Merja Mahrt – författare

This book has won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award 2014. Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has evolved from a niche service to a mass phenomenon; it has become instrumental for everyday communication as well as for political debates, crisis communication, marketing, and cultural participation. But the basic idea behind it has stayed the same: users may post short messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters and follow the updates posted by other users. Drawing on the experience of leading international Twitter researchers from a variety of disciplines and contexts, this is the first book to document the various notions and concepts of Twitter communication, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview of current research into the uses of Twitter. It also presents methods for analyzing Twitter data and outlines their practical application in different research contexts.

This book has won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award 2014. Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has evolved from a niche service to a mass phenomenon; it has become instrumental for everyday communication as well as for political debates, crisis communication, marketing, and cultural participation. But the basic idea behind it has stayed the same: users may post short messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters and follow the updates posted by other users. Drawing on the experience of leading international Twitter researchers from a variety of disciplines and contexts, this is the first book to document the various notions and concepts of Twitter communication, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview of current research into the uses of Twitter. It also presents methods for analyzing Twitter data and outlines their practical application in different research contexts.

Values of German media users, 1986-2007 Values have been discussed in connection to the changes brought to the German TV landscape since the introduction of the dual system in 1984. Yet, on such occurrences arguments have rarely, if at all, been based on reliable information about differences in televised values. Nor have values of the audience of channels or genres been considered. This study offers a starting point for such an endeavor, focusing on the role values play for people’s media choices. In a theoretical overview, values are situated in a framework of overlapping spheres that influence people in the adoption of values. Social learning is the main mechanism behind this process of socialization. Values define what is desirable or not and how one should behave in a given situation according to the rules of one’s society. As stable basic traits close to an individual’s personality, values play a part in the building of motives that finally result in behavior. With regard to media, a well-established gratification of media use is the reinforcement of one’s own values and worldviews. Based on the finding that mediated value patterns differ across outlets and types of content, I assume that different values should lead people do prefer different media over others.