The blind spots of measuring online news exposure: a comparison of self-reported and observational data in nine countries

IF 4.2 1区 文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION Information Communication & Society Pub Date : 2022-05-11 DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072750
Sandra González-Bailón, Michael A. Xenos
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引用次数: 3

Abstract

ABSTRACT Measures of news exposure are common in research that tries to explain political knowledge, political engagement, opinion formation and, more generally, media effects. Much of that research employs self-reported measures obtained with surveys, known to suffer from accuracy problems. Observational measures, however, also suffer from limitations derived from data collection and instrumentation. Here we offer new comparative evidence on the nature of those problems. We show that commonly used self-report measures of digital news consumption are problematic for three reasons: they only pay attention to a small fraction of all available sources; they underestimate audience share; and they distort the relative position of news sites in visibility rankings. Measurement problems, however, also exist in observational studies, especially when mobile access is excluded from data collection. Our analyses quantify the magnitude of these problems, offering unprecedented comparative evidence of online news consumption that spans nine countries and a period of five years. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research on news exposure.
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衡量在线新闻曝光的盲点:九个国家自我报告和观察数据的比较
摘要在试图解释政治知识、政治参与、舆论形成以及更普遍的媒体影响的研究中,新闻曝光的衡量标准很常见。大部分研究都采用了通过调查获得的自我报告的测量方法,已知这些方法存在准确性问题。然而,观测措施也受到数据收集和仪器仪表的限制。在这里,我们就这些问题的性质提供了新的比较证据。我们发现,常用的数字新闻消费自我报告指标存在问题,原因有三:它们只关注所有可用来源中的一小部分;他们低估了观众份额;它们扭曲了新闻网站在知名度排名中的相对地位。然而,在观察性研究中也存在测量问题,尤其是当移动接入被排除在数据收集之外时。我们的分析量化了这些问题的严重性,为跨越九个国家和五年的在线新闻消费提供了前所未有的比较证据。我们讨论了我们的发现对未来新闻曝光研究的影响。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
10.20
自引率
4.80%
发文量
110
期刊介绍: Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age. Information, Communication & Society (iCS) transcends cultural and geographical boundaries as it explores a diverse range of issues relating to the development and application of information and communications technologies (ICTs), asking such questions as: -What are the new and evolving forms of social software? What direction will these forms take? -ICTs facilitating globalization and how might this affect conceptions of local identity, ethnic differences, and regional sub-cultures? -Are ICTs leading to an age of electronic surveillance and social control? What are the implications for policing criminal activity, citizen privacy and public expression? -How are ICTs affecting daily life and social structures such as the family, work and organization, commerce and business, education, health care, and leisure activities? -To what extent do the virtual worlds constructed using ICTs impact on the construction of objects, spaces, and entities in the material world? iCS analyses such questions from a global, interdisciplinary perspective in contributions of the very highest quality from scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, communication and media studies, as well as in the information and computer sciences.
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