A Stratified Observational Archive of High-Salience News Presentation on a Major Social Media Platform

This record contains a stratified observational archive consisting of two components bundled under a single DOI: A compressed dataset of 342 contemporaneously captured screenshots documenting the interface-level presentation of high-salience news content on a major social media platform during a discrete mid-January observation window. A companion documentation file providing methodological description, stratification logic, scope, limitations, and archival orientation for the dataset. The screenshots preserve interface features including visual hierarchy, urgency framing, institutional branding, engagement indicators, and relative ordering as rendered to an end user at the time of capture. The archive is observational and non-exhaustive. It makes no interpretive, evaluative, or normative claims regarding the content depicted. Inclusion reflects visibility at time of capture rather than significance, endorsement, or representativeness. The documentation file serves as a stabilization layer for future researchers, defining capture conditions, preservation constraints, and interpretive boundaries without advancing substantive claims about the archived content. Together, the files constitute a single interface-level observational record intended for use in digital ethnography, platform studies, media archaeology, and related fields.