The 10th European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) took place at the end of September in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Many of our team members attended and presented their research. See this page for their full presentations and profiles!

Bias-based cyberaggression, which includes hateful and prejudiced content shared through digital platforms, is a common experience for young internet users. This kind of online behaviour can have harmful effects on both individuals and society as a whole. We conducted a systematic review of research dealing with young people's experiences, risk and protective factors and consequences of bias-based cyberaggression.

“The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”, a new book by Jonathan Haidt, quickly found an audience. For www.parenting.digital, Michaela Lebedíková, Michal Tkaczyk, Vojtěch Mýlek and David Smahel share 10 ways in which they disagree with the way Haidt builds his argument based on their own studies of the impact of technology on adolescents’ wellbeing.

Researchers from the IRTIS team looked at Czech adults' willingness to use AI to find health-related information and their trust in the health information AI provides. Read more in the article!

Aggression and violent video games are frequently linked in both scientific and non-scientific literature. However, the relationship between aggression and violent video games remains a subject of ongoing debate. Investigations into whether observing others engage in violent gaming through live streams might lead to increased aggression are basically nonexistent. This lack of research evidence has inspired our recent study, now published in New Media & Society, and conducted by David Lacko, Hana Machackova, and Eliška Dufková.

Young people often use the internet to stay connected with family and friends, but they also frequently form new relationships with people they've never met in person, known as online acquaintances. In a recent report, researchers from the IRTIS team at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, explored what happens when adolescents meet these online acquaintances face-to-face. The results show that such meetings are quite common—31.7% of the 2,500 surveyed teenagers aged 11-16 reported having had this experience.

Cyberhate victimisation can be an especially harmful experience for vulnerable children and young people. We present results from a study with young people from four European countries and their cyberhate victimisation experiences. Can supportive environments mitigate the risk for them?

Images of individuals' physical appearance shared on social media platforms are often accompanied by affirming comments that praise their attractiveness, such as "you look amazing!". In a recent research led by Nikol Kvardová, Hana Macháčková, and Hayriye Gulec, we delved into the impact of these social media comments on adolescents' body dissatisfaction. Our study was conducted as part of the FUTURE project and published in the journal Body Image.