ABSTRACT
Tablets provide a canvas with unique characteristics, by which news institutions and their readers can, respectively, distribute and access news. This paper reports on a study into the multimodal construal of news on the front page/home page of 12 English-language news apps from Australia, the UK, and the USA. The apps studied appear to cluster into a relatively limited number of design choices according to their use of language, page composition, and visual metaphor on the home page. Images are used for a wide variety of news functions and in a variety of different designs, but are ubiquitous. The question of whether the home pages of these apps are image-centric is addressed. A definition of ‘image-centricity’ is proposed.
