What are you currently working on?

I likely work on too many projects but to name two which are quite important for me right now: I am currently working on a theory piece I am writing together with Thilo von Pape where we use the metaphor of snacking for explaining mobile phone use and its effects in everyday life. Besides, a team of people and I will collect data for a diary study soon where we want to get a better understanding of how people use ChatGPT when they are stressed. We already collected some preliminary data for this and found some interesting usage patterns so I am very curious to see what we will find in the larger study.

 

Can you share a project that changed the way you think or work? 

I think the qualitative study I conducted during my dissertation was very insightful and still influences the projects I do today. I conducted focus groups with parents on how they use their phones for coping with stress in their everyday lives. The way participants described their usage patterns and in particular how they described clearly adaptive usage forms directly followed by explaining how they should use their phone less was an interesting experience. It illustrated the ambivalence of mobile communication and constant connectivity that I am still interested in today.

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Wolfers, L. N. (2021). Parental mobile media use for coping with stress: A focus groups study. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 3(2), 304–315. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.252

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Which piece of work feels closest to your heart, and why?

I think the theory paper that was published last year in Communication Theory. It is my second sole author paper and my very first theory paper. I really enjoyed thinking it through and writing it and I learned a lot during this process.

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Wolfers, L. N. (2024). A social constructivist viewpoint of media effects: Extending the social influence model of technology use to media effects. Communication Theory, qtae015. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtae015

 

What's a question you keep returning to?

What I come back to is asking myself why there is such a big gap between the extent to which we think mobile technologies changed our lives and what our research findings show. We often only find very small or no effects but we frequently write in our introductions how much mobile media changed our lives. Also, people believe that digital media have a large impact on themselves and on society. I think understanding and explaining this disconnect between perceived and actual effects is still something I wonder a lot about.

 

If you had a tagline or motto, what would it be? 

I would say maybe “people first”. I believe that what we do in our research is important. Still, I think the wellbeing of the people we work with, participants, colleagues, and students, should still always come before publications, grants and research projects.

 

If time, money, and logistics weren't a concern, what dream project would you dive into?

I would love to follow a large number of families from before the first child is born until the youngest child leaves home and have a combination of data sources including tracking media use, observing relationship development, conducting child development tests, and asking questionnaires across the entire time. I would love to be able to see what effects, for example, having a smartphone earlier or spending more time on the phone during interactions have in the long-term on individuals and also on relationships.

 

What's one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out as a scholar? 

Take some time in between jobs or in between your studies to travel or also simply not do a lot for a month. Restoring energy is important and one month when compared to an entire career is not a lot.

 

What is a book or paper that shaped the way you think about the world?

There were a lot of great papers I read across the years so it is hard to choose. I will choose two if that is allowed. One paper that I used a lot during my dissertation is the meta-media framework paper by Lee Humphreys, Veronika Karnowski, and Thilo von Pape. It really helped me thinking about what makes smartphones special and how to structure mobile communication. One paper I read recently and which I really enjoyed reading is Hall and Davis’ Communicate Bond Belong Theory. It was recommended to me at the Mobile Communication Preconference this year by Alicia Gilbert and it is a very interesting paper. It is also nicely structured. I can strongly recommend both papers.

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Humphreys, L., Karnowski, V., & von Pape, T. (2018). Smartphones as metamedia: A framework for identifying the niches structuring smartphone use. International Jornal of Communication, 12, 2793–2809.

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Hall, J. A., & Davis, D. C. (2017). Proposing the Communicate Bond Belong Theory: Evolutionary Intersections With Episodic Interpersonal Communication: Proposing the Communicate Bond Belong Theory. Communication Theory, 27(1), 21–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12106

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Who's someone whose work deserves more attention - and who you want to nominate as the next featured scholar? 

I would like to nominate Mora Matassi. I heard some of her presentations during ICA and always enjoyed them and I would love to hear what projects she is currently working on.