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An Open-Source Smartphone Screen-Recording Tool with Application to Political Science Research

Author

Listed:
  • Muise, Daniel
  • Cornelius, Justin
  • Lee, Jihye
  • Lu, Yingdan

    (Northwestern University)

  • Shapiro, Jacob N

Abstract

Political scientists seek to understand the political environment and to identify causal relationships within it. This often requires accurate measurement of how individuals consume political information. Many data-collection approaches, particularly those relying on social media content, infer consumption behavior from publicly posted material. Yet public-facing, platform-specific content misrepresents the fragmented, multimedia nature of smartphone use, and thus of political information consumption. Continuous smartphone screen-recording (CSSR) offers a theoretically strong means of capturing individuals’ information experience, but has remained largely inaccessible to political scientists due to technical, operational, analytical, and ethical barriers. We introduce an open-source CSSR tool to mitigate these challenges. We motivate its relevance for political science and outline its solutions to practical constraints that have limited CSSR’s adoption.

Suggested Citation

  • Muise, Daniel & Cornelius, Justin & Lee, Jihye & Lu, Yingdan & Shapiro, Jacob N, 2026. "An Open-Source Smartphone Screen-Recording Tool with Application to Political Science Research," SocArXiv 6wgm5_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:6wgm5_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/6wgm5_v1
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