Measuring Media Use and Exposure - Recent Developments and Challenges

The precise measurement of media use and exposure to media content posits currently one of the main methodological challenges in communication research. Against this background, new communication technologies have been gaining particular importance because they change existing patterns of media use and create new types of media use. At the same time, these technologies do not only present a challenge for communication research, but they also provide new opportunities for the assessment of media use. The volume regards current developments and trends in the measurement of media use and exposure from various perspectives. Contributions deal with the refinement and advancement of classical approaches, and new methods and measures of assessing media use are introduced and evaluated. They also discuss the advantages and challenges of using online behavioral data as indicators for media exposure. Contributions tackle questions how different methods of measuring media use and exposure can be combined to gain a more accurate picture and what pitfalls can occur.