Five scholarly papers, all produced by members of the JMS Digital/Social Media Research Task Force, were presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference, held in August in Washington D.C.
“The overarching goal of this unique School-wide research program is to gain insights into the processes underlying user involvement with a wide range of digital and social media genre, as well as the outcomes of such involvement,” said Dr. Valerie Barker, task force chair.
The project was conceived by JMS faculty in spring 2012, under the leadership of then-School Director Dr. Diane Borden, to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of uses and consequences of digital and social media.
The five AEJMC conference papers were products of the first round of research, which involved a large-scale telephone survey of a representative sample of almost 1,500 U.S. Internet users, conducted in summer 2012. JMS faculty papers presented at the AEJMC conference included:
- Barker, V., Dozier, D. M., Schmitz Weiss, A., & Borden, D. L. Harnessing peer potency: Predicting positive outcomes from social capital affinity and engagement with participatory websites.
- Barker, V., Dozier, D. M., Schmitz Weiss, A., & Borden, D. L. Facebook friends: Effects of social networking site intensity, social capital affinity, and flow on knowledge-gain.
- Dozier, D. M., Barker, V., Schmitz Weiss, A, & Borden, D. L. Surfing alone: Search engines, flow, and positive outcomes.
- Nee, R., & Dozier, D. M. Incidental learning as a function of complementary simultaneous media use: The mediating role of TV engagement.
- Schmitz Weiss, A., Barker, V., Dozier, D. M., & Borden, D. L. The power of the impulse: The flow of content communities and online news consumption.
A second round of data collection began in September. Six web genres are involved: social networking sites, news organizations, search engines, virtual worlds, multi-player online games, and two-screen use of television and online media.
