Automated Tracking Approaches for Studying Online Media Use: A Critical Review and Recommendations

Christner, Clara; Urman, Aleksandra; Adam, Silke; Maier, Michaela

doi:10.1080/19312458.2021.1907841

Cited by 53 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Here, participants installed browser extensions that were specifically designed for the project and were based on the screen-scraping principle, namely capturing the web content appearing in the browser. Unlike other webtracking approaches (see Christner et al 2021 ), screen-scraping approaches allows capturing not only the URL visited by the participants, but also the actual content viewed in the browser (Supplementary Information file, Appendix A ). Limiting our sample to those who participated in both waves, agreed to webtracking, and answered all relevant survey items, the sample was composed of 367 participants…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

León

Makhortykh

Gil‐López

et al. 2022

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals’ trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

León

Makhortykh

Gil‐López

et al. 2022

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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“…Recent advances have produced an array of tools that allow researchers to measure SMU through various device or platform features [19]. Some approaches leverage native services to collect measures of usage duration or frequency for targeted applications [18], others collect such data via custom logging applications [20] or browser plugins [21], and others rely on data donations from participants (i.e., when participants supply researchers with usage data provided by platforms or devices) [22,23].…”

Section: Using Behavioural Measures Of Smumentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and Well-being: A Methodological Perspective

Parry¹,

Fisher²,

Mieczkowski³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Due to the methodological challenges inherent in studying social media use (SMU), as well as the methodological choices that have shaped research into the effects of SMU on well- being, clear conclusions regarding relationships between SMU and well-being remain elusive. We provide a review of five methodological developments poised to provide increased understanding in this domain: (1) the use of longitudinal and experimental designs; (2) the adoption of behavioural (rather than self-report) measures of SMU; (3) a shift away from aggregate use; (4) the emergence of an idiographic media effects paradigm; and (5) the use of formal modelling and machine learning. We focus on how these advances stand to bring us closer to understanding relations between SMU and well-being.

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“…After agreeing to participate in online tracking, each participant received a link to the website where extensions (i.e., plugins) for desktop versions of Chrome and Firefox browsers could be downloaded and installed. The extensions were designed specifically for the project and based on the screen-scraping principle, namely capturing HTMLs of web content appearing in the browser, where the extension was installed (Christner et al 2021). The captured HTML content together with the URL address of the page from which it was captured were sent to the remote server, where data were encrypted and stored.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study has two major limitations. First, we examine only desktop-based browsing behaviour because mobile-based tracking is notoriously complex to implement, especially in a waythat would make mobile data comparable with the the desktop one (Christner et al 2021). This is an important limitation given that mobile devices account for roughly a half of the global internet traffic.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present study, we address these limitations by relying on a type of data source that, to the best of our knowledge, has not been used in the context of web search behaviour. We utilize the combination of web tracking data (Christner et al 2021) with demographic data about individual users acquired via survey to explore users' web search behaviour. Web tracking data includes information on user desktop-based browsing behaviour along with the actual HTMLs of the browsed content.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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You Are How (and Where) You Search? Comparative Analysis of Web Search Behaviour Using Web Tracking Data

Urman,

Makhortykh

2021

Preprint

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We conduct a comparative analysis of desktop web search behaviour of users from Germany (n=558) and Switzerland (n=563) based on a combination of web tracking and survey data. We find that web search accounts for 13% of all desktop browsing, with the share being higher in Switzerland than in Germany. We find that in over 50% of cases users clicked on the first search result, with over 97% of all clicks being made on the first page of search outputs. Most users rely on Google when conducting searches, and users' preferences for other engines are related to their demographics. We also test relationships between user demographics and daily number of searches, average share of search activities in one's general browsing behaviour as well as the tendency to click on higher-or lower-ranked results. We find differences in such relationships between the two countries that highlights the importance of comparative research in this domain. Further, we observe differences in the temporal patterns of web search use between women and men, marking the necessity of disaggregating data by gender in observational studies regarding online information behaviour.

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Automated Tracking Approaches for Studying Online Media Use: A Critical Review and Recommendations

Cited by 53 publications

References 29 publications

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

Social Media and Well-being: A Methodological Perspective

You Are How (and Where) You Search? Comparative Analysis of Web Search Behaviour Using Web Tracking Data

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