Meerdere schermen in de huiskamer: een onderzoek naar simultaan mediagebruik

Today’s (home) media environment is becoming increasingly saturated. Smartphones, tablets and laptops enter our living rooms and possibly alter our television viewing experience. In this paper, we want to grasp to what extent the use and role of television changes in the presence of multiple mobile media technologies. Through a multi-method approach we explore TV viewing behavior in a media-rich living room. Survey results indicate that the ownership of multiple media technologies in the home environment promotes their use whilst watching television. In addition, in-depth interviews reveal that in these media-rich living rooms media consumption becomes both more individualized and more social. According to the interviewees, social interaction within the living room has not decreased, but rather complemented with online conversations. These conversations can be in accordance (or congruent) with television content, but most of the time they are unrelated (or incongruent)

Social network profiles as information sources for adolescents' offline relations

This paper presents the results of a study concerning the use of online profile pages by adolescents to know more about “offline” friends and acquaintances. Previous research has indicated that social networking sites (SNSs) are used to gather information on new online contacts. However, several studies have demonstrated a substantial overlap between offline and online social networks. Hence, we question whether online connections are meaningful in gathering information on offline friends and acquaintances. First, the results indicate that a combination of passive uncertainty reduction (monitoring a target’s profile) and interactive uncertainty reduction (communication through the target’s profile) explains a considerable amount of variance in the level of uncertainty about both friends and acquaintances. More specifically, adolescents generally get to know much more about their acquaintances. Second, the results of online uncertainty reduction positively affect the degree of self-disclosure, which is imperative in building a solid friend relation. Furthermore, we find that uncertainty reduction strategies positively mediate the effect of social anxiety on the level of certainty about friends. This implies that socially anxious teenagers benefit from SNSs by getting the conditions right to build a more solid relation with their friends. Hence, we conclude that SNSs play a substantial role in today’s adolescents’ everyday interpersonal communication

Technological convergence in audiovisual media technologies

This paper presents the results of a large-scale survey on viewing practices. Data from over 10,000 cases are used to explore the adoption-use diffusion gap and the correlation structures in the frequencies of the use of multiple channels (e.g. linear television, download, Vod) on multiple devices. The results show that although a lot of devices capable of audiovisual playback are adopted, few (only computers) of them are used to consume television content. Furthermore, in terms of viewing frequencies, the data suggest spill over effects of using multiple devices, rather than a displacement. Finally, it shows there is a stable tendency to use multiple delivery channels within devices, rather than forming a pattern between devices. That is, channels usage frequencies are correlated within devices, rather than scattered among devices

Adolescents' privacy on social network sites: an investigation of predictors of privacy protection behavior

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Why girls play digital games: an empirical study into the relations between gender, motivations and genre

In recent years, several studies have explored the motivations for playing different game genres such as MMO (Yee, 2006a, 2006b) and FPS (Jansz & Tanis, 2007). Others have taken steps towards creating an integrated framework for use across genres (Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, & Lachlan, 2006). Despite the strong gender bias of the game industry, however, none of these studies have tackled the issue of gender differences in motivations. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the relation between genres and gamer motivations. For this we draw upon a sample of 983 gamers recruited on online forums to fill out an online survey. On average, the respondents were 23.94 years old (SD = 6.43) and 37% were female. By means of a principal component analysis (PCA) on 23 Likert items, we distinguish between five motivation components: immersion, social contact, challenge, competition and control. Analysis reveals that women have consistently lower motivation scores than men, with a Cohen's d ranging from -.40 for competition to -.99 for social contact. This indicates that women are generally less strongly motivated to play digital games. The picture becomes more complex, however, when we look at playing frequency and differences between game genres. Again using linear PCA, frequency measures of playing 22 different game genres are reduced to five general components: casual games (e.g. puzzle games, board games), heavy action games (e.g. shooters, role-playing games), light action games (e.g. platform games, party games), management games (e.g. strategy games, simulation games) and sports games (e.g. football and racing games). Except for light action, gender effects are found for all game genre components. This shows that female gamers play casual games more often (d = .66), while male gamers spend more time on heavy action, sports and management games (d ranging from -.42 to -1.18). Next, gaming frequency components are regressed on gender, age, gender*age, game motivation and game motivation*gender. Casual gaming is explained by gender (positive effect), challenge and immersion with immersion being a stronger predictor for females. For heavy action gaming: gender (positive effect for males), challenge, social contact and immersion are positive predictors. Again, interaction effects are found as women share stronger effects for these motivations. Concerning light action gaming, a positive prediction is found for females, social contact, and immersion. Once more, immersion yields a stronger effect for females. Management games' frequency is, apart from gender (positive effect for males), positively predicted by social contact and competition. Furthermore, challenge and immersion interact with gender, marking a strong effect of these motivations for females. Finally, no effect of gender is found on the frequency of playing sports games whereas all five motivations yield significant predictions. Except for competition, these predictions are all positive. Again, an interaction of gender with immersion is found, indicating a stronger effect for females. These results indicate that gender as well as motivations can be used to predict genre preferences. Remarkable, however, is that the interactions between gender and motivations consistently show stronger effects for females. This indicates that women who game more frequently are, in comparison, more strongly motivated than their male counterparts. A possible explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the existing stereotype that digital games are ‘boys’ toys’. Consequently, we hypothesize that females are confronted with a higher threshold to engage in video gaming. In other words, their motivation for playing digital games needs to be stronger than their belief that gaming is for men, hence the relatively higher motivational scores for high-frequency female gamers. Next, we look into inter- and intra-gender differences in attitudes towards gaming which confirm this. There are consistent differences between low-frequency gamers, who game less than once a week, and high-frequency gamers, who game at least once a week. Low-frequency gamers generally have a more negative attitude towards gaming than high-frequency gamers. When including gender, however, we notice that these differences are consistently larger for women than for men. This suggests that low-frequency female gamers tend to support the current stereotype of gaming being for males whereas high-frequency female gamers resist this belief strongly. Thus high-frequency female gamers have a relatively more outspoken positive attitude towards gaming than males which corroborates our hypothesis that female gamers face a higher threshold to becoming a gamer than men which in turn explains the stronger interaction effect of gender on the motivational dimensions. References Jansz, J., & Tanis, M. (2007). Appeal of playing online first person shooter games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(1), 133-136. Sherry, J., Lucas, K., Greenberg, B., & Lachlan, K. (2006). Video game uses and gratifications as predictors of use and game preference. Playing video games. Motives, responses, and consequences, 213-224. Yee, N. (2006a). Motivations for play in online games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(6), 772-775. Yee, N. (2006b). The psychology of massively multi-user online role-playing games: Motivations, emotional investment, relationships and problematic usage. In R. Schroeder & A. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at work and play: Collaboration and interaction in shared virtual environments (pp. 187–208)

Teenage uploaders on YouTube: networked public expectancies, online feedback preference, and received on-platform feedback

This article focuses on teenage YouTube uploaders' networked public expectancies when posting a video. These expectancies allow uploaders to cope temporarily with the uncertainty of who exactly will view their video. The results indicate that teenage uploaders strongly expect viewers that are situated close to them in both geographic and socio-demographic terms. Furthermore, we discuss the uncertainty-reducing properties of online feedback. We propose that different types of online feedback are preferred to verify the prior networked public expectancies. An effect of the identified online public expectancy (viewers with a similar interest/activity) is found for the importance of feedback both on the platform (e.g., views, comments) and off the platform (e.g., interaction on a social-network site). The identified offline public expectancy (friends/family) affects the importance attributed to off-platform feedback. Surprisingly, no effect of the unidentified online public expectancy (the general public) was found on on-platform feedback. This finding, in conjunction with the low expectancy of this group, raises the question of whether teenagers either cannot conceive this ambiguous mass public, or, if their expectancies are accurate, whether they are aware of the fact that only a small fraction of the videos on YouTube reach notable popularity. Therefore, in a second study, we test the accuracy of the online networked public expectancies by testing their effects on the longitudinal growth of actual feedback (views, comments, and rates). The results provide modest evidence that teenage uploaders have accurate online public expectancies

Towards a Serious Game Experience Model: Validation, Extension and Adaptation of the GEQ for Use in an Educational Context

In this paper, we present the results of game experience measurements of three design stages of the serious game Poverty Is Not a Game (PING) using the FUGA Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) extended with a Perceived Learning (PL) module. It is hypothesized that subsequent design stages will evoke a more positive game experience and higher PL. In a first step the factor structure and convergent and discriminant validity of the existing GEQ modules are tested yielding disappointing results. Next an adapted version is proposed yielding more acceptable results. Based on this model the different design stages are compared failing to yield significant differences either for most GEQ dimensions (except for challenge and competence which is probably related to usability issues) or for PL. Significant differences were found between classrooms however pointing to the importance of taking into account context in future research

An evaluation of the potential of Web 2.0 API's for social research

Web 2.0 not only changed the role of internet users (from consumer to prosumer or produser), it also changed the architecture and structure of websites. New scripting languages such as Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), new software architectures such as REST (Representational State Transfer) and API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) as gateways, short-circuited the submit/response loop that dominated web pages until recently, making data easier to share, verify and re-use. Nowadays, (amateur) programmers, web developers, creators of third-party applications and scientists can access Web 2.0 sites through API’s - sets of rules and specifications for interacting with websites - as if they were data servers with multiple front ends. This paper presents a reflection on the potential of these API‘s as exclusive or additional data resources for research into the practices of internet users. A literature review is presented that critically summarises articles using the Flickr or YouTube API for online audience research. We especially focus on how the use of Web 2.0 affordances (such as tagging, rating or commenting) can be investigated. Although we distinguish a wide variety of research threads (e.g. on the features of the network structure, the user sessions or on the folksonomy and tagging system) we notice that little is known about the predominant practices of ‘ordinary’ Web 2.0 users. Furthermore, results are difficult to compare because of website specific features. We also conclude that research combining API data with qualitative or quantitative data gathered through surveys or interviews is rather sparse