The main research questions of the project include the following: Which journalists are willing to donate data under which conditions? Which personalised information environments have what share in the total volume of professional online use? And how do journalists reflect and explain the relevance of these information environments in their work? In the project, we supplement the statements of the interview partners with donated browser usage data by using the browser plug-in
WebHistorian. This allows us to address not only the difficulty of detailed recall in ubiquitous media environments, but also the problem of social desirability and professional socialisation.
WebHistorian is an open-source university project of the American University in Washington. By installing a browser plug-in, participants can access their browser history of the past 90 days (URLs and time stamps) easily and graphically on their own devices. They can "clean up" this information individually before passing it on to a server of the HBI.
