A standard for (qualitative) diary studies: MeTag app and MeTag analyzer

Abstract

The MeTag mobile app and the web-interface MeTag analyzer by Hohman et al. (2022) provide an infrastructure for communication scholars conducting mobile media diaries and are filling a blind spot for (qualitative) diary research in communication science. The software meets high standards of transparency, open science, and accessibility. The user-friendly interface that does not require any coding skills from researchers as well as the detailed documentation (manual and tutorials) make it easy for researchers to conduct mobile media diary studies. While (media) diary studies are an essential part of many social sciences, including communication research, there is to date no standard software solution to conduct (qualitative) media diary studies. There are, of course, handwritten solutions, but the downside of this is well known. Besides accessibility, mobile diary studies carry further advantages even for a less literate sample: The smartphone is portable, and participants have it with them anyway. Some of the media usage reported is happening on the same device as the diary entries. It comes with the opportunity to do audio-based entries for those who are not able or willing to type (long) entries by hand into their mobile device. I will now list some of the characteristics that make the infrastructure a standard tool for media diary studies and fulfill all quality criteria for research software in the social sciences. Please let me elaborate on the mobile app first; that is, the interface where participants conduct their media diary entries.