Jessica Franks
Exploring the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on young Victorian adults’ social media use and experience.
Supervisors:
Professor Richard Chenhall, Centre for Health Equity, University of Melbourne
A/Professor Louise Keogh, Centre for Health Equity, University of Melbourne
Advisory Committee:
Professor Jane Pirkis (Chair), Centre for Mental Health, University of Melbourne
Title of PhD:
Exploring the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on young Victorian adults’ social media use and experience.
Abstract:
Social media has played a crucial role in making lockdown experiences more bearable during COVID-19, by providing entertainment and facilitating social connectedness. However, constant social media use in itself can be a source of user stress, fatigue and burnout that can have a negative impact affecting individuals professional, personal and social lives. Utilising a qualitative approach this research aims to reveal innovative ways young adults have utilised social media for maintaining social connections, strategies for coping socially as well as capturing challenges experienced. The findings from this research could contribute to providing further insight into the role of social media and the users experience during an outbreak, which will be of particular interest to researchers, policy makers and app developers in both the public and private sectors, of disaster, crisis and health emergency management, support and recovery.
Bio:
Jessica Franks completed a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Federation University and Master of Public Health from the University of Melbourne. Jessica is employed as a casual research assistant at Ballarat Community Health and holds a sessional tutoring role at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. She is currently working on a number of projects focusing on young adults’ social media user experience. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic her original PhD project interested in understanding how young adults navigate and negotiate social interactions during periods of temporal social media discontinuance and reconnection practices has been temporally postponed. In the meantime, she is exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding lockdowns on social media use and experience among young adults living in Victoria.