Rethinking Mobile Media Use

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Emmer
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2022 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495764524

Media use is a core concept in communication science, and its measurement has become increasingly complex with the dissemination of the Internet and the beginning of the smartphone era in 2007. Today, numerous media-related activities can be carried out anytime and anywhere with just one device. As a result of their integration into everyday life, media applications on smartphones, for example, are often used very briefly but very frequently and only with short interruptions. Such developments render the measurement of smartphone use with classic measurement methods - usually selfreported frequency and duration in surveys - imprecise and incomplete as compared to more objective, technical measurement instruments. In this research project, a new conceptualization of smartphone use will be developed, which, in addition to frequency and duration, takes into account other dimensions that are significantly linked to the mediality of the smartphone and its multifunctionality, frequent use and flexible applicability: gratification diversity, degree of habitualization and contextual diversity. The specific usage patterns of the device have also led to the media effect Entrapment which describes the user’s feeling of expecting constantavailability. This specific effect will be used as an example for analysis in the course of the project. Second, in the context of a quantitative, empirical study, an app will be developed and tested which allows for the use of two advanced survey methods, tracking and the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), in addition to a classic survey for testing the new conceptualization. The aim is to investigate whether these new survey methods can add value concerning the variables of media use as compared to the survey method. This will be tested in the context of examining whether the three dimensions of smartphone use can add explanatory power to measuring the phenomenon of entrapment. The project aims for proposals for a preferably standardized method for measuring media use, which will improve its validity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants