Exposure Research Going Mobile: A Smartphone-Based Measurement of Media Exposure to Political Information in a Convergent Media Environment

In today’s convergent media environment, media exposure becomes increasingly channel-independent and social media-bound, and media content is more frequently accessed on mobile devices. This calls for new approaches to measuring media exposure. This study applies an innovative approach to survey (n = 2378) exposure to political information in the form of a mobile diary measurement, accessible via a specifically developed app. Respondents exhibited broad acceptance and uptake of the mobile measurement, resulting in an almost representative sample and equally satisfactory application of different platform modes. The study furthermore confirms limitations of mere usage time measurements of social media platforms in effects research and explores a range of actual content types that citizens encounter in social networks. It recommends more frequent use of mobile exposure measurements and argues for a content-related assessment of social media use in effects research.