Self-Reporting News Use in Situ and in Retrospect

The current study describes the discrepancies between measures of retrospective and repeated in situ self-reports for exposure to audio-visual news broadcasts on TV, news websites, and social media. It tests the influence of the amount of news broadcast exposure, habitual news use at certain times of the day, and user demographics on the discrepancies between the measures. Results show that people significantly under-report TV news exposure and over-report watching the news on social media in retrospect. More heavy news users tend to under-report exposure in retrospect compared to aggregated in situ values. Daytime news users tend to over-report social media news exposure in retrospect.