Presentation of DISTRACT work

On Friday the 20th of November, DISTRACT staff presented ongoing research to students at the new MSc programme in Social Data Science at The University of Copenhagen in order to provide the students with an insight into what kinds of research can be conducted with the gaze and skills of social data science.

Morten Axel Pedersen, Professor and PI, Anna Sapienza, Postdoc, and Malene Hornstrup Jespersen, Student Assistant, presented the DISTRACT project with a focus on two examples from the sub-project Defying Distractions. The presentation centered on research conducted in the spring concerning the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on digital behaviour. The researchers presented findings both from a large-scale computational analysis of how patterns of online gaming changed in the spring and a country-wide survey exploring how Danes had adapted their screen use to the new situation. The presentation gave students a behind-the-scenes insight into different aspects of social data science research.