Philipp Masur

I’m joining the Department of Communication Science at the VU Amsterdam!

I am excited to share that I accepted a position as assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam in the Department of Communication Science. I am thrilled to become a member of this great department and I am looking forward to work and learn together with an amazing group of scholars. At the VU, I will have colleagues whose work is characterized by the use of advanced and computational research methods and an extraordinary… Read More »I’m joining the Department of Communication Science at the VU Amsterdam!

New Publication: Can online privacy literacy support informational self-determination?

Current debates on online privacy are often rooted in liberal theory. Privacy is hence often understood as a form of freedom from social, economic, and institutional influences. Such a negative perspective on privacy, however, focuses too much on how individuals can be protected or can protect themselves instead of challenging the necessity for protection itself. Similar to treating symptoms of a disease instead of its causes, providing protection fails to acknowledge that the necessity for such… Read More »New Publication: Can online privacy literacy support informational self-determination?

New Publication: An Agenda for Open Science in Communication

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, I recently wrote a paper with more than 30 authors in which we propose an agenda for adopting… Read More »New Publication: An Agenda for Open Science in Communication

The problem of false positives: Antibody tests in times of Corona

A few weeks or months from now, we could have a Covid-19 test kit sent to our home. Similar to a blood sugar test for diabetics, we would prick our finger, wait for a couple of minutes, and we will know whether we are immune or not. The general idea is that this would help in lessen the social distancing restrictions because those who are immune could in principle go back to a normal life.… Read More »The problem of false positives: Antibody tests in times of Corona

Understanding exponential growth: The corona pandemic

With the news going crazy these days, I felt like there is one particularly thing that is often misunderstood. The corona virus spreads exponentially (without intervention or measures). The problem is that we – as human beings – are very bad at imagining what an exponential trend looks like. By now, many differnet graphics and figures appear everywhere that aim to visualize the amount of infections or mortality rates per country. One of the most… Read More »Understanding exponential growth: The corona pandemic

How to do power simulations for structural equation models in R

Computing a priori power analyses for simple statistical models can be done analytically (e.g., with G*Power or the pwr package in R). However, estimating the power for more complex models and in particular structural equation models (SEM) is not as straightforward and requires simulations. I recently came across the package paramtest (Hughes, 2017) which provides a great framework for conducting more complex power simulations. In what follows, I provide some examples of how to simulate… Read More »How to do power simulations for structural equation models in R

How to do specification curve analyses in R: Introducing ‘specr’

In the last month, Michael Scharkow and I have worked on a new R-package called specr. The goal was to facilitate specification curve analyses (also called multiverse analyses). The idea behind a specification curve analysis stems from the observation that a researcher has many degrees of freedom when conducting a quantitative analysis of a data set and sometimes, we do not really know how different decisions may impact the results. It starts with the question… Read More »How to do specification curve analyses in R: Introducing ‘specr’

I started a post-doc position at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

I am excited to share with you that I started a post-doc position at the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Moving back to Mainz is exciting and a bit nostalgic too since I started my academic career (as a young student, of course) at this very university and I have good memories of living and studying in this city. I will be working in the Dynamics of Society and Communication… Read More »I started a post-doc position at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Reconceptualizing online privacy literacy

In recent years, online privacy literacy has often been regarded as a potential solution to people’s seemingly paradoxical behaviors in online environments. Based on empirical findings that Internet users rarely implement privacy and data protection strategies, it has been suggested that they are simply not literate enough to make informed decisions in online environments. Throughout the last years, we have been working on reconceptualizing online privacy literacy and providing reliable and validated instruments to measure online… Read More »Reconceptualizing online privacy literacy

What I read, heard and watched in 2018

When a year comes to an end, many blogger seem to have this urge to do one of these “Best of 2018” posts. The blogosphere is full of lists, thoughts, personal accomplishments and idiosyncratic meditations and resolutions. It is almost too much. Yet, I have to admit that I quite like to scroll through at least some of them, thereby realizing someone’s personal taste and likes as well as finding common themes and topics in… Read More »What I read, heard and watched in 2018