Ralf De Wolf
Biographic Data
| ID | 4209205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ralf De Wolf |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ralf |
| FAMILY NAME | De Wolf |
| SIGNATURE | DE WOLF R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2586-4150 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Disconnection Amid Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Ethno-Racial Minoritized Young Women’s Digital Media (Non)use
Digital disconnection studies conceptualize disconnection as a deliberate strategy to balance the benefits and drawbacks of digital engagement to improve well-being. However, this field has been criticized for focusing on privileged subjects while overlooking how structural inequalities shape minoritized youths’ (dis)connection practices. Our 15-month ethnographic study addresses this gap by examining how ethno-racial minoritized young women navi…
Exploring children’s perspectives on parental surveillance in Belgium
Academics have warned against the normalization of invasive monitoring of children. Limited effort, however, has focused on the perspective of children and their preferences. In this article, we shift our attention to children’s view on parental surveillance. Using an in-depth interview study with 31 children (aged 9 to 12) we found how new media and surveillance technology, somewhat paradoxically, may actually pave the way to more autonomy and p…
The ambivalences of digital disconnection for life coaches: Navigating discrete and performative disconnecting in the creator economy
This study examines how life coaches navigate the tension between the authenticity of digital disconnection and the selective, strategic performance of that disconnection on Instagram, either through discrete (unpublicized) or performative (publicly framed) practices. Drawing on interviews with 15 Flemish-Belgian and Dutch life coaches and a qualitative analysis of their Instagram content, the study shows how disconnection emerges as an ongoing n…
Real Men Do the Work!”: How Life Coaches Perform Masculinity in Online and Offline Settings
Life coaches claim to offer men pathways to “authentic” masculinity through self-development. Despite their growing popularity, scholars have paid little attention to how these coaches negotiate and perform masculinity. In addressing this gap, we examine how male-oriented life coaches understand, construct, and perform masculinity—both online and offline. Drawing on a hybrid ethnographic approach—analyzing Instagram content from 15 life coaches a…
Home maintainer, guardian or companion? Three commentaries on the implications of domestic AI in the household
Social media influencers as new agents on parenthood? A systematic literature review of parent influencer research and a future research agenda
Parents frequently turn to social media and blogs to find information, advice, and support on parenting. In recent years, social media influencers and specifically ‘parent influencers’ have become prominent figures in the realm of parenthood. The latter group capitalizes on their family lives, skillfully integrates product placements, and openly shares their daily experiences. Parent influencers are believed to have an exceptionally influential v…
Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens
Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about d…
Trust in algorithmic decision-making systems in health: A comparison between ADA health and IBM Watson
Algorithmic decision-making systems (ADMs) support an ever-growing number of decision-making processes. We conducted an online survey study in Flanders (n = 1,082) to understand how laypeople perceive and trust health ADMs. Inspired by the ability, benevolence, and integrity trustworthiness model (Mayer et al., 1995), this study investigated how trust is constructed in health ADMs. In addition, we investigated how trust construction differs betwe…
Unlock a better life: "Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances
Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession. Drawing from a one-month observation of 1,650 posts collected from 20 Instagram profiles of life co…
From bliss to burden: An ethnographic inquiry into how social, material and individual obstacles to digital well-being shape everyday life
Drawing from a two-year ethnography with sixteen adults in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium, this study disentangles the social, material, and individual obstacles experienced in day-to-day life that hinder and foster digital well-being. Findings show how these obstacles are interrelated, laying bare the tensions that cut across social relations, digital devices, and spaces. Moreover, (gendered) responsibilities and social relations impact whether …
Smarter homes, smarter surveillance? Exploring intimate surveillance practices in modern day households
Smart home technologies (SHT) are becoming more and more widespread. The commodification of the household and the surveillance of family life by companies have understandably sparked numerous questions. It should not be forgotten, however, that SHT also bring family members convenient tools to surveil each other. Parental and partner surveillance, further referred to as intimate surveillance, have rarely been studied with regard to the smart home…
Decoding Algorithms: Exploring End-Users’ Mental Models of the Inner Workings of Algorithmic News Recommenders
Algorithmic recommenders are omnipresent in our daily lives. While a multitude of studies focus on how people use algorithmic recommenders, far too little attention has been devoted to how they perceive and understand these complex systems. In this study we focus on Algorithmic News Recommenders (ANR). Drawing on 26 semi-structured interviews, we investigated how laypeople decode Google News and Facebook News. In our method we employ the scroll-b…
Predicting Teens' Privacy Management and Attitude Toward Data Protection on Social Media
This study contributes to ongoing debates on the protection of teens' privacy on social media. While ample research is focused on teens' privacy management, less is known about their attitude toward data protection. Drawing from cross-sectional survey data, this study examines whether predictors of privacy management, namely privacy literacy, privacy concern, and perceptions of data control, also predict teens' attitude toward data protection. St…
Exploring Teenagers’ Folk Theories and Coping Strategies Regarding Commercial Data Collection and Personalized Advertising
New data collection methods and processing capabilities facilitate online personalization of advertisements but also challenge youth’s understanding of how these methods work. Teenagers are often unaware of the commercial use of their personal information and are susceptible to the persuasive effects of personalized advertising. This raises questions about their ability to engage in privacy-protecting behaviors. This article examines teenagers’ c…
Teenagers’ reflections on media literacy initiatives at school and everyday media literacy discourses
Often coined as digital natives, contemporary teens are ascribed a paradoxical status of skilled but vulnerable media users. Therefore, media literacy initiatives often target young audiences in order to mitigate detrimental media effects as well as to facilitate emancipatory media engagements. The literature on media literacy draws from diverse disciplines (e.g. educational sciences, media studies) and examines a wide range of thematic areas (e.…
Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust
The reciprocal exchanges of messages, likes, and pictures on social media are typical expressions of mobile youth culture. After all, it is well-established that young people’s disclosure practices support their efforts to maintain relationships, gain autonomy, and, by large, consolidate a place in the world. What is often missing, however, is an exploration of how the specific socio-cultural contexts of ethno-religious minority youths shape and …
In-between child’s play and teenage pop culture: Tweens, TikTok & privacy
TikTok’s popularity ignites anxieties about youths’ privacy on the short-video sharing social media platform. This is especially true for 8–12-year-old ‘tweens’. This study draws from in-depth interviews with tweens and their parents to explore perceptions of tweenhood, TikTok and privacy. In our investigation, we move beyond a developmental framework on childhood by taking into account how life stage categories are socio-culturally constructed. …
Exploring Flemish Muslim children’s experiences and negotiation of offline and online group privacy
In privacy research, much attention has been devoted to the online privacy practices of adolescents and college youth. Less is known about the privacy management of children and Muslim children in particular. In this study, we gave a voice to Muslim children in the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, and how they negotiate information about their Muslim culture and identity using focus groups and interviews. The empirical studies clarify h…
Children’s reflections on privacy and the protection of their personal data: A child-centric approach to data protection information formats
Applying contextual integrity to digital contact tracing and automated triage for hospitals during Covid-19
Contextualizing how teens manage personal and interpersonal privacy on social media
Many researchers have been studying teens’ privacy management on social media, and how they individually control information. Employing the theoretical framework of communication privacy management (CPM) theory, I argue that individual information control in itself is desirable but insufficient, giving only a limited understanding of teens’ privacy practices. Instead, I argue that research should focus on both personal and interpersonal privacy m…
Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life
Using Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory we examine how social structures in mobile communication technologies shape the everyday life of individuals, thereby re-shaping power dynamics that underlie the social organization of society. We argue that the anytime, anyplace connectivity afforded by mobile communication technologies structures society by imposing a network, social and personal logic. We discuss how each logic both reproduces and cha…
From persuasive messages to tactics: Exploring children’s knowledge and judgement of new advertising formats
Despite that contemporary advertising is decreasingly about persuading children through persuasive messages and increasingly about influencing them through implicit tactics, little attention has been given to how children may cope with advertising by understanding and evaluating the new advertising tactics. Drawing on 12 focus groups entailing 60 children of ages 9–11 years, this article investigates children’s advertising literacy by exploring t…
Group privacy management strategies and challenges in Facebook: A focus group study among Flemish youth organizations
A large body of research has studied young people’s privacy practices and needs in Facebook. Less is known about group privacy. In this study 12 focus groups were organized with a total of 78 adolescents and young adults of local Flemish youth organizations to discuss their privacy practices. Findings describe how different strategies are used to coordinate the group information flow. The study also shows how online group privacy management can b…
Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life
Using Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory we examine how social structures in mobile communication technologies shape the everyday life of individuals, thereby re-shaping power dynamics that underlie the social organization of society. We argue that the anytime, anyplace connectivity afforded by mobile communication technologies structures society by imposing a network, social and personal logic. We discuss how each logic both reproduces and cha…
In-between child’s play and teenage pop culture: Tweens, TikTok & privacy
TikTok’s popularity ignites anxieties about youths’ privacy on the short-video sharing social media platform. This is especially true for 8–12-year-old ‘tweens’. This study draws from in-depth interviews with tweens and their parents to explore perceptions of tweenhood, TikTok and privacy. In our investigation, we move beyond a developmental framework on childhood by taking into account how life stage categories are socio-culturally constructed. …
Contextualizing how teens manage personal and interpersonal privacy on social media
Many researchers have been studying teens’ privacy management on social media, and how they individually control information. Employing the theoretical framework of communication privacy management (CPM) theory, I argue that individual information control in itself is desirable but insufficient, giving only a limited understanding of teens’ privacy practices. Instead, I argue that research should focus on both personal and interpersonal privacy m…
Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens
Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about d…
From bliss to burden: An ethnographic inquiry into how social, material and individual obstacles to digital well-being shape everyday life
Drawing from a two-year ethnography with sixteen adults in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium, this study disentangles the social, material, and individual obstacles experienced in day-to-day life that hinder and foster digital well-being. Findings show how these obstacles are interrelated, laying bare the tensions that cut across social relations, digital devices, and spaces. Moreover, (gendered) responsibilities and social relations impact whether …
Smarter homes, smarter surveillance? Exploring intimate surveillance practices in modern day households
Smart home technologies (SHT) are becoming more and more widespread. The commodification of the household and the surveillance of family life by companies have understandably sparked numerous questions. It should not be forgotten, however, that SHT also bring family members convenient tools to surveil each other. Parental and partner surveillance, further referred to as intimate surveillance, have rarely been studied with regard to the smart home…
Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust
The reciprocal exchanges of messages, likes, and pictures on social media are typical expressions of mobile youth culture. After all, it is well-established that young people’s disclosure practices support their efforts to maintain relationships, gain autonomy, and, by large, consolidate a place in the world. What is often missing, however, is an exploration of how the specific socio-cultural contexts of ethno-religious minority youths shape and …
Children’s reflections on privacy and the protection of their personal data: A child-centric approach to data protection information formats
Applying contextual integrity to digital contact tracing and automated triage for hospitals during Covid-19
From persuasive messages to tactics: Exploring children’s knowledge and judgement of new advertising formats
Despite that contemporary advertising is decreasingly about persuading children through persuasive messages and increasingly about influencing them through implicit tactics, little attention has been given to how children may cope with advertising by understanding and evaluating the new advertising tactics. Drawing on 12 focus groups entailing 60 children of ages 9–11 years, this article investigates children’s advertising literacy by exploring t…
Group privacy management strategies and challenges in Facebook: A focus group study among Flemish youth organizations
A large body of research has studied young people’s privacy practices and needs in Facebook. Less is known about group privacy. In this study 12 focus groups were organized with a total of 78 adolescents and young adults of local Flemish youth organizations to discuss their privacy practices. Findings describe how different strategies are used to coordinate the group information flow. The study also shows how online group privacy management can b…
From persuasive messages to tactics: Exploring children’s knowledge and judgement of new advertising formats
Despite that contemporary advertising is decreasingly about persuading children through persuasive messages and increasingly about influencing them through implicit tactics, little attention has been given to how children may cope with advertising by understanding and evaluating the new advertising tactics. Drawing on 12 focus groups entailing 60 children of ages 9–11 years, this article investigates children’s advertising literacy by exploring t…
Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life
Using Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory we examine how social structures in mobile communication technologies shape the everyday life of individuals, thereby re-shaping power dynamics that underlie the social organization of society. We argue that the anytime, anyplace connectivity afforded by mobile communication technologies structures society by imposing a network, social and personal logic. We discuss how each logic both reproduces and cha…
Contextualizing how teens manage personal and interpersonal privacy on social media
Many researchers have been studying teens’ privacy management on social media, and how they individually control information. Employing the theoretical framework of communication privacy management (CPM) theory, I argue that individual information control in itself is desirable but insufficient, giving only a limited understanding of teens’ privacy practices. Instead, I argue that research should focus on both personal and interpersonal privacy m…
In-between child’s play and teenage pop culture: Tweens, TikTok & privacy
TikTok’s popularity ignites anxieties about youths’ privacy on the short-video sharing social media platform. This is especially true for 8–12-year-old ‘tweens’. This study draws from in-depth interviews with tweens and their parents to explore perceptions of tweenhood, TikTok and privacy. In our investigation, we move beyond a developmental framework on childhood by taking into account how life stage categories are socio-culturally constructed. …
Exploring Flemish Muslim children’s experiences and negotiation of offline and online group privacy
In privacy research, much attention has been devoted to the online privacy practices of adolescents and college youth. Less is known about the privacy management of children and Muslim children in particular. In this study, we gave a voice to Muslim children in the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, and how they negotiate information about their Muslim culture and identity using focus groups and interviews. The empirical studies clarify h…
Children’s reflections on privacy and the protection of their personal data: A child-centric approach to data protection information formats
Applying contextual integrity to digital contact tracing and automated triage for hospitals during Covid-19
Exploring Teenagers’ Folk Theories and Coping Strategies Regarding Commercial Data Collection and Personalized Advertising
New data collection methods and processing capabilities facilitate online personalization of advertisements but also challenge youth’s understanding of how these methods work. Teenagers are often unaware of the commercial use of their personal information and are susceptible to the persuasive effects of personalized advertising. This raises questions about their ability to engage in privacy-protecting behaviors. This article examines teenagers’ c…
Teenagers’ reflections on media literacy initiatives at school and everyday media literacy discourses
Often coined as digital natives, contemporary teens are ascribed a paradoxical status of skilled but vulnerable media users. Therefore, media literacy initiatives often target young audiences in order to mitigate detrimental media effects as well as to facilitate emancipatory media engagements. The literature on media literacy draws from diverse disciplines (e.g. educational sciences, media studies) and examines a wide range of thematic areas (e.…
Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust
The reciprocal exchanges of messages, likes, and pictures on social media are typical expressions of mobile youth culture. After all, it is well-established that young people’s disclosure practices support their efforts to maintain relationships, gain autonomy, and, by large, consolidate a place in the world. What is often missing, however, is an exploration of how the specific socio-cultural contexts of ethno-religious minority youths shape and …
Decoding Algorithms: Exploring End-Users’ Mental Models of the Inner Workings of Algorithmic News Recommenders
Algorithmic recommenders are omnipresent in our daily lives. While a multitude of studies focus on how people use algorithmic recommenders, far too little attention has been devoted to how they perceive and understand these complex systems. In this study we focus on Algorithmic News Recommenders (ANR). Drawing on 26 semi-structured interviews, we investigated how laypeople decode Google News and Facebook News. In our method we employ the scroll-b…
Predicting Teens' Privacy Management and Attitude Toward Data Protection on Social Media
This study contributes to ongoing debates on the protection of teens' privacy on social media. While ample research is focused on teens' privacy management, less is known about their attitude toward data protection. Drawing from cross-sectional survey data, this study examines whether predictors of privacy management, namely privacy literacy, privacy concern, and perceptions of data control, also predict teens' attitude toward data protection. St…
Trust in algorithmic decision-making systems in health: A comparison between ADA health and IBM Watson
Algorithmic decision-making systems (ADMs) support an ever-growing number of decision-making processes. We conducted an online survey study in Flanders (n = 1,082) to understand how laypeople perceive and trust health ADMs. Inspired by the ability, benevolence, and integrity trustworthiness model (Mayer et al., 1995), this study investigated how trust is constructed in health ADMs. In addition, we investigated how trust construction differs betwe…
Unlock a better life: "Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances
Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession. Drawing from a one-month observation of 1,650 posts collected from 20 Instagram profiles of life co…
From bliss to burden: An ethnographic inquiry into how social, material and individual obstacles to digital well-being shape everyday life
Drawing from a two-year ethnography with sixteen adults in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium, this study disentangles the social, material, and individual obstacles experienced in day-to-day life that hinder and foster digital well-being. Findings show how these obstacles are interrelated, laying bare the tensions that cut across social relations, digital devices, and spaces. Moreover, (gendered) responsibilities and social relations impact whether …
Smarter homes, smarter surveillance? Exploring intimate surveillance practices in modern day households
Smart home technologies (SHT) are becoming more and more widespread. The commodification of the household and the surveillance of family life by companies have understandably sparked numerous questions. It should not be forgotten, however, that SHT also bring family members convenient tools to surveil each other. Parental and partner surveillance, further referred to as intimate surveillance, have rarely been studied with regard to the smart home…
Home maintainer, guardian or companion? Three commentaries on the implications of domestic AI in the household
Social media influencers as new agents on parenthood? A systematic literature review of parent influencer research and a future research agenda
Parents frequently turn to social media and blogs to find information, advice, and support on parenting. In recent years, social media influencers and specifically ‘parent influencers’ have become prominent figures in the realm of parenthood. The latter group capitalizes on their family lives, skillfully integrates product placements, and openly shares their daily experiences. Parent influencers are believed to have an exceptionally influential v…
Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens
Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about d…
Disconnection Amid Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Ethno-Racial Minoritized Young Women’s Digital Media (Non)use
Digital disconnection studies conceptualize disconnