Љубиша Бојић

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.

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.