LJubiša Bojić

Accurately forming personality judgments is of vital importance in a wide range of social interactions. Although people are able to make fairly accurate personality judgments of others, recent technological advances in machine learning made computers better at predicting personality than humans. In this review, we will focus on computer-based personality judgments and their theoretical considerations and practical implications in politics. More precisely, we will discuss (i) the use of social platforms and digital devices in collecting so-called digital footprints, (ii) personality traits that are assessed based on digital footprints, (iii) advantages and disadvantages of using computer-based personality judgments, (iv) persuasive communication based on digital footprints of personality traits, and lastly, (v) the matters of privacy and informed consent. With this review, we aim to provide a guide how to use computer-based personality judgment in a way to serve the public interest.

The Annual Attitude Examination Survey consisting of 366 questions was deployed on nationally representative sample in Serbia to get 2608 responses on the Oxford Happiness Inventory and Multiple Lickert scale questions concerning attitudes, fears, media use and closeness of different social categories to the participants. Research results confirm all hypotheses. Quantity of television use is negatively correlated to happiness. As for the quality of newspapers use, those consuming contents such as culture, sports and IT are happier than others. When looking at television use, individuals that prefer programs such as cartoons, culture, music, fashion, science, IT and sports are happier than others. This is the first research examining relationship of happiness and quality of media use. Future research should encompass data from online social networks in order to see how positive and negative emotions of media users are related to media content they are exposed to.

The Annual Attitude Examination Survey consisting of 366 questions was deployed on nationally representative sample in Serbia to get 2608 valid inputs on the Oxford Happiness Inventory and Multiple Lickert scale questions concerning attitudes, fears, media use and closeness of different social categories to the participants. Research results confirm that happiness is affected by certain attitudes and characteristics of research participants such as those indicating openness to new experiences, being people loving, optimistic, positive, future and present focused, knowledge oriented, relaxed, creative, helping, just and empathetic. This is the first happiness research in Serbia. Future inquiries of this kind should be moved towards the Internet as a source of continuous data.

With explosion of technological innovation, people tend to deve­lop an addiction to new media such as mobile devices, computers, and gaming consoles. This study expands the previous research by addres­sing the overall (new and old) media addiction in Serbia by using eight universal indicators. The study found that 88% of participants are the potential media addicts while only 7.6% of them show the signs of the extreme media addiction. As it is very significant to know and under­stand the media addiction in our society, the media addiction research should be standardized and continuous.

Appearance of the Internet and its spread to 38.8% of world population from 1995 to 2013 indicate that new media bring significant changes to societies around the world. Features of new media such as interactivity and possibility to use it from anywhere anytime indicate the Internet may be highly addictive. Data point to increases in overall media use over the last 60 years. On the other hand, decreases in political participation are registered together with decline in socializing and active membership in professional organizations for the same period. Research is conducted through nationally representative survey in Serbia during 2013. All hypotheses of this study have been confirmed including main one, saying that increases in media addiction cause decreases in political participation. Those who have less confidence in future are bigger media addicts, those who fear about present and future are bigger media addicts, those who are not interested in politics are bigger media addicts, those who have less political knowledge are bigger media addicts and finally that low participants in elections are bigger media addicts. This study is limited to Serbia, while it would be useful to measure media addiction in all countries. New methodology introduced by this study should be improved. Results of further studies should be presented with 3D graphs.

Two aspects of technologically driven civilization are evident: availability of new media and interactivity. This study examines media addiction on three levels: purpose of use, medium of choice and online application utilized. Media addiction increases with those who use media for fun as opposed to individuals who use media for information; level of media addiction is higher with users of new media as opposed to users of old media; more interactive and less practical online applications such as social networks and chat are more addictive. When looking into nature of new and old media it is possible to conclude that media addiction may be related to number of senses grabbed by media and media features, such as live broadcasting and interactivity. This brings us to conclusion that future of media may be in employment of additional human senses in its use.