Screenertia: Understanding “Stickiness” of Media Through Temporal Changes in Screen Use
Descriptions of moment-by-moment changes in attention contribute critical elements to theory and practice about how people process media. We introduce a new concept called screenertia and use new screen-capture methodology to empirically evaluate its occurrence. We unobtrusively obtained 400,000+ screenshots of 30 participants’ laptop screens every 5 seconds for 4 days to examine individuals’ attention to their screens and how the distribution of attention differs across media content. All individuals’ screen segments were best described by a log-normal survival function—evidence of screenertia. Consistent with the literature on uses and gratifications of media, news/entertainment activities were the most “sticky.” These findings indicate that screenertia is not only related to the level of interactivity of media content but is also related to its modality and agency. Discussion of the findings highlights the importance of theorizing, examining, and modeling the specific time scales at which media behaviors manifest and evolve.
Miriam Brinberg et al, Screenertia: Understanding “Stickiness” of Media Through Temporal Changes in Screen Use, Communication Research (50, 5) pp. 535-560. Copyright © 2022. DOI: 10.1177/00936502211062778. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission.
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Work Title | Screenertia: Understanding “Stickiness” of Media Through Temporal Changes in Screen Use |
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License | In Copyright (Rights Reserved) |
Work Type | Article |
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Publication Date | February 11, 2022 |
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Deposited | October 14, 2024 |
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