Hamburg, 20 April 2020. Two apps are intended to make media and communication research under the conditions of "social distancing" easier. They were developed by ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) and the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib). The use of the apps for scientific research is free of charge.
Research on media use and communication practices is becoming increasingly expensive because people can use more channels and offers than ever before. In this field of science, media diaries and sorting techniques are used to record these practices as detailed as possible. The interdisciplinary research context at ZeMKI has now led to the development of special software that makes this possible with the help of computers: the sorting application MeSort and the media diary application MeTag.
Furthermore, both applications are particularly suitable for digital research and teaching in the current COVID-19 situation, where face-to-face data collection is no longer possible as usual. MeSort and MeTag are web-based browser applications that enable research and teaching under the conditions of "social distancing.”
With MeTag, research projects can be set up via a browser application and media diaries can be kept on the mobile phones of study participants via a smartphone app.
MeSort is used to collect information about the repertoires of the media used by sorting symbols and can be set up online. Sorting tasks in interviews can be carried out using the screen sharing functions of video conference solutions such as Zoom or Jitsi.
The development of the applications is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Both apps can be used free of charge. Feedback is welcome. Further information is available on the website
www.mesoftware.org
