Screen Media Research Articles

Technology and Media Use in Preschool Classrooms: Prevalence, Purposes, and Contexts

Although the amount of time that preschoolers spend with screen media at home is continuing to increase, less is known about the types of media experiences children are having in preschool settings. Furthermore, little research has investigated the purposes for which preschool teachers use technology and media in the classroom and the contexts in which such use occurs. The current study addresses that gap by providing a nuanced picture of technology and media use in preschool classrooms. Lead teachers were recruited via email lists of educators who participated in previous studies or expressed interest in receiving communication from our research group. Participants (N = 312, 98.6% female; Mage = 43.9 years) all taught preschool-age children. Participants were first asked to check which of four devices they used with children in their classroom (tablet, smartphone, computer, television). If participants responded that they used each device, they were asked how often. Survey items also assessed (1) Purposes: how often teachers used each device for instructional purposes (e.g., teaching new material, practicing material) and non-instructional purposes (e.g., entertainment, as a reward), and (2) Context: how often teachers used devices for both teacher-supported and non-teacher-supported activities. Results indicated that tablet and computer use were most common, whereas smartphone and television use were less prevalent. Teachers reported most frequently using tablets, computers, and smartphones for instructional purposes. Television was most frequently used for entertainment. Tablets and smartphones were most frequently used in teacher-supported individual contexts, whereas computers were most frequently used in teacher-supported whole group contexts. Latent class analysis showed five classes of classroom technology and media use: tablet and computer users, tablet only users, low technology users, computer for teacher-supported instruction users, and television only users. Finally, we determined that these classes were predicted by program funding (publicly- or privately-funded), teacher experience, and teacher education.

EventEpi-A natural language processing framework for event-based surveillance.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 60% of all outbreaks are detected using informal sources. In many public health institutes, including the WHO and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), dedicated groups of public health agents sift through numerous articles and newsletters to detect relevant events. This media screening is one important part of event-based surveillance (EBS). Reading the articles, discussing their relevance, and putting key information into a database is a time-consuming process. To support EBS, but also to gain insights into what makes an article and the event it describes relevant, we developed a natural language processing framework for automated information extraction and relevance scoring. First, we scraped relevant sources for EBS as done at the RKI (WHO Disease Outbreak News and ProMED) and automatically extracted the articles' key data: disease, country, date, and confirmed-case count. For this, we performed named entity recognition in two steps: EpiTator, an open-source epidemiological annotation tool, suggested many different possibilities for each. We extracted the key country and disease using a heuristic with good results. We trained a naive Bayes classifier to find the key date and confirmed-case count, using the RKI's EBS database as labels which performed modestly. Then, for relevance scoring, we defined two classes to which any article might belong: The article is relevant if it is in the EBS database and irrelevant otherwise. We compared the performance of different classifiers, using bag-of-words, document and word embeddings. The best classifier, a logistic regression, achieved a sensitivity of 0.82 and an index balanced accuracy of 0.61. Finally, we integrated these functionalities into a web application called EventEpi where relevant sources are automatically analyzed and put into a database. The user can also provide any URL or text, that will be analyzed in the same way and added to the database. Each of these steps could be improved, in particular with larger labeled datasets and fine-tuning of the learning algorithms. The overall framework, however, works already well and can be used in production, promising improvements in EBS. The source code and data are publicly available under open licenses.

Parents’ Views on Young Children’s Distance Learning and Screen Time During COVID-19 Class Suspension in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This study explored parents’ views on kindergarten and primary school students’ distance learning experience and support needed as well as the amount of time children spend on screen media at home during COVID-19 class suspension. Between February 19 and 22, 2020, three weeks after classes were suspended in Hong Kong, responses from 6,702 parents (93% mothers) of kindergarten students and primary school students were collected via an online survey. Research Findings: Three major findings emerged: (a) Most children encountered difficulties in completing distance learning tasks at home, with major difficulties being children’s lack of learning interests and home environment related limitations. Most children were not able to complete the learning tasks independently; (b) More parents without online learning were dissatisfied with distance learning during class suspension than those with online learning. Parents wanted more interactive online learning to facilitate children’s learning during class suspension and desired better learning support from schools, flexible work arrangements, and government subsidies; (c) There was a high usage of electronic devices without parental mediation during class suspension. Practice or Policy: Together, the findings have important policy and pedagogical implications for delivering a distance learning curriculum and working with families during class suspension. The findings also suggest the need for schools to work on a balance of types of learning during class suspension by introducing diversified on- and off-line activities as well as supporting parents in navigating children’s screen time.

Strategies for More Effective Six-Second Video Advertisements

<h3>ABSTRACT</h3> Six-second advertisements are a recent advertising format growing in popularity. Despite their growth, little insight exists on how to craft successful six-second advertisements. The format presents challenges to advertisers because of its brevity, which limits what can be shown and conveyed. The current study develops an understanding of how six-second advertisements can be made more effective by leveraging research in advertising and screen media as well as analyzing data drawn from an agency dataset, popular press articles, social media, and interviews. The authors detail several immediately actionable strategies that can be used to improve the effectiveness of six-second advertisements.

Screening of Effective Media for Black Soldier Fly Larvae Used in Food Waste Treatment

Objectives : Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) are organisms that effectively decompose various types of organic waste including food waste, and food waste treatment using BSFL is attracting attention as a sustainable waste treatment method. However, food waste discharged from Korea has a wide variety of properties, and its high salt concentration limits its treatment by BSFL. Therefore, to increase the efficiency of food waste treatment using BSFL, it is necessary to increase the quality of food waste as a production medium for BSFL. In this study, the ratio of protein and fat was adjusted by adding bean sprouts and wheat brans to food wastes treated at high temperature under vacuum, and whether such medium is suitable for rearing BSFL was investigated.Methods : To improve the medium, the ratio of protein and fat was adjusted to approximately 2:1 by adding bean sprouts and bran residue to food waste. Subsequently, the growth and development rate of BSFL reared on chicken feed, food waste, food waste + bean sprouts, food waste + wheat bran were measured. Also, the decomposition rate of each medium was analyzed.Results and Discussion : The growth rate of BSFL grown on food waste + wheat bran medium was similar to that of BSFL reared on chicken feed. The speed of development at day 7 was also the fastest for BSFL reared with food waste + wheat bran medium and chicken feed. These results suggest that the mixed medium to which wheat bran has been added to food waste has the potential to be used as a commercial medium for BSFL production. The survival rate of BSFL was 89% or higher in all media.Conclusions : When food waste was used alone, BSFL development was poor compared to that in media combined with agricultural by-products such as bean sprouts and wheat bran. Therefore, to use food waste as a rearing medium of BSFL, it is necessary to adjust the ratio of protein and fat by adding various agricultural by-products and reduce salinity. For the improvement of food waste treatment technology using BSFL, mass rearing of useful insects such as BSFL, and promotion of the use of agricultural by-products, additional research is needed to optimize the composition of rearing medium based on food waste.

What’s outside the learning box? Resisting traditional forms of learning and assessment with the video essay: a dialogue between screen media & education

ABSTRACT This article explores how the video essay can be part of a radical pedagogy in the arts and humanities. Written as a dialogue between a screen studies educationalist and a researcher in contemporary education theory, the article examines the different ways that the video essay can be argued to reframe and resist dominant forms of pedagogy. Drawing on small-scale empirical research with a cohort of third year undergraduates at Deakin University, each of the authors read the data through a specific lens: Sean looks to the ideas and themes of radical pedagogy; and Jo draws upon contemporary assessment research. While the article starts from their different positions, it comes together to recognise their shared belief in learning and assessment that thinks and creates outside the box.

Relationship between SES and preschoolers’ sociality: the mediating effect of household screen media experience

ABSTRACT This study tested potential mediating effects of household screen media experience (HSME) on the relationship between SES and six aspects of preschooler’s sociality: social cognition, independence, aggression, social adaptivity, peer relationship and emotional control. A total of 471 parents of 3- to 6-year-old children completed an online questionnaire on SES, household screen media experience and social behaviours of children. Our results revealed that the effects of SES on Social Cognition, Independence and Aggression were partly mediated by HSME. Specifically, higher SES predicted lower HSME scores, which predicted better Social Cognition, higher Independence and lower Aggression. HSME did not appear to mediate the effects of SES on Social Adaptivity, Peer Relationship, and Emotional Control. This study affords novel insights into the role of screen use in children’s sociality development.

Screen use relates to decreased offline enrichment activities.

The displacement hypothesis1 states that screen media use displaces learning opportunities for children to practice developmental skills (e.g., talking, walking, drawing), as well as caregiver interactions and other enriching offline activities (e.g., reading), which in turn leads to delays in developmental skill acquisition. In line with this hypothesis, support has been found for the association between higher levels of screen media and poorer developmental skills,2,3 as well as decreased physical activity and sleep;4 yet, little research has examined the association between screen use and other learning-based activities that occur within the family system.

The Electronic Media Fast and Student Well-Being: An Exercise in Transformational Teaching

Introduction: In the past decade, use of screen media has increased dramatically among young adults. Statement of Problem: Mounting evidence suggests that high levels of media use are associated with a range of negative psychological outcomes. Literature Review: We present instructions for a four-day electronic media fast assigned in a course module on positive psychology. Drawing from student accounts and direct classroom observations, we illustrate student experiences that suggest substantial positive changes in learning, media habits, and well-being. Teaching Implications: An electronic media fast is an easily implemented class assignment which enables students to reflect on their media use and make adjustments to support their learning and well-being. It is appropriate for use in a range of undergraduate psychology courses including introductory psychology, social psychology, psychology of adolescence, and positive psychology. Conclusion: When undertaken with a flexible, sensitive, and collaborative approach, a media fast can be a powerfully transformative learning experience.

The Relationships between Screen Use and Health Indicators among Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review.

Evidence suggests that excessive screen time in early childhood is related to children’s physical and mental health. This study aimed to review the relationships between screen media use and several health indicators in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. A systematic search was conducted by two independent reviewers on PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library to identify the eligible studies, with an end date of 13 August 2019. Included studies (published in English) were peer-reviewed and met the determinate population (children aged 0–7 years with screen media exposure and related health outcomes). The AHRQ, NOS, and the Cochrane Handbook were used to evaluate the cross-sectional study, cohort study, and RCT, respectively. A meta-analysis and narrative syntheses were employed separately. Eighty studies (23 studies for meta-analysis) met the inclusion criteria for the systematic review. Strong evidence of the meta-analysis suggested that excessive screen time was associated with overweight/obesity and shorter sleep duration among toddlers and preschoolers. Excessive screen use was associated with various health indicators in physical, behavioral, and psychosocial aspects. Better-quality research on newer media devices, on various kinds of contents in young children, and on dose–response relationships between excessive screen use and health indicators are needed to update recommendations of screen use.

Screening Job Candidates With Social Media

With the proliferation of social media, job candidate screening and evaluation professionals have new avenues to gather information regarding job candidates. Job candidates recognize that recruiters will examine their social media, and tailor their profiles to foster a positive impression. However, recent popular press news suggests that some employers are taking social media screening to more invasive levels. This study seeks to evaluate how job candidates respond to social media screening from recruiters. Using a scenario-based experiment with 290 subjects, the authors tested relationships between candidate characteristics and trust in the recruiter as well as hesitancy to accept an offer. This research found that under all conditions, trust reduces hesitancy to accept the offer and that age reduces trust in the company. Further, this article found differences in the relationships between privacy protection competence, social media production and trusting stance on trust in the company based on the level of social media screening.

Sleep, screen time and behaviour problems in preschool children: an actigraphy study.

Inadequate sleep and excessive exposure to media screens have both been linked to poorer mental health in youth. However, the ways in which these interact to predict behaviour problems have yet to be examined using objective sleep measurement. The lack of objective evidence for these relationships in young children has recently been defined by the World Health Organization (2019) as a gap in the field. We thus aimed to test the interacting effects of screen exposure and objectively measured sleep on behaviour problems in the preschool age. A total of 145 children aged 3-to-6-years participated in this cross-sectional study. Sleep was assessed objectively using actigraphy for 1-week, and subjectively using parent-reported daily sleep diaries. Parents reported the child's daily duration of screen exposure, and completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Results showed that actigraphic sleep duration, timing and efficiency were associated with screen exposure. The link between screen time and behaviour problems was moderated by sleep duration, as it was significant only for children with sleep duration of 9.88h or less per night. Sleep duration also moderated the relation between screen time and externalizing-but not internalizing-problems. Hence, the combination of increased screen exposure and decreased sleep duration may be particularly adverse for child mental health. While these key relationships should be further examined in longitudinal and experimental investigations, our findings shed light on their complexity, underscoring the importance of the moderating role of sleep.

Consumption of Fruits, Vegetables, and Nuts Can Be Increased When Multitasking with Screen Devices

ABSTRACT Past research shows that people overconsume energy-dense, nutrient-poor (EDNP) foods when they are not paying attention to environmental cues that encourage consumption. Very little is known about the mindless consumption of nutritious foods (herein referred to as preferred foods). Using dual-processing, limited capacity, and mood management models and theories, this study explored whether people misreport the selection of preferred and EDNP foods under differing levels of distraction created by screen media device use. Participants freely grazed on EDNP and preferred snacks while either watching TV (one screen) or multitasking with two or three screens (TV, iPod, laptop computer). Participants under-reported the number of preferred foods they selected for consumption in the three-screen multitasking conditions more than in one- and two-screen conditions. They under-reported the selection of preferred snacks more than EDNP snacks in the three-screen conditions. The under-reporting of snack selection was greater in one three-screen condition (TV+texting+online shopping) (which was evaluated as highly arousing and pleasant), than in the other three-screen condition (TV+texting+online reading) (which was rated as highly arousing but less pleasant). Compared to participants with weaker health beliefs, those with stronger beliefs about healthy lifestyle said they were more rational in selecting preferred snacks. Findings show that people sometimes eat greater amounts of preferred foods than they realize, when they are multitasking with screen devices. By surrounding oneself with snack-size fruits, vegetables, and nuts in multitasking situations, mindless eating could be a powerful nudge to facilitate greater consumption of preferred foods to combat health concerns.

Mind-Craft: Exploring the Effect of Digital Visual Experience on Changes to Orientation Sensitivity in Visual Contour Perception.

Visual perception depends fundamentally on statistical regularities in the environment to make sense of the world. One such regularity is the orientation anisotropy typical of natural scenes; most natural scenes contain slightly more canonical (horizontal and vertical) information than oblique information. This property is likely a primary cause of the oblique effect in which subjects experience greater perceptual fluency with horizontally and vertically oriented content than oblique. Recent changes in the visual environment, including the "carpentered" content in urban scenes and the framed, caricatured content in digital screen media presentations, may have altered the typical (natural) level of orientation anisotropy. The current work evaluated whether digital visual experience, or visual experience with framed digital content, has the potential to alter the magnitude of the oblique effect in visual perception. Experiment 1 successfully established a novel eye-tracking method capable of indexing the visual oblique effect quickly and reliably and demonstrated the oblique effect. Experiment 2 used this method and found that one session of exposure to a specific video game altered visual orientation perception. Taken together, these results indicate that exposure to the realistic, but caricatured scene statistics of digital screen media, can alter visual contour perception in one session.

Influence of content, events and culture on the public discourse about medical genetics in Switzerland – A quantitative media content analysis

Medical genetics is a broad and expanding field with many important implications for society, but knowledge about media coverage of this topic from recent years is lacking. This study aims to identify topics in medical genetics emerging in print media coverage in Switzerland by quantitatively analysing their occurrence in the public media discourse and assessing culturally conditioned differences between two Swiss language regions. We conducted a quantitative media content screening of print media and news agencies in the German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland, and eight topics were identified. They demonstrate the large variety of topics in medical genetics present in public discourse. Coverage was dominated by legislative voting on genetics issues and by the preventive surgeries of the Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie. We found only small differences between the language regions, and coverage was strikingly similar for most variables.

Microcosmic retaining mechanism and behavior of screen media with highly argillaceous fine sand from natural gas hydrate reservoir

The formation sands of natural gas hydrate (NGH) reservoirs in the South China Sea are fine silty sands with a high content of clay, and it is difficult to be controlled effectively. We carried out a series of experiments to investigate the microcosmic retaining and plugging behavior of screen media with highly argillaceous fine sand samples, with median size of 10.13 μm. The screen sand-retention media and joint involved four types with slot width or accuracy of 20–60 μm. The screen media/joint sample was placed in the linear/radial flowing apparatus, and then the mixture of gas, water and sand were displaced flowing into the media to simulate the sand retaining process. The Microscopic imaging system was used to visually observe the dynamics of sand particle deposition and plugging inside the media as well as on its surface. The plugging permeability and the amount of the passed sand were also analyzed. According to the result, three microcosmic mechanisms of sand retaining and plugging were proposed, concerning fine sand invading and coarse sand bridge, partial sand block, and integrated sand bridge. The plugging permeability performance of screen media generally shows three stages of slow decreasing, rapid increasing and balance. At the balance stage of displacement, the plugging permeability of media sample mostly decreases more than 90%. During the whole test, the sand passing rate tends to slow down gradually, and the final retained sand ratio were more than 85%. Different configurations of sand retraining test show a little difference in plugging performance, depending on the factors of medium type, accuracy, sand characteristics, and flow conditions. Based on the effect of sand retaining and final flow ability observed in these experiments, the sand control in NGH reservoirs with highly argillaceous fine sands is practicable.

Interactional theory of childhood problematic media use.

The growth of mobile device access and ownership has yielded many opportunities and challenges for raising healthy digital media consumers. As adoption of mobile and internet-connected devices has increased among children, concerns for healthy child development have been expressed regarding excessive or problematic use. Although much theoretical and empirical work has been conducted evaluating adolescents' and adults' risks for dependence on various screen media (e.g., Gaming Disorder, Internet Addiction), little theoretical consideration has been expounded regarding the etiology and maintenance of problematic media use earlier in childhood (i.e., under age 12 years). The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework through which to investigate problematic media use in early childhood. Our theory, the Interactional Theory of Childhood Problematic Media Use (IT-CPU) merges developmental and clinical psychology theories, with communication and human-computer interaction perspectives. We outline distal and proximal factors that we hypothesize contribute to the development of problematic media use in childhood, and emphasize maintaining factors that could be targets for intervention. Finally, we provide recommendations for an interdisciplinary research agenda to test our proposed theory and inform experimental trials to prevent and treat childhood problematic media use.

Screen Media Use in Pediatrics: A QI Project to Promote Behavioral Change (Abstract)

Screen Media Use in Pediatrics: A QI Project to Promote Behavioral Change (Abstract)

Screen Media Use in Pediatrics: A QI Project to Promote Behavioral Change

Screen Media Use in Pediatrics: A QI Project to Promote Behavioral Change

디지털 이미지의 텍스처 사용 특성 변화에 대한 연구 – 스크린 기반의 일러스트레이션을 중심으로

디지털 이미지의 텍스처 사용 특성 변화에 대한 연구 – 스크린 기반의 일러스트레이션을 중심으로