Media effects & news exposure: new forms of data to address old questions

Banducci, S. and Horvath, Laszlo and Kolpinskaya, E. and Stevens, D. (2021) Media effects & news exposure: new forms of data to address old questions. In: Rudolph, T.J. (ed.) Handbook of Politics and Public Opinion. Elgar Handbooks in Political Science. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781800379602. (In Press)

Abstract

Thirty years ago, research trying to establish relationships between media exposure, political attitudes and behavior was described as, “one of the most notable embarrassments of modern social science” (1993, 267). Yet much has changed since then, both in terms of the media landscape and the way in which individuals engage with news. While these changes, including the rise of 24-hour news channels, web 2.0 and social media, have complicated “media exposure”, they also offer opportunities to gauge exposure in different, and potentially less error-prone, ways. In this chapter, we consider the promise of web-tracking (or Clickstream) methods, in which the websites participants visit are unobtrusively monitored via software. We outline what these methods entail and, using examples from our own research during the EU Referendum in 2016 in the United Kingdom, consider their strengths and weaknesses for media effects research, including the new ethical challenges they present for researchers.

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