We are looking for a motivated PhD candidate in the social and behavioural sciences with a strong quantitative background for the interdisciplinary project "Adolescents, mixed-reality applications, and trust: Assessing use, effects, and over-time development"
The aim of the project is to explore adolescents' uses, and experiences with, mixed-reality applications and how these affect interpersonal and systemic trust.
The PhD project has an interdisciplinary supervision team consisting of prof. dr. Jochen Peter (Entertainment Communication), dr. Eva van Reijmersdal (Persuasive Communication), dr. Remmert Daas (Educational Sciences) and dr. Helle Larsen (Psychology). The position is embedded in the new research-priority area Youth Digitality of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. You will be a member of the Programme Group Entertainment Communication in the Department of Communication Science. Yet, you are encouraged to join research meetings of Educational Sciences and Psychology as well.
The projectAlthough research on adolescents and social media has been booming, it has largely ignored an important emerging trend in adolescents' use of digital media, the turn toward mixed-reality applications, such as augmented-reality filters and deepfakes. While this development is considered a pressing issue, we know little about adolescents' use of such applications, potential effects and underlying mechanisms, and their possible change over time. Importantly, it is not well understood whether the modification of visual information in mixed-reality applications affects a crucial category in adolescence, interpersonal and systemic trust. To fill this research gap, the proposed PhD project has four goals: first, to explore adolescents' uses, and experiences with, mixed-reality applications; second, to study effects of adolescents' use of mixed-reality applications on interpersonal and systemic trust and to unravel underlying mechanisms; third, to detect the moderating impact of social, developmental, and individual factors; and fourth to advance a longitudinal perspective on adolescents' use of mixed-reality applications and their effects, focusing also on within-person change, and to investigate developmental differences. The four goals are addressed in four studies that rely on cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and an experiment.
The project is one of three projects of the research-priority area Youth Digitality that start in September 2023. These three projects collaborate and obtain their data from a joint cohort study, using Dutch students aged between 10 and 18 years.
What are you going to do?You will:
- complete and defend a PhD thesis within the official appointment duration of four years;
- gain knowledge of the field through literature survey, discussion with team members, and internal research meetings;
- contribute to the design of surveys and experiments;
- plan, organize, and conduct data-collection, analyse and interpret results of surveys and experiments;
- present results at local, national and international scientific meetings;
- work in an ambitious research team and contribute to the vibrant academic life in Amsterdam by attending workshops, meetings, and lectures;
- (assist in) teaching (10% of your time) of BA students.