sj-pdf-1-nms-10.1177_1461444821989972 – Supplemental material for The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural perspective
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
The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural perspective
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 …
Day-to-day routines of media platform use in the digital age: A structuration perspective
Using Giddens's structuration theory, this study examines how the routinized use of traditional and new media platforms differently align with the structures of everyday life. We analyzed data from a quantitative diary study in Germany to find that new media platforms specifically affect societal structuration by blurring the lines between obligations and leisure time. The part played by routines in the use of new media platforms was less strongly connected to clock time compared to traditional media platforms. Consequently, the findings indicate both a vanishing potential for media platform use as a social zeitgeber and the relevance of rules as structuring elements.
How Do Filtering Choices Impact the Structures of Audience Networks? A Simulation Study Using Data from 26 Countries
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...
How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news
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.