Category: Publication

New publication: The quality and quantity of mobile media use

Roland Toth

In a world where smartphones are rarely out of reach, the conversation around mobile media use has long centered on one metric: screen time. But what if the real story isn’t about duration, but about how we use these devices?

The Methods Lab is proud to share a new publication in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, authored by Roland Toth, Aurelio Fernández, Javier García-Manglano, and Pedro de la Rosa. Titled Quality and quantity: The role of gratification and situation variety when measuring mobile media use, this study challenges the dominance of screen time and proposes a more meaningful way to understand smartphone engagement. This publication is a result of a cooperation between the Methods Lab and the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra that was initiated with a research stay in 2023.

Using data from 1,525 Spanish emerging adults across three waves of a national panel study, the researchers suggest that the variety of gratifications (such as staying informed, socializing, organizing, or escaping stress) and the diversity of situations (different combinations of places, activities, and social settings) play an important role when measuring mobile media use more comprehensively. Both were stronger predictors of mobile vigilance (our constant mental and behavioral attention to devices) than the duration spent using them. Situation variety was particularly strongly linked to mobile vigilance. This suggests that the true significance of smartphone use lies not in how long we use it, but in how deeply and broadly it’s woven into daily life.

The findings challenge the idea that screen time alone captures meaningful engagement. Instead, they highlight that smartphones are not just tools for consumption, but dynamic instruments of identity, connection, and routine – especially when used across varied purposes and contexts. This paper calls for a shift in research: measuring not just how much, but to what extent people leverage their devices. By integrating quality dimensions like gratification and situation variety, researchers can gain a richer, more expressive picture of digital behavior.

As mobile media evolve, so must our methods. This work is a step toward a more human-centered understanding of digital life – one that values depth over duration.

New publication: Methodological biases of the Mobile Experience Sampling Method

Roland Toth

The Methods Lab is excited to share a new publication in Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, authored by researchers Jakob Ohme, Timothy Charlton, Roland Toth, Theo Araujo, and Claes H. de Vreese. This paper, titled Bursting Self-reports? Comparing Sampling Frequency Effects of Mobile Experience Sampling Method on Compliance, Attrition, and Sample Biases, explores the effects of different sampling frequencies in experience sampling studies on compliance, sample biases, and reactivity of measures in the context of digital media use.

The study presents an analysis of the impact of daily-intensive burst measures (seven surveys per day) versus hourly-intensive burst measures (12 surveys over two hours per day) on compliance, attrition, and sample biases. To do so, the authors used data collected through the Mobile Experience Sampling Method (MESM) with a mobile-only sample of Dutch Internet users. They reveal differences in compliance, attrition, and sample biases between the two sampling frequency designs.

The results indicate general problems with MESM studies, such as sample attrition during onboarding and sample biases due to age, education, tech savviness, and privacy literacy. They also show that hourly-intensive burst measures lead to lower MESM protocol compliance compared to a more spread-out sampling schedule. However, the study also finds that the average response rate across seven study days does not strongly decrease, suggesting that while the number of measurements may be lower using hourly-intensive burst measures, the day-to-day decrease is a minor issue.

The study highlights the importance of considering systematic biases in MESM studies, particularly during the recruitment phase, and suggests that researchers should be transparent and mindful about these. The findings have implications for future ESM studies with high-frequency sampling, suggesting that researchers should carefully consider the sampling frequency design to minimize biases and ensure high-quality data.

New Publication: A Mixed Methods Study of Smartphone Use

Diana Ignatovich

The Methods Lab is excited to share a new publication in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, authored by data scientist Roland Toth along with researchers Douglas Parry, and Martin Emmer from the Weizenbaum institute. This paper, titled From Screen Time to Daily Rhythms: A Mixed Methods Study of Smartphone Use Among German Adults, explores how much, when, how, and under which circumstances Germans use their smartphones throughout the day. 

The study presents a detailed analysis of smartphone usage characteristics, showing engagement in aggregate as well as how it varies throughout the day, and associations with the user’s socio-demographic characteristics. To do so, the authors used a mix of the Mobile Experience Sampling Method (MESM), Android event logs, and iOS data donations. They reveal distinct temporal patterns that are beneficial for understanding the broader contexts, motivations, and situational factors shaping different types of mobile interactions. It also outlines practical implications for researchers employing longitudinal and real-time measurement methods in interdisciplinary and social science research. This comprehensive analysis provides a strong basis for further exploration of the psychological, social, and behavioral dimensions of smartphone use.

