Making Sense of Algorithmic Profiling

This is a summary post of an article published open access in Information, Communication & Society. What reactions and rationales do Facebook users have when confronted with their algorithmically generated profiles? We surveyed 292 US-based users and led them to their "Your Interests" and "Your Categories" sections on their Facebook profiles followed by open-text questions … Continue reading Making Sense of Algorithmic Profiling

What’s in a Library?

After not using a reference manager at first (2014–2016) and later being very frustrated with Mendeley after a couple of years, I started using Zotero in 2018. I am extremely happy with the software and its features – it just works very well for everything I do. The browser plugin to import the full citation … Continue reading What’s in a Library?

Journal Metrics

Update: https://twitter.com/MoritzBuchi/status/1419702949878587398 The journal impact factor is defined as all citations made in the past year from scholarly publications (journals, proceedings, and books) to a journal's publications from the two years prior divided by the total number of publications (articles and reviews, i.e., citable items) published in the journal in those two prior years. So … Continue reading Journal Metrics

Success and Luck

If you assume there are 5 jobs available for a pool of N candidates, luck will play a more important role in determining success, i.e., being selected for the job, the larger N is. Here is a simulation example in R adapted from this video. Let's assume a candidate's "true score" can be objectively assessed … Continue reading Success and Luck

Simulating Sample Size Effects

Simulate and plot data in R to see the effects of sample size differences Results: https://twitter.com/MoritzBuchi/status/1394967444209471488 library(truncnorm) # modified version of rnorm() to allow min and max specification n <- 20 # base n f <- 1:75 # sample size multiplication vector N <- n * f # vector of 75 different sample sizes (20 … Continue reading Simulating Sample Size Effects

Quantifying Internet Use

This post summarizes key findings from our article How Long and What For? Tracking a Nationally Representative Sample to Quantify Internet Use published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media. Read more about this new journal here. The internet is increasingly used across multiple devices, often on the go, and very much integrated into … Continue reading Quantifying Internet Use

Book Review: The Digital Divide

This is a preprint version of a review published in New Media & Society. [PDF] Perhaps because by the 2010s four in five people were using the Internet in many regions of the world, the digital divide appeared fixed. This book, however, is a reminder of the continued social relevance of inequalities in access to, … Continue reading Book Review: The Digital Divide

AI for Civil Society Participation in Policy-Making: A Digital Inequality Perspective

Update: Workshop proceedings published This post is an adaptation of an invited presentation given at the Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Civil Society Participation in Policy-Making Processes in December 2020, hosted by the Global Studies Institute, University of Geneva. Under what conditions can artificial intelligence support the participation of civil society in policy-making? AI is … Continue reading AI for Civil Society Participation in Policy-Making: A Digital Inequality Perspective

Smartphone Use and Academic Performance: A Pervasiveness Approach Beyond Addiction

Update: Article published New preprint posted with Tiziano Gerosa and Marco Gui: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/up9xm In adolescents' everyday lives, critical moments for social and physiological well-being include sleep, school, time with friends, meals,… -- smartphones are often constant companions. Is that "problematic"? Instead of imposing an addiction frame, the new pervasiveness scale (Smartphone Pervasiveness Scale for adolescents … Continue reading Smartphone Use and Academic Performance: A Pervasiveness Approach Beyond Addiction

Journals for Open Media and Communication Research

If you’re looking for a journal that supports open science in communication and media research through open access, registered reports etc., we started a list. View and comment on the latest version here or download a static PDF here. Open media and communication research has many more aspects – see, for example, this summary by … Continue reading Journals for Open Media and Communication Research