Research Reports from the World Internet Project – Switzerland 2021: Covid-19 and Digitization Push

95 percent of the Swiss population use the internet in 2021. Among those under 70, it is almost 100 percent. 86 percent of the total population also use mobile internet in 2021, which is more than four times as many as ten years ago. Internet usage time doubled between 2011 and 2019 to 3.5 hours … Continue reading Research Reports from the World Internet Project – Switzerland 2021: Covid-19 and Digitization Push

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