We are what we click: Understanding time and content-based habits of online news readers

Makhortykh, Mykola; Vreese, Claes H. de; Helberger, Natali; Harambam, Jaron; Bountouridis, Dimitrios

doi:10.1177/1461444820933221

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(70 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We use these metrics to cluster individuals who were exposed to at least one QAnon website. Following other research that clusters users based on their news browsing behaviors (Makhortykh et al, 2021), we use a k-means clustering algorithm. Before clustering, we removed one individual who had an extraordinary number of visits to QAnon websites (1,483; the person with the next highest number of visits had 125).…”

Section: Part 1: Quantitative Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before clustering, we removed one individual who had an extraordinary number of visits to QAnon websites (1,483; the person with the next highest number of visits had 125). Again following past research, we selected the number of clusters using the elbow method (Makhortykh et al, 2021). These clusters group people with similar browsing behaviors together.…”

Section: Part 1: Quantitative Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The private life of QAnon: A mixed methods investigation of Americans’ exposure to QAnon content on the web

Dahlke¹,

Moore²,

Forberg³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In an increasingly polarized political environment, heightened focus has been placed on the potentially devastating effects of misinformation on democracy. Emblematic of this concern is the viral conspiracy theory QAnon, which began during the Trump presidency and evolved to become a frequent distributor of misinformation. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which Americans are exposed to QAnon, in what contexts, and to what effect. To do so, we employ a mixed methods review of 21 million website visits from a nationally representative sample of 1,238 U.S. adults collected during the 2020 presidential election. We find that: (1) exposure to QAnon is limited and stratified by political affiliation and news consumption; (2) exposure tends to occur within right-wing media ecosystems that align with QAnon beliefs; and (3) mixed methods approaches to analyzing digital trace data can provide rich insights that contextualize quantitative techniques.

show abstract

Section: Part 1: Quantitative Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Part 1: Quantitative Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

The private life of QAnon: A mixed methods investigation of Americans’ exposure to QAnon content on the web

Dahlke¹,

Moore²,

Forberg³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Different users may have different 'tolerance' for diversity, depending on the topic and even on things such as the time of day. Whether or not news recommenders can successfully motivate users to consume more diverse can also depend on the (user-friendly) design of the recommender and the way the recommendations are presented [33]. Designing for more diverse news consumption also gives rise to a different discussion: is it ethical to nudge news consumption, even if it is for a commendable goal such as "more diversity" or "countering filter bubbles", and where do we draw the line between offering more diverse recommendations and manipulating the reader?…”

Section: General Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recommenders with a Mission

Vrijenhoek

Kaya²,

Metoui

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

News recommenders help users to find relevant online content and have the potential to fulfill a crucial role in a democratic society, directing the scarce attention of citizens towards the information that is most important to them. Simultaneously, recent concerns about so-called filter bubbles, misinformation and selective exposure are symptomatic of the disruptive potential of these digital news recommenders. Recommender systems can make or break filter bubbles, and as such can be instrumental in creating either a more closed or a more open internet. Current approaches to evaluating recommender systems are often focused on measuring an increase in user clicks and short-term engagement, rather than measuring the user's longer term interest in diverse and important information.This paper aims to bridge the gap between normative notions of diversity, rooted in democratic theory, and quantitative metrics necessary for evaluating the recommender system. We propose a set of metrics grounded in social science interpretations of diversity and suggest ways for practical implementations.

show abstract

“…A more or less diverse news diet is the result of a series of decisions for certain news articles over others, a sequence of choices that was made by the individual consumer. They can be explored by looking at chains of choices in digital traces of news consumption [18,32]. In this case, diversity becomes something that is less focused on the absolute level but is more brought back to an individual measure.…”

Section: Previous Work 21 News Consumption and Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Is this a click towards diversity? Explaining when and why news users make diverse choices

Löecherbach

Welbers

Moeller

et al. 2021

13th ACM Web Science Conference 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Modelling the different factors that lead people to choose news articles is one of the key challenges for understanding the diversity of news diets -as a news diet is the result of a series of decisions for certain articles over others, a sequence of choices that was made by the individual consumer. This study sheds light on the interplay between content-related (past behavior, habits, preferences) and situational factors (positioning, saturation, control). The latter could offer possibilities to promote more unexpected news encounters that diverge from past news consumption. To test this, a Pythonbased web application for interactively testing different forms of news personalization over time was used. 247 respondents used the system over a two-week period, in total making almost 23,000 choices. Our results show that: (1) Selections are influenced by a strong positioning effect that follows a reading pattern (left-right, up-down). This effect is stable across devices, topics, and preferences. (2) How much control people are given influences the length and the amount of different sessions (personalization leads to fewer and shorter sessions). (3) With high control, the diversity of preferences influenced the diversity of selected news more, possibly widening gaps between diversity-seeking and -averse users. (4) How often a topic was chosen in the last hour negatively impacts whether it gets chosen again, showing saturation effects. (5) Clicks on sports and economic articles can be explained by preferences, but not past behavior; for political news the opposite is found. (6) There is no significant correlation between the actual diversity (presented or selected topics) and the topic diversity perceived by the users -in spite of clear differences in actual diversity between the groups. From this we can conclude the importance of situational factors in modelling news selection and their potential to narrow This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

show abstract

We are what we click: Understanding time and content-based habits of online news readers

Cited by 22 publications

References 46 publications

The private life of QAnon: A mixed methods investigation of Americans’ exposure to QAnon content on the web

The private life of QAnon: A mixed methods investigation of Americans’ exposure to QAnon content on the web

Recommenders with a Mission

Is this a click towards diversity? Explaining when and why news users make diverse choices

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About