VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience
Hamburg (ots)
The one-year research project “Digital Resilience in Media Use” by the VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience in cooperation with the Word & Picture Publisher examines the health and social consequences of digital media use and their outstanding importance for social cohesion.
In their final report “How resilient are we in the network?” emphasize the two study directors Dr. Leif Kramp (ZeMKI, University of Bremen) and Dr. Stephan Weichert (VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience, Hamburg) that, especially in times of crisis and war, it is important to competent handling of digital media to find: “Digital communication and news are more important to the population, especially in times of crisis – the pandemic has massively increased the demand for digital media content. Smartphones and the like make us constantly available – even for stressful crisis news: people are using social media almost non-stop and news apps are confronted with bad news and the comments of other users”so the conclusion of the media experts.
In particular, the media researchers warn of the downside of the increased demand for digital media during crises: Digital consumption and the flood of negative news can affect people “a chronic mental overload” cause – according to one of the central study results. The result: parts of the audience turn away “tired of the news” due to the symptoms of overload, it is a “news fatigue” and in extreme cases a “News Burnout” notice a total exhaustion as a result of too intensive news consumption. “In a permanent state of emergency, when we get from one crisis to the next, both – resilience and digitality – come together.”
“It is important to us to develop and promote individual and societal digital resilience, i.e. an inner resilience that can help people to slip into a more active role.”, says co-director of studies Stephan Weichert. The aim of the study is “To explore how professional media and their audiences escape the maelstrom of stressful media consumption.” The representative survey shows that younger people suffer from the ambivalence of their digital media use and thereby “the risk of emotional exhaustion” rise, says co-director of studies Leif Kramp. At the same time, there is a great desire among the population “To do something against disinformation and hatred on the internet – but exactly what remains unclear.”
“The study results make it clear that many respondents are worried about their future in view of the pandemic, war, inflation and climate change. For us, this shows once again how explosive the topic of resilience is and why we, as a health media house, are increasingly focusing our offers on this”, according to Dr. Dennis Ballwieser, Editor-in-Chief of the pharmacy magazine from Wort & Bild Verlag, cooperation partner of the study. “We are trying to fulfill our duty to provide as many people as possible with practical tips on how to deal better with fears, stress and being overwhelmed.”
In their numerous recommendations developed on the basis of the study, the media experts Kramp and Weichert advise “digital clearing” and recommend, for example, regularly checking screen times and limiting social media use: “In our view, the addictive checking, scrolling and updating of news in news and social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, is by far the biggest time waster caused by the reflexive stimulus-response principle most likely to make people sick”, according to Weichert. Other methods and assistance that can be found in the illustrated handouts of the 38-page final report takes place are the regulation of regular media downtime and rest breaks as well Mindfulness exercises in everyday work and an anchor of prevention centers in the workplace.
“Getting through the crisis more calmly means training your own self-efficacy in dealing with digital media and thereby helping the audience to have a more active framework for action.”, says Leif Kramp. The study provides empirical plausibility as to why the accumulation of crises and the associated, sometimes highly emotional media use are increasingly seen as a task for society as a whole. “Our urgent appeal is to develop new holistic approaches, methods and tools to increase resilience in the face of digital addiction behavior, depression and news avoidance. Because this challenge is about nothing less than the vulnerability of society – and thus the resilience of our democracy.”is the conclusion of the final report “How resilient are we in the network?”.
The final report is available free of charge at www.digitale-resilienz.org.
The entire study can be obtained from: [email protected]
Press contact:
dr Stephen Weichert
VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience
+49 170 310 51 38
[email protected]
Original content from: VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience, transmitted by news aktuell