New Publication: Ethics of Data Work

Diana Ignatovich

Machine learning is becoming increasingly central to academic research, yet it often depends on data workers in exploitative conditions whose contributions are largely overlooked in ethical guidelines and unacknowledged within the academic community.

Last year, the Methods Lab outlined the aims of a project to target this issue in a short blog post. We’re now excited to announce the resulting published discussion paper: “Ethics of Data Work: Principles for Academic Data Work Requesters.”

This paper builds on the insights of an interdisciplinary group of scholars, practitioners, and data workers, alongside expert workshops held at the Weizenbaum Institute in 2024. It organizes practical principles for engaging more ethically with platform-based data workers, including how to define data work to then address important gaps in current ethical guidelines. The paper therefore offers concrete recommendations and regulations based on the most pressing challenges faced by these contributors. As the rapid development of AI continues to rely on the insight and labor of real people, it’s crucial to reflect on how research is conducted to ensure those workers receive proper acknowledgment for their role. This discussion paper calls for commitment to fair treatment, transparency, and meaningful support to make ethical data work a consistent part of the machine learning research process.

If you would like to learn more about the experiences and working conditions of these data workers, check out our blog post featuring creative projects from the Data Workers’ Inquiry!

New Publication: Extracting smartphone use from Android event log data

Diana Ignatovich

Back in October 2024, the Methods lab shared a preprint of a study by Methods Lab member and data scientist, Roland Toth, and former research fellow, Douglas Parry, exploring how to isolate meaningful measures of smartphone use from Android event log data. We’re now pleased to announce that this work has been peer-reviewed and published in the journal Computational Communication Research.

The article titled “Extracting Meaningful Measures of Smartphone Usage from Android Event Log Data: A Methodological Primer” outlines a practical and reproducible step-by-step guide for deriving objective indicators of human usage from raw mobile data, offering valuable insights for research in social science and related disciplines. It details the extraction of key usage metrics through written explanations, visual aids, and pseudo-code. The paper is a vital resource for researchers seeking to understand patterns of mobile phone engagement and its implications in today’s rapidly evolving digital environment.

Special Issue: Open Research Infrastructures and Resources for Communication and Media Studies

Diana Ignatovich

Despite the advantages of accessible and reproducible research practices for scholars in media and communication research, few journals present opportunities to examine these resources. Therefore the journal of Media and Communication plans to publish a Special Issue on “Open Research Infrastructures and Resources for Communication and Media Studies” in 2026 to encourage an exchange of feedback between researchers on the implications of relevant resources and infrastructures. The Call for Papers on this issue invites papers to discuss and pursue resources that adhere to open science principles. The Methods Lab lead, Christian Strippel is a co-editor of this issue. 

In regards to submissions, open science principles emphasize non-commercial tools that may apply to both quantitative and qualitative methods. Articles that present datasets, evaluate research software or compare instruments involved in data analysis are encouraged. The scope also extends to papers discussing developments or challenges to the operation of open research infrastructure, and investigates the potential areas for improvement. Notably, this publication considers implications for researchers of different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds to address research inequalities and promote sustainability. Thus, papers are encouraged to reflect this dimension of diversity. In conclusion, contributions to this publication equip researchers with greater access and ease of operation to these valuable resources, ultimately advancing and promoting inclusivity within open research practices. 

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2025

Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 January 2026

Publication of the Issue: July/December 2026

New preprint article: Extracting smartphone use from Android event log data

Diana Ignatovich

With smartphones now more prevalent in everyday life than ever before, understanding their use and its implications becomes increasingly necessary. While self-reporting in surveys is the method typically used to assess smartphone use, it is affected by various problems such as distorted retrospection, social desirability bias, and high aggregation. More advanced methods include the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which presents multiple short surveys per day to limit the degree of retrospection, and logging (Android only), which accesses an internal log on the device itself that documents each user activity in extremely high resolution. Although the latter is the most precise and objective method available for assessing smartphone use, the raw data received from the log file requires extensive transformation to extract actual human behavior rather than technical artifacts. Still, this transformation was never documented systematically and researchers working with this input implemented arbitrary steps to extract the data they required. 

The preprint article Extracting Meaningful Measures of Smartphone Usage from Android Event Log Data: A Methodological Primer, authored by former Methods Lab fellow Douglas Parry and Methods Lab member Roland Toth, aims to provide a detailed step-by-step guide to extracting different levels of smartphone use from Android log data. Specifically, the guide helps identify glances (short checks without unlocking the device), sessions (uses from unlocking to locking), and episodes (single app uses) from such log files, allowing for further investigation. All steps are presented as pseudo-code as well as described in text. In addition, the Online Supplementary Material (OSM) contains the full pseudo-code, a rendition in the R programming language, a sample data set containing raw log data, and more helpful material.

This guide ultimately enhances our understanding of how humans interact with these versatile devices, particularly beneficial for projects within the social sciences and neighboring disciplines. While survey methods are recognized for their economical advantages and ease of administration, access to objective high-resolution data contributes a more refined perspective. We hope this article helps researchers identify valuable measures from raw android event log data, thereby making this rich data source more accessible and manageable than it has previously been. 

First Research Fellow at the Methods Lab

Methods Lab

The Methods Lab is excited to welcome its first research fellow who arrived at the Weizenbaum Institute on November 20: Douglas Parry from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research focus lies on Socio-Informatics in the area of Communication Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Media/CyberPsychology.

Roland Toth, Christian Strippel, and Douglas Parry (left to right).

During his 4-week stay, Douglas Parry will contribute to work at the Methods Lab in different ways. On November 30, he will hold the workshop A Practical Introduction to Text Analysis, where he covers all important steps, from pre-processing text to visualizing results of topic modeling in a single day. On December 7, he will host a Digital Methods Colloquium together with Roland Toth, where German researchers focusing on digital methods will get together, present recent work, and discuss challenges and opportunities in the field.

Douglas Parry discussing problems when measuring digital behavior in the Weizenbaum Fellow Colloquium.

Furthermore, Douglas Parry is collaborating on two research projects with the Methods Lab during his stay, both of which involve the processing of complex data surrounding smartphone usage that were collected using multiple methods earlier this year.

The Methods Lab is happy to host Douglas Parry and is looking forward to the results of this exciting partnership – stay tuned!

Call for Contributions: “Data, Archives, & Tool Demos” at the 2024 DGPuK Annual Conference

Christian Strippel

We are excited to announce that Methods Lab lead Christian Strippel organizes a panel on “Data, Archive & Tool Demos” at the Annual Conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) on March 13-15, 2024, in Erfurt. The corresponding Call for Contributions can be found here: https://www.dgpuk2024.de/sonderfenster/

Similar to the “Tool Demos” at international conferences, the panel serves as a forum for sharing reusable research data, databases, collections, archives, as well as tools and R packages with a wider academic audience. This initiative builds on the success of the “Research Software for Communication and Media Studies” panel in 2019, but this time aiming to enhance the development, provision, and utilization of research infrastructures and resources in German-speaking communication and media research in general.

Colleagues who wish to present data, archives, or tools at the panel are invited to submit a short abstract (200-300 words), with relevant links or screenshots, to christian.strippel@weizenbaum-institut.de by the submission deadline of November 30, 2023. To be eligible for submission, your tool or resource should not have been previously featured in the research tools panel 2019 or the special issue in Publizistik. It should be openly available for scholarly reuse and not operated for commercial purposes.

For more information and submission guidelines, please visit this page.

Editorial to Special Issue and Software Presentation

Methods Lab

We are thrilled to announce the contributions of Methods Lab members Christian Strippel and Roland Toth to the latest issue of Publizistik: Vierteljahreshefte für Kommunikationsforschung.

Christian co-authored the editorial and served as a guest editor of this special issue. The editorial “Data, archives, and tools: Introducing New Publication Formats on Infrastructures and Resources for Communication and Media Research” is available here.

Roland’s research on tracking and the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) app is featured in the same journal. Dive into his article, “One App to Assess Them All – Combining Surveys, Experience Sampling, and Logging/Data Donation in an Android and iOS App” here and learn more about MART, the open-source app designed to simplify data collection in social sciences.