Ana’s PhD Defense

The first PhD defense within ReDefTie is already a fact! On July 27, Ana defended her dissertation “Spontaneous Inferences and their Implications for Ambient Awareness”, which was part of the Informational Benefits subproject, with a summa cum laude.

Updates

Ana has handed in her PhD thesis and our paper on the effects of SNS use on online social support, stress and life satisfaction has been accepted for the special issue of JMP on media use and well-being!

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Method specialist wanted! – for position or as collaborators

Are you interested in the long-term effects of social media use? Then join our team!

Johannes is leaving our team by April 1st, so we are looking for another method specialist with experience in analyzing complex longitudinal data-sets.

As the project ends in December 2017, the position is temporary.
https://www.iwm-tuebingen.de/www/de/karriere/stellenangebote/anzeige.html?kind=wissenschaftlich#ausschreibung1002

The collection of the 8th and last wave of the longitudinal study will start soon, and we will share the dataset afterwards. We have detailed information on Facebook use, LinkedIn use and Twitter use from a representative sample of Dutch online users and a bunch of social capital indicators (e.g., stress, social support, civic engagement, informational benefits). If you are interested in working with us, just contact me at s.utz@iwm-tuebingen.de

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Have no fear, your smartphone is here – Nomophobia among internet users

The use of smartphones has become ubiquitous for large parts of the population in Europe. As smartphones are also commonly used to access social network sites, we decided to take a look at the use of smartphones in the latest waves of our longitudinal study. We first asked our respondents whether they own a smartphone. Out of the 1330 person who participated in the 6th wave of our survey, 72.8% reported that they currently own a smartphone. The share of smartphone owners slightly increased in wave 7 with 76.5% of the sample reporting ownership. Continue reading

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Longitudinal study: Fotosharing sites become more popular; only small changes in the overall use of social networking sites

As the data from the 5th wave of our longitudinal study are in, we decided that it’s time to look at the development of social media use over time. Similar to what we saw in the data from the first two waves (see previous post), the overall patterns of social media use remain quite stable. Around 71% of the respondents use social networking sites (SNS) for private purposes, while the share of people who use SNS for professional purposes is approximately 24%. Continue reading

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International Summer School “Living with Media”

Ana and Ruoyun attended the International Summer School “Living With Media” taking place in Cologne between July 19th and 24th, and presented their work in the interactive poster session. Ana’s poster won the best poster award. The posters are available here on our blog.

The summer school, hosted by the University of Cologne, is the first in a series of summer schools organized in collaboration with Michigan State University. The summer schools aims to provide students advanced training and foster the development of sustainable international and interdisciplinary networks. Four general topics were covered this year: 1) media, development, education and learning; 2) online communication and social media; 3) media, morality, and social norms; and 4) media, well-being, and self-regulation.

The days consisted of a morning lecture by senior faculty and responses given by junior scholars. The attendees could choose to participate in one of the workshops guided by junior scholars. The workshops consisted of working in small groups and presenting the groupwork in a plenary session for feedback and discussion. Each day ended with an interactive poster session, in which participants first presented their work for 5 minutes.

The organizers did a great job ensuring excellent work environment and friendly, collaborative atmosphere. The discussion were lively and informative, often carrying on much after the official hours of the school had ended. The social events, some of which were organized and some happened spontaneously, were fun and enjoyable.

We would like to thank the organizers, the lecturers, and other participants for the great time and opportunity to discuss our work and the works of others in such an excellent yet relaxed environment. We learned plenty of valuable research knowledge, heard about excellent research, met amazing people, and came back inspired and full of enthusiasm.

And here comes the great news – the summer school will have a next chapter! If you or your grad students are interested in taking part, we recommend it wholeheartedly. We’ll make sure to share upcoming info here and on our Twitter account @ReDefTie.

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