The Blind Spots of Measuring Online News Exposure: A Comparison of Self-Reported and Observational Data in Nine Countries

Information, Communication & Society

38 Pages Posted: 8 Feb 2020 Last revised: 8 Apr 2022

See all articles by Sandra González-Bailón

Sandra González-Bailón

University of Pennsylvania - Annenberg School for Communication

Michael Xenos

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Date Written: January 20, 2020

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.

Keywords: news consumption, web, digital traces, exposure, measurement error

Suggested Citation

González-Bailón, Sandra and Xenos, Michael, The Blind Spots of Measuring Online News Exposure: A Comparison of Self-Reported and Observational Data in Nine Countries (January 20, 2020). Information, Communication & Society, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3522774 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3522774

Sandra González-Bailón (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania - Annenberg School for Communication ( email )

Philadelphia, PA
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://dimenet.asc.upenn.edu/people/sgonzalezbailon/

Michael Xenos

University of Wisconsin - Madison ( email )

716 Langdon Street
Madison, WI 53706-1481
United States

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