Zoekresultaten

The Void Teletext

Social Media, Distracting or Engaging?

As part of my PhD research, I investigate the factors of student success and the influence of the use of social media by first year students in higher education. For this I use the insights provided by the highly influential and leading integration theory of Tinto and diminished the amount of variables by only using the best predictive ones. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and establishing a more easy to use model for teachers and management. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. Principal component analysis on Facebook usage provided different integration/engagement components, which I coined peer-engagement and knowledge engagement. Both consisted of various purposes of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. To uncover if these latent variables play a significant role in student success or if Facebook is a multi-distracting platform, two models were compared using structural equation modeling with SPSS AMOS; one with and one without the peer-, and knowledge engagement variables. The fit of both models are compared using the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the direct influence and indirect influence of all variables are compared to provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success.

Do Narrative Engagement and Recipients’ Thoughts Explain the Impact of an Entertainment-Education Narrative on Discouraging Binge Drinking?

Previous research suggests that narrative engagement (NE) in entertainment-education (E-E) narratives reduces counterarguing, thereby leading to E-E impact on behavior. It is, however, unclear how different NE processes (narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement, narrative presence) relate to different thought types (negative or positive; about the narrative form or about the target behavior) and to E-E impact. This study explores these relations in the context of alcohol binge drinking (BD). Participants (N = 172) watched an E-E narrative showing negative BD consequences, thereby aiming to discourage BD. The main findings were that the E-E narrative had a positive impact on discouraging BD on almost all assessed BD determinants such as beliefs and attitude. It was shown that attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence were associated with BD-discouraging impact, albeit on different BD-related determinants. No evidence was found that negative thoughts about BD mediated these associations. From this, we conclude that attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence were important for E-E impact but that negative thoughts about BD did not play a role therein. The study’s empirical and practical implications are discussed.

Confessions of a 'guilty' couch potato understanding and using context to optimize binge-watching behavior

Binge-watching serialized video content

Confessions of a 'guilty' couch potato understanding and using context to optimize binge-watching behavior

Viewers more frequently watch television content whenever they want, using devices they prefer, which stimulated 'Binge-watching' (consecutive viewing of television programs). Although binge-watching and health concerns have been studied before, the context in which binge-watching takes place and possibilities to use context to optimize binge-watching behavior have not. An in-situ, smartphone monitoring survey among Dutch binge-watchers was used to reveal context factors related to binge-watching and wellbeing. Results indicate that binge-watching is a solitary activity that occurs in an online socially active context. The amount of time spent binge-watching (number of episodes) correlates with the amount of free time and plays an important role in the effect of binge-watching on emotional wellbeing. Considering the difficulty viewers have to create an optimal viewing experience, these context factors are used as a framework to be able to design and promote a recommendation tool for TV streaming services to create a more optimal binge-watching experience.