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
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Miriam Brinberg
  2. Nilam Ram
  3. Jinping Wang
  4. S. Shyam Sundar
  5. James J. Cummings
  6. Leo Yeykelis
  7. Byron Reeves
Keyword
  1. intensive longitudinal data
  2. laptop use
  3. media attention
  4. screenomics
  5. survival analysis
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Communication Research
Publication Date February 11, 2022
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502211062778
Deposited October 14, 2024

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added CR-21-060.R2_Proof_hi.pdf
  • Added Creator Miriam Brinberg
  • Added Creator Nilam Ram
  • Added Creator Jinping Wang
  • Added Creator S. Shyam Sundar
  • Added Creator James J. Cummings
  • Added Creator Leo Yeykelis
  • Added Creator Byron Reeves
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • intensive longitudinal data, laptop use, media attention, screenomics, survival analysis
    Publication Date
    • 2022-01-01
    • 2022-02-11