PhD Position on (Dis)Engagement-by-design Features in the Context of Digital Overuse

Are you exceptionally interested in science, and specifically in the field of communication research? Is it your ambition to achieve a PhD in Communication Science? The Amsterdam School of Communication Research  (ASCoR ) is the research institute of the Communication Science  department at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences  (FMG) and we are seeking a PhD candidate for a project focused on the impact of social media design features on digital (over)use and well-being. This PhD track is part of the Youth & Media Entertainment programme group.

Are you excited to understand whether it is possible to design social media that are beneficial for the users, and increase instead of decrease well-being? Then this project might be for you. In this project we will look closely at the design features embedded in social media and how these promote engagement and contribute to digital overuse, while at the same time consider if there are design features that could achieve the opposite and improve the social media experience. Moreover, we want to map the prevalence of these design features, their underlying mechanisms, and scope out opportunities for intervention. This project lies at the intersection of several disciplines (e.g., psychology, human-computer interaction, media psychology) and requires a curious, creative and open-minded PhD candidate.

What are you going to do

You will work on three related projects during this PhD project. First, a systematic literature review is needed to improve our understanding of how and through which mechanisms social media design features affect users (Study 1). Second, although these design features are ubiquitous in today’s social media, we lack knowledge on the awareness and acceptance of these design features among the general public. For this reason, you will conduct a survey study among a general audience (Study 2), which will also provide insights in the counter-strategies people already employ to mitigate the engaging nature of social media applications. Finally, you will examine how the removal or adaptation of specific design features can lead to a better social media experience, e.g., higher digital well-being, lower digital overuse (Study 3).

You will/tasks:

• review literature of design features embedded in digital media to increase and decrease engagement;
• develop a theory driven model on the effectiveness of design features;
• create, field and analyse a survey study to assess awareness of design strategies and employment of counterstrategies among a representative sample;
• create, field, and conduct in the wild experiment(s) to test the effectiveness of design strategies and counter strategies as informed by both the literature review and the survey study. These field studies will use an intense longitudinal design and employ the latest digital methods;
• Writing up findings for publications in high-impact scientific journals and presenting them at (inter)national conferences.