Measuring Exposure and Attention to Media and Communication

Valid and reliable measurement of media and communication exposure is crucial for communication science, psychology, political science, sociology, pedagogy, economics, and law, and the practitioners in media, communication, and information. At the same time, this is a wicked problem for which there are no simple solutions. That was never the case, but in today's digital and abundant media landscape it is even more difficult. The book discusses the ways in which media and communication exposure can be conceptualized, operationalized, and measured. Methods examined include self-reports, recall, recognition, ecological momentary assessment, think aloud, digital traces, data donation, human observation, eye-tracking, EEG, fMRI, heart rate, and skin conductance, their pros and cons, complexities, and performance. The book concludes with recommendations for the application and further development of these methods, as well as an extensive bibliography with references to in-depth insights into specific aspects of media exposure measurement.

Peter Neijens is an Honorary Fellow and Emeritus Professor at ASCoR. He held the Chair in Media and Persuasion at the University of Amsterdam until 2019. His research focuses on persuasive communication, in particular media use and effects in advertising and public opinion. Theo Araujo is a Full Professor of Media, Organisations and Society, and Scientific Director of ASCoR. His research investigates the dynamic interplay between media and organizations, and what it means for society, with a special focus on trust and technology. His research has also a methodological focus on computational communication science and the implementation of large-scale data collection and analysis for communication research. Judith Möller was an Associate Professor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Since 2023 she holds the chair of "Empirical communication research, especially media use and social media effects" at the University of Hamburg and the Leibniz Institute for Media Research Hans Bredow Institute (HBI).

Acknowledgments, About the authors, Preface 1. Introduction, 2. Conceptualizing media contact, 3. Quality criteria for media exposure measures, 4. Self-report measures, 5. Digital trace data, 6. Observation, 7. Eye tracking (by Claire M. Segijn & Emily Vraga), 8. Neurobiological methods (by Frederic R. Hopp & Bert N. Bakker), 9. Ecological methods, Recommendations, List of References, Index