ABSTRACT

Quantifying the ubiquitous, ephemeral, and highly diverse patterns of mobile social media (MSM) use is a challenge for communication research. Most researchers employ retrospective survey measurement, thus depending on the accuracy of users’ memories and generalizations. Alternatively, some researchers rely on in-situ measurement, being less dependent on users’ memories and generalizations, but requiring random situation samples. To assess differences and similarities between these two measurement approaches we analyzed whether characteristics (duration and frequency of a usage episode, habit, elaboration, and gratifications) of MSM use (regarding Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube) vary between retrospective survey and mobile experience sampling measurement. We observe a consistent pattern of higher estimates in retrospect as compared to individual averages of in-situ reports. The absolute magnitude of these differences varies considerably between platforms and characteristics studied. Nonetheless, for most constructs and platforms we find low significant positive correlations between retrospective and aggregated in-situ values.

摘要

量化移动社交媒体（MSM）使用的无处不在，短暂且高度多样化的模式是传播研究的挑战。大多数研究人员采用回顾性调查测量，因此取决于用户记忆的准确性和概括性。另外，一些研究人员依赖于原位测量，较少依赖用户的记忆和概括，但需要随机情况样本。为了评估这两种测量方法之间的差异和相似性，我们分析了回顾性调查和移动体验采样之间MSM使用（关于Facebook，WhatsApp和YouTube）的特征（使用情节的持续时间和频率，习惯，细化和满足）测量。与原位报告的单个平均值相比，我们在回顾中观察到了一致的较高估计值模式。这些差异的绝对大小在所研究的平台和特性之间存在很大差异。但是，对于大多数构造物和平台，我们发现追溯值和汇总的原位值之间的显着正相关性较低。