Ana Levordashka received the Herbert S. Dordick Award from the Communication and Technology Division of ICA for her outstanding dissertation – congratulations!

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!

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.

We are looking for a committed
Researcher, main area: methods (part-time)
in the ERC/Social Media lab, starting to work at KMRC on April 1, 2015 or later. Our lab investigates the emotional and informational benefits of social media use as well as strategic communication via social media in the interpersonal and organizational domain. These topics are studied from a social psychological, media psychological and communication science perspective.
The successful applicant will work within the ERC project ReDefTie / Redefining tie strength – How social media (can) help us to get non-redundant useful information and emotional support” (ERC Starting Grant). The mains tasks will be method consulting and help with the analysis of complex datasets (including longitudinal data).

Click here for the (German) job ad:

Also available: post-doc position in the social media group, starting in August 2015