Our online behaviour is far from virtual–it extends our offline lives. Much social media research has identified the positive opportunities of using social media; for example, how people use social media to form support groups online, participate in political uprising, raise money for charities, extend teaching and learning outside the classroom, etc. However, mirroring offline experiences, we have also seen social media being used to spread propaganda and misinformation, recruit terrorists, live stream criminal activities, reinforce echo chambers by politicians, and perpetuate hate and oppression (such as racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic behaviour).
THIS IS PART 2 OF THIS WORKSHOP, PLEASE MAKE SURE TO SIGN-UP FOR PART 1.
Workshop Facilitator
Dr. Jeffrey Boase, Associate Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto (Canada)
Workshop Details
The first part of this workshop will review arguments and empirical findings regarding the role of mobile phone use in personal networks. The second part of the workshop will focus on discussing a newly developed multi-method approach to combining mobile calling and texting log data with traditional survey and interview techniques. This approach involves a system in which an online portal is used to customize the actions of a smartphone based data collection application. These actions include the collection of non-identifying calling and texting log data, on-screen survey questions, and dynamically drawing on log data to generate questions and stimuli for use during in-person interviews. After discussing this method we will have a hands-on exercise with the online portal and app. Respondents are encouraged to bring an Android phone to the workshop in order to fully participate in this exercise.
Bio
Dr. Jeffrey Boase is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the relationship between communication technology and personal networks. He is particularly interested in how emerging technologies such as smartphones and social media platforms may enable or hinder the transfer of information and support within personal networks. In recent years he has incorporated digital trace data into his project designs, merging it with more traditional survey and interview data.
