0000000000719275
AUTHOR
Michael Scharkow
showing 5 related works from this author
sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_1461444821989972 – Supplemental material for The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural …
2021
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_1461444821989972 for The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural perspective by Frank Mangold, Sebastian Stier, Johannes Breuer and Michael Scharkow in New Media & Society
Opening a Conversation on Open Communication Research
2021
Abstract Many disciplines have been debating and enacting a range of policies, procedures, and practices that fall under the umbrella term “open research” or “open science.” Following the publication of “An Agenda for Open Science in Communication”, we invited communication scholars to continue the conversation on what open research practices broadly might mean for our diverse field. Specifically, we sought work that: looked empirically at the need for and impact of open research practices; considered the unintended consequences of calls for open research practices broadly; and that reflected on what such a move would mean for qualitative and humanistic communication research. We hope the c…
The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural perspective
2021
Recent research by Taneja et al. suggested that digital infrastructures diminish the generational gap in news use by counteracting preference structures. We expand on this seminal work by arguing that an infrastructural perspective requires overcoming limitations of highly aggregated web tracking data used in prior research. We analyze the individual browsing histories of two representative samples of German Internet users collected in 2012 ( N = 2970) and 2018 ( N = 2045) and find robust evidence for a smaller generational gap in online news use than commonly assumed. While short news website visits mostly demonstrated infrastructural factors, longer news use episodes were shaped more by …
How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news
2020
Research has prominently assumed that social media and web portals that aggregate news restrict the diversity of content that users are exposed to by tailoring news diets toward the users’ preferences. In our empirical test of this argument, we apply a random-effects within–between model to two large representative datasets of individual web browsing histories. This approach allows us to better encapsulate the effects of social media and other intermediaries on news exposure. We find strong evidence that intermediaries foster more varied online news diets. The results call into question fears about the vanishing potential for incidental news exposure in digital media environments.
How Do Filtering Choices Impact the Structures of Audience Networks? A Simulation Study Using Data from 26 Countries
2020
Although communication scholars have increasingly studied audience fragmentation by analyzing audience networks, recent cross-national research has spurred a methodological debate about how to cons...