Back to school! Fall 2013

A new school year has started again, and I am back to the daily routine of teaching, writing, and research. Updated in that order, then:

Teaching
This fall in September and October I am teaching Essentials of Media Psychology to the incoming group of MA students in the Media Psychology track in Communication at the VU. Students are very keen on learning about and discussing all aspects of media psychology, and I am looking forward to posting the results from some new assignments we have planned this term.S Should be quite fun!

Writing
So many special issues and deadlines coming up! Journal of Communication is asking for entertainment-centered pieces on media psychology, and Comm Monographs, Journal of Media Psych, and Comm methods and measures all have calls out for media neuroscience papers in 2014. Not to mention the upcoming deadlines for Etmaal and ICA (annual comm conferences) that hit in October and November, respectively. Plus I got some good news on several papers currently under review. Nothing worth updating about yet, but things are in progress. Moving along, even. Hope to be able to share more soon.

Research
Two great initiatives start this fall:
The Network Institute project “SIRUP: Enhancing Serendipity In Recommendations via User Perceptions” with myself, Tilo Hartmann, Gerard Steen (VU L&C), Lora Aroyo (VU CS), Valentina Maccatrozzo (VU CS), & Paul Groth (VU CS) starts in October. We will be examining TV and film recommendations from three discrete research positions (Comm Science, Computer Science, and Language) to isolate factors enhancing serendipitous positive encounters with online recommendation systems.

My collaboration with Mobi game (http://van5naar4.nl/) a mobility game designed to decrease CO2 emissions and increase green commuting will continue. Mobi will launch in 6 European countries, starting in October. An overview of some of my (and Christian Burgers’) research on this project can be found here.

I have a few other data collections planned: A follow up to a NCA paper with Matt Grizzard on terror management and group identification in media, some ego-depletion studies following up on our JoC paper with Leonard Reinecke and Tilo Hartmann, and a narrative transportation and visualization study that should be pretty cool (if it works out) with Tim Smits.

I will also be trying to update this blog more regularly, so won’t need to make update posts like these 🙂 But one has to start somewhere! Enjoy your first week back and see you next week.