Presentation at DGPUK methods workshop 22.09.2016

1. Measuring news exposure using
behavioral tracking data
Judith Möller
The Amsterdam Personalised Communication Project

2. Why are we looking
into personalised
communication?

3. Web-shop of ideas
 Personalised news
recommondation
 Personalised political
advertising
 Personalised health
information websites
 Personalised online shopping

4. Studying causes and effects of
personalised communication

6. Research infrastructure
 Interdisciplinary network
Communication
Law
Ethics
Economics
Computer Science
 Research instruments:
Panel Survey
Online tracking study

7. Research infrastructure
 Interdisciplinary network
Communication
Law
Ethics
Economics
Computer Science
 Research instruments:
Panel Survey
Online tracking study

8. Online tracking study
Goal: Study the personalised news menu of
internet user, taking into account that their news
feeds is individualized to their cookies and
browsing history
Clickstream is not enough

9. Man in the middle research infrastructure

10. But that is not so easy to
accomplish.....
 Legal constraints
Privacy
Copyright
 Ethical considerations
Conflicting guidlines (transparency vs. Protection of personal data)
 Panel constraints
 Technical constraints: secure storage, whitelist, filters

11. What does this look like in practice?
11

14. Conceputalizing exposure
Various degrees of exposure
- Content was featured on a website you visited
- User selects content (click)
- User reads selected content until the end
- User engages with content (further clicks, comments)
Our goal: Match specific exposure measure to specific content to
media effects (e.g., agenda setting, political knowledge)

15. Thank you for your attention
Follow us on personalised-communication.net
First data is coming in in October/November!