Graduate Students Presented Their Research About Digital Trust in August at the Annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference
Mass communications graduate students Kailey Thompson and Payton Pingree presented their research, “Digital Trust Issues! Examining Relational Uncertainty in the Digital Age” last August at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference (AEJMC).
Pingree and Thompson teamed up on the project for their quantitative methods class in which they learned how to effectively use statistics to understand specific communications phenomena.
“We chose a data set that was about dating and interpersonal relationships and centered our research on how digital devices can either help or hinder interpersonal relationships,” Thompson said. “There was a lot of focus on trust, surveillance, snooping on your partner’s devices and exploration of how our digital devices are affecting our interpersonal communications.”
Pingree and Thompson conducted their research using a data set from the PEW Research Center in hopes of finding statistically significant results. “When we did find statistically significant results, that was a big deal and our professor was so excited because it shows that what we were looking into is happening in real life,” Thompson said.
“We found that women were exhibiting more behaviors of uncertainty in their relationships which led them to be more likely to snoop on a partner’s device, stalk an ex on social media or get phone passwords from their partner,” said Pingree.
Thompson shared that she was struck by a realization that digital devices can be used for good or bad, as well as the importance of learning to communicate in other forms. “People who are uncertain in their relationships are using digital tools as a crutch to find out information that they should really be just talking to their partner about,” Thompson said. “From a big picture perspective, it was interesting to see how digital devices have changed romantic relationships and communication within them.”
They were encouraged by their professors to submit their research to the conference. “Payton and I thought that we’d be the last to get in — that was our bit the whole semester; we’d walk in and say ‘you guys have fun at AEJMC in Philly, we’ll be in Provo!’ because we were all applying to the same conference,” said Thompson. However, after submitting their research at the end of April into the Communications Technology division, they received an acceptance letter at the end of May.
The conference, which took place in August, had networking events for the various divisions (Pingree and Thompson submitted their research into the Communications Technology Division) and several thousand attendees including master’s students, PhD students and professors.
Pingree and Thompson presented in a poster session in which an anonymous moderator wandered around to ask specific questions to each of the presenters to ensure that they knew their data well and were comfortable with their presentation technique and style. Being asked questions stretched both Pingree and Thompson as students.
“The trickiest part was thinking on your toes when people are asking you questions that you might not even have the answers to,” Pingree said. “We were asked a lot of implication questions with more of a psychological background that were beyond our wheelhouse, so we had to either use our knowledge base to answer their questions to the best of our ability or just acknowledge that we didn’t have all the answers,” said Pingree.
Pingree emphasized the support they felt throughout the whole experience from the School of Communications and encouraged graduate students who want to take advantage of experiential learning opportunities to not be discouraged by obstacles. “There’s so much funding available if you want to do projects and attend conferences, so even if you think it’s not possible, the School of Communications is there to support you.”
Both also expressed gratitude for their faculty mentors, professors Othello Richards and Jessica Zurcher, as well as the graduate student faculty as a whole. “The grad faculty really want students to take advantage of every opportunity and they will make it happen. It is a really amazing environment to be in as a graduate student,” Thompson said. “It’s been really awesome to be given so much support from the faculty.”
“It takes some courage to submit research, present it and be brave enough to put yourself out there,” Thompson said. “I’m really grateful that our professors pushed us to do this — they bolstered our confidence and we couldn’t have done it without them.”