45~74 to 20 relationship, rather than 80 to 20. Besides, the study also identified the critical news categories that online users read the most are “movie commentary”, “front page”, and “cultural phenomenon”. Two of the three critical news categories are the so called “soft news”, suggesting the infotainment trend of the online users and the news industry. Furthermore, the study also found that the traffic performance of the top 20% popular news categories and pages is significantly different from that of the last 80% news categories and pages. Nevertheless, as far as the cumulative traffic points are concerned, the total traffic of the last 80% news categories and pages collectively can comprise a market rivaling the top 20%.