Doug Parry
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dougaparry.bsky.social
Doug Parry
@dougaparry.bsky.social
2K followers 570 following 200 posts
Assistant Prof of Media Psychology in the Department of Communication Science at VU Amsterdam (🇳🇱) researching media effects, digital well-being, attention, mental health. Open Science, Computational Methods

🖥️ https://dougaparry.com

🇿🇦 From South Africa
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dougaparry.bsky.social
Out of interest, this was what the data look like for each track listened to.

With the Spotify API more info on the track can be pulled to augment the listening history data.
JSON format of spotify listening history data.
October 26, 2025 at 9:05 AM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Yip, @candiceodgers.bsky.social says as much here too www.nature.com/articles/d41...

and @cjsewall9.bsky.social (and I) try to make this argument here psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...
October 22, 2025 at 2:07 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
From Street to Screen: Online Risks and Digital Literacy Among Adolescents in the Global South

@mienkemaristeytler.bsky.social

How do adolescents in a low-income, semi-rural South African community navigate the dual promise and peril of social media.

Preprint coming soon…

📆 12.09, 13h00, LK053
September 9, 2025 at 2:42 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Debate Club: We Don’t Need Digital Traces of Time Spent on Digital Media

@klingelhoefer.bsky.social

We will debate the role, importance, shortcomings, & relative value of this data to prompt critical reflection.

This debate draws on our preprint

➡ doi.org/10.31234/osf...

📆 12.09, 09h00, LX1205
September 9, 2025 at 2:42 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
From r/nosurf to #digitaldetox: A computational analysis of discourses of technology resistance and digital well-being

@chrdrn.bsky.social, @klingelhoefer.bsky.social, @aliciagilbert.bsky.social

We will present preliminary results from our analysis of Twitter & Reddit data.

📆 11.09, 16h15, LK051
September 9, 2025 at 2:42 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
We outline a set of plausible direct and indirect mechanisms that now enter the conceptual frame to move the field beyond the capacity focus and consider intra-individual variation and situational regulation when studying digital technology use and attentional control

Feedback welcome!
August 12, 2025 at 12:58 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Rather than (only) occurring at the level of capacity (as current research implicitly argues but largely fails to show), considering intra-individual variation opens up the possibility that effects occur at the level of situational regulation (control-learning and/or motivated control mechanisms)
August 12, 2025 at 12:58 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
New in JCMC with @bronwynec.bsky.social: People who feel more in control of their social media use tend to use it less and report better well-being. Seeing social media as positive was associated with more use, but not well-being. 👉 doi.org/10.1093/jcmc...
Abstract: Building on the idea that subjective evaluations of social media use (SMU) may shape well-being effects, this study investigated how two “social media mindsets”—agency (perceived control over SMU) and valence (perceived effects of SMU)—relate to self-reported and logged SMU, and four well-being indicators (depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction) in a South African sample of young adults (N = 1,858; M age = 21.01). Agency mindsets were negatively correlated with SMU and positively with well-being, while valence mindsets were associated with higher SMU but not with well-being. Logged SMU showed weaker associations with mindsets and well-being than self-reported SMU, suggesting differences between perceived and actual behavior. The findings replicate, extend, and in some cases contradict prior research, emphasizing how users’ sense of control is more important for well-being than SMU duration or perceptions of its effects, and that more work is needed to understand whether the “mindsets” concept is fruitful. Lay summary: This study investigated how young adults’ feelings about social media—whether they feel in control of their use (agency) or view it positively (valence)—relate to their actual use and mental well-being. The study involved 1,858 participants from South Africa using both self-reported and actual logged social media usage data. The results show that people who feel more in control of their social media use tend to use it less and report better mental well-being. In contrast, those who see social media as more positive spend more time on it, but this mindset did not directly relate to well-being. The data collected from logs of actual usage show weaker relations with well-being compared to people’s estimates and to their mindsets. These findings suggest that a person’s sense of control over social media plays a more important role in their mental health than how much time they spend on it.
June 30, 2025 at 7:34 AM
dougaparry.bsky.social
#ICA25 if you're looking for something to do this afternoon, strong recommendation for the Denver Art Museum.
June 12, 2025 at 7:44 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Heading back to Amsterdam after three packed days of ambulatory assessment, autoregressive models, and EMA/ESM at #SAA2025 in Leuven. Plenty to think about!
May 28, 2025 at 5:36 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
The consensus paper deserves plenty of criticism. I won’t defend the process, how some have framed the findings, or claims that it represents a preponderance of evidence.

I (naively?) contributed hoping to shape a more accurate view of the evidence, given how it might be used.

t.co/7r6WQ6vCbm
May 20, 2025 at 2:32 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
It really was wow. 🤩
God is an astronaut live at Patronaat
March 16, 2025 at 2:43 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
It took 41 days at my new job for the journal spammers to find me...
...it was nice while it lasted.
December 11, 2024 at 2:51 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
It looks like it's a Wiley thing? I received the same, for an article published 2 years ago. Not a fan.
December 5, 2024 at 8:06 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Seeing that God is an Astronaut will be playing in The Netherlands next year prompted me to reconnect my Spotify account to my old last.fm profile. It's been such an amazing time capsule of old (and current) favourites.
September 18, 2024 at 6:17 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
While this partnership between Meta & @@cos.io is an exciting first-step in data access & transparency, let's hope in the long run this can go beyond a "a select group of academic researchers".

Some data access is good, but more data access is better

www.cos.io/meta
January 29, 2024 at 2:49 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Hahah. Closest I’ve come to that is an acknowledgement in my dissertation…
January 4, 2024 at 7:59 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
And with the final coffee, I bid the
@weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social
adieu after a fun, full, and productive month in Berlin!

On to Amsterdam and some rest…

Until we meet again..
December 20, 2023 at 6:45 PM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Excited to be at the @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social for the next month to work with researchers here on mobile tracking research.

I'm always available for a coffee if anyone wants to meet up while I'm here.
November 21, 2023 at 9:16 AM
dougaparry.bsky.social
We're conducting some research on communication visibility in organisational/enterprise social media among public/transparent organisations. I saw this message today and for some reason found it to be quite funny in this context.
November 15, 2023 at 9:10 AM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Excited to have received the "Early Career Researcher" award from Stellenbosch University. While there is only one name on the award, this should not be an individual prize, thanks to all of my collaborators, mentors, colleagues, students, friends, family for all of the support!
Trophy for Stellenbosch University Early Career Research Award
October 31, 2023 at 6:55 AM
dougaparry.bsky.social
Its possible to do this with slack. If you're a channel owner you can export a folder for each public channel with a JSON file containing the messages for each day (and metadata). This can be easily parsed but I guess the tricky thing is access...I can't see any examples of 3rd party studies..
October 20, 2023 at 1:10 PM