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Abstract: Exposure to mass media in today’s world is metaphorically starting to equal the process of breathing air; scrolling through social media has become a part of everyday routine, and students use their smartphones for lengthy durations and for a variety of chores that stem from responsibilities as well as from their hobbies. The aim of this master's thesis is to offer an insight into the possibility of integrating TikTok and English language education, as perceived by Slovene students in the third triennium of primary school. We employed a questionnaire to explore the opinions of students (grades 7 – 9) in the Podravje region. The results revealed that students are loyal users of the app, on which they encounter English content to a greater extent and share a good understanding of the language. They recognize TikTok’s potential for improving different language skills (predominantly speaking), and are familiar with English teaching channels on the app. The results portray a moderate preference for using TikTok in the ELT classroom, mostly due to inexperience and linking social media solely to leisure time. Teachers should at least consider incorporating TikTok in accordance with their students’ needs and preferences or share advice on finding valuable resources on the platform.
Keywords: ICT, social media, English language learning, extramural activities, language skills
Published in DKUM: 04.10.2024; Views: 0; Downloads: 5
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Abstract: With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media became one of the most utilized sources of information relating to the disease. With the increased reliance on social media, the risk of excessive use and the development of social media addiction emerges. The aim of the present study was to explore the psychometric properties of the Slovenian version of the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, and to explore how psychological resilience affects social media addiction symptoms directly and indirectly through symptoms of depression, anxiety and mental distress. A large online cross-sectional study was conducted in March 2021 among Slovenian tertiary students (N = 4868). The results showed the high reliability, unidimensionality and criterion validity of the Slovenian Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale. The proposed structural model fit the data well and showed a significant direct positive effect of depression and stress on social media addiction. Moreover, the majority of the negative effects of psychological resilience on social media addiction (87.2%) were indirect, through depression and stress symptoms, whereas resilience had a significantly smaller impact on social media addiction by reducing anxiety symptoms. The overall prevalence of social media addiction symptoms was 4.6%, with females exhibiting higher proportions than men. Additionally, female social media users reported a complete absence of social media addiction symptoms less often compared to males. Future research should further explore the mechanisms behind social media addiction, in order to gain a better understanding of the apparently different risk levels for both genders.
Keywords: social media addiction, behavioral addictions, resilience, validation, Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS), COVID-19
Published in DKUM: 09.07.2024; Views: 128; Downloads: 4
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Abstract: We study collective failures in biologically realistic networks that consist of coupled excitable units. The networks have broad-scale degree distribution, high modularity, and small-world properties, while the excitable dynamics is determined by the paradigmatic FitzHugh–Nagumo model. We consider different coupling strengths, bifurcation distances, and various aging scenarios as potential culprits of collective failure. We find that for intermediate coupling strengths, the network remains globally active the longest if the high-degree nodes are first targets for inactivation. This agrees well with previously published results, which showed that oscillatory networks can be highly fragile to the targeted inactivation of low-degree nodes, especially under weak coupling. However, we also show that the most efficient strategy to enact collective failure does not only non-monotonically depend on the coupling strength, but it also depends on the distance from the bifurcation point to the oscillatory behavior of individual excitable units. Altogether, we provide a comprehensive account of determinants of collective failure in excitable networks, and we hope this will prove useful for better understanding breakdowns in systems that are subject to such dynamics.
Keywords: collective behavior, excitable media, complex network, neuronal dynamics
Published in DKUM: 10.06.2024; Views: 163; Downloads: 16
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Abstract: The recent health crisis and the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence have caused misinformation on social media to flourish by becoming more sophisticated and challenging to detect. This calls upon fact-checking and questions users’ competencies and attitudes when assessing social media news. Our study provides a model of how fact-checking intent is explained by news literacy and news trust to examine how users behave in the misinformation-prone social media environment. Structural equation modeling was used to examine survey data gathered from social media users. The findings revealed that users’ intent to fact-check information in social media news is explained by (1) news literacy, such as the awareness of various techniques used by creators to depict situations about COVID-19; (2) news trust, in terms of the conviction that the news contains all the essential facts; and (3) intent, such as an aim to check information in multiple pieces of news. The presented findings may aid policymakers and practitioners in developing efficient communication strategies for addressing users less prone to fact-checking. Our contribution offers a new understanding of news literacy as a sufficient tool for combating misinformation, which actively equips users with knowledge and an attitude for social media news fact-checking.
Keywords: fact-checking, news literacy, trust, social media, misinformaiton, fake news, pandemic, health crisis
Published in DKUM: 04.06.2024; Views: 161; Downloads: 8
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Abstract: The rapid spread of the English language, which is frequently referred to as a lingua franca, has had a significant impact on other languages and the peculiar language of computer-mediated communication. What is more, the Internet, social media and digital influencers are the key agents of both language change and changes in the modern society. Due to the globally growing popularity of social media influencers, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the ways in which their language use is affected by the globality of English, with a focus on Croatian influencers. Therefore, data for this paper are drawn from altogether 270 social media posts published by the eight most successful Croatian influencers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. The research methods include linguistic, thematic and content analysis. The results reveal that the use of ‘ad hoc loanwords’ and intra-sentential code-switching are more common among Croatian influencers in comparison with outdated Anglicisms and inter-sentential code-switching. While the most frequently used loanwords among Croatian influencers belong to the categories of cyberculture and popular culture, the use of loanwords belonging to particular semantic fields is not strongly related to their thematic content categories. The importance and originality of this thesis are that it is the first study to provide new insights into the language use of Croatian influencers in relation with English as a global and leading online language. However, due to practical constraints, it is limited in terms of the research sample size and generalizability, which offers implications for further research.
Keywords: English as a global language, influence of English on Croatian, Croatian social media influencers, computer-mediated communication, loanwords, code-switching
Published in DKUM: 04.01.2024; Views: 544; Downloads: 53
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