This study addressed the low motivation observed on news aggregators. While news aggregators expose their users to diverse news content, individuals tend to seek news sources that align with their own viewpoints. Subsequently, scholars have raised concerns regarding polarization and fragmented citizenry. It is therefore important to explore means of promoting user engagement with the diverse news articles on news aggregators. This study investigated how gamification – levels and leaderboard – affects user engagement on news aggregators as well as stance and open-minded thinking of their featured topics. 

The study involved an online experiment with 98 participants randomly assigned into three groups – LevelGamify, LeaderboardGamify, and NoGamification. The goal of the data collection was to evaluate user engagement, stance, and open-minded thinking on a news aggregator. Two of the groups used a points-based game element, either levels or leaderboard, while the control group did not use any game elements.

The results showed that levels and leaderboard promote user engagement in terms of objective metrics. This involved the number of news articles clicked and the time spent interacting with the news aggregator. However, the news aggregators with gamification were not perceived as more engaging and it did not increase the participants’ comprehension of the news articles. Moreover, gamification affected the participants’ stances and open-minded thinking depending on the topics covered in the news aggregators. While some topics had more participants showing stronger agreement and higher levels of open-minded thinking after using the gamified news aggregators, some topics did not. Furthermore, a news aggregator without gamification occasionally caused a decrease in open-minded thinking depending on the topic.

The findings of this study provide insights on how gamification promotes user engagement on news aggregators and understanding of how it may affect the stance and open-minded thinking of the reader toward featured topics.