Information Exposure, Seeking, and Sharing in the Emerging Media Environment: Definitional and Measurement Considerations

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  Exposure is usually a major focus of health communication campaign evaluation studies. The rapid diffusion of new media technologies has created a landscape in which consumers not only passively encounter information designed to influence behavior and attitudes, but also actively engage with information across media. Simple exposure to advertising messages, news stories or other public information created by journalists or social institutions is no longer an accurate description of what individuals experience when they receive attention in health communication campaigns. Computer-mediated communications offer alternative means for gathering and managing information, which are not present with traditional media, introducing a higher level of control and making it easier for consumers to actively search for, produce, and share content. Thus, the processes of information seeking, selection and retransmission become crucial for understanding the reach of health communication campaigns. In order to accurately explain and predict the consequences of health communication interventions, it is necessary to adequately understand and measure these additional behaviors. To date, scholars have rarely articulated a formal definition of exposure, instead opting to view it as a mere passive encounter with information. Furthermore, the relationship between information exposure, seeking, and retransmission across traditional and new media is not well-described in the literature.

Methods and Results (informing the conceptual analysis):  We synthesize the conceptualization of information exposure from the previous definitional work in the fields of communication, health behavior, and media effects research. We illuminate major gaps in research and propose operational definitions of the concepts of message exposure, retransmission, and information seeking, to develop a conceptual framework for the new media landscape. We apply the proposed framework to a specific example of operationalizing and measuring exposure to tobacco-related messages on social media, i.e. Twitter and Instagram. We discuss such measures of exposure to tweets and Instagram posts as potential reach based on the number of followers (viewing), retweets and regrams (sharing), likes, and comments (engagement), likes to followers and comments to followers ratios, etc.

Conclusions:  The proposed model presents a continuum between exposure, seeking, and sharing of information, positing a range of involvement with the information from lowest to highest. We discuss the methodological pitfalls, biases, and challenges associated with measuring information exposure in the context of online media environment.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Finally, we speculate about the directions for the next generation of research necessary to understand exposure as an essential component in media effects research and theory.