Understanding Audience Behavior with Digital Traces: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

In recent decades, significant transformations in audience characteristics and the media environment have necessitated a reassessment of audience analysis. Communication scholars have increasingly recognized the value of utilizing digital traces as valuable resources to understand audience behaviors. This research presents a comprehensive review of 243 audience analyses that incorporate digital traces, covering the period from 2001 to 2022, as published in 19 prominent communication journals. Our analysis reveals a remarkable expansion in the variety of data sources and a diversification of research contexts within the field. The integration of digital traces has empowered researchers to enhance behavioral concepts and attain deeper insights into audience dynamics. By harnessing the temporal, semantic, and structural information embedded within digital traces, novel audience metrics have been developed. This review identifies noteworthy theoretical and methodological implications for future audience research, emphasizing the necessity to embrace the evolving landscape of digital media. Furthermore, it suggests avenues for further exploration and the refinement of existing methodologies. By capitalizing on the potential of digital traces, communication scholars can continue to advance our understanding of audience characteristics and behaviors in the ever-changing media ecosystem.

Keywords:

• Audience analysis
• audience behavior
• audience metrics
• web 2.0
• digital traces

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The list of reviewed studies with bibliographies is available in the appendix. The coding data will be shared upon request.

Notes

1 In the media industry and academic research, various terms such as audience insights, user analytics, and user analysis are employed as alternative labels for audience analysis. Despite the different terminology, these labels share a common conceptual emphasis on studying the utilization and impact of media. Consequently, in our paper, we will treat these labels as interchangeable with audience analysis and consider the terms audience and users to be equivalent.

2 A study can potentially construct multiple audience metrics. Consequently, the cumulative total of the reported percentages may not necessarily equal 100%.