Understanding Online Behaviors through a Temporal Lens

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a time-in-behaviors perspective to better understand online behaviors, emphasizing the importance of temporal details in digital traces and demonstrating its potential through empirical cases.

Contribution

It introduces the time-in-behaviors perspective as a novel approach to analyze online behaviors, expanding beyond traditional time-in-behaviors frameworks.

Findings

Demonstrates the utility of temporal analysis in online behavior studies

Shows how multiple units of analysis can be examined temporally

Proposes future research directions in computational social science

Abstract

Timestamps in digital traces include significant detailed information on when human behaviors occur, which is universally available and standardized in all types of digital traces. Nevertheless, the concept of time is under-explicated in empirical studies of online behaviors. This paper discusses the (un)desirable properties of timestamps in digital traces and summarizes how timestamps in digital traces have been utilized in existing studies of online behaviors. The paper argues that time-in-behaviors perspective can provide a microscope with a renovated temporal lens to observe and understand online behaviors. Going beyond the traditional behaviors-in-time perspective, time-in-behaviors perspective enables empirical examination of online behaviors from multiple units of analysis (e.g., discrete behaviors, behavioral sessions, and behavioral trajectories) and from multiple dimensions (e.g., duration, order, transition, rhythm). The paper shows the potentials of the time-in-behaviors perspective with several empirical cases and proposes future directions in explicating the concept of time in computational social science.