If You Have Choices, Why Not Choose (and Share) All of Them?

Author(s)
Christian Pipal, Hyunjin Song, Hajo Boomgaarden
Abstract

Social sciences are facing a crisis of replicability, and concerns about the confidence in quantitative findings have resulted in an increasing interest in open science practices across many fields. In this article we introduce scholars of (digital) journalism studies and communication science to multiverse analysis while addressing the possible reasons of heterogeneity in the findings of research on engagement with news on social media. Using the question of which news article characteristics predict news engagement on social media, this illustration of the multiverse approach shows how different measurement, data processing, and modelling choices lead to divergent conclusions. In particular, we show how the selection of widely used automated text analysis tools and preprocessing steps influence the conclusions drawn from the analysis. We also use this illustration to guide interested scholars through the different steps of doing a multiverse analysis. More broadly, we demonstrate how multiverse analysis can be an open and transparent research approach in a field that is increasingly faced with a wide range of analytical choices.

Organisation(s)
Department of Communication
External organisation(s)
University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Journal
Digital Journalism
Volume
11
Pages
255-275
No. of pages
21
ISSN
2167-0811
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2036623
Publication date
03-2022
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
508007 Communication science
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Communication
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/if-you-have-choices-why-not-choose-and-share-all-of-them(b822ba2e-7817-4cf4-b6bc-e720446becf6).html