From meaning to perceived importance: Predicting news consumption with news utility (working title & research idea)

-- Story line --

Economics suggest people innately seek to maximize utility, but scholars rarely discuss the utility of news to audiences. They often explore "why people consume news" (which has proven to have lukewarm predictive power from the uses and gratifications literature) but not how useful news is to audiences. This study offers two ways to understand news utility (what is news and how important is it?), and examines how they predict news consumption.

-- Research questions --

RQ1: What does "news" mean to audiences?

RQ2: How important is news to different news audiences? 

RQ3: How does the audience's definition of news influence perceived importance of news? 

RQ4: How does the audience's definition of news influence their news consumption from a) local newspapers, b) national newspapers c) network national news, d) cable (CNN, MSNBC, FOX), e) local TV, f) social media (Facebook & Twitter), g) aggregators (Yahoo & Google) ? 

RQ5: How does perceived importance influence news consumption from a) local newspapers, b) national newspapers c) network national news, d) cable TV, e) local TV, f) social media, g) aggregators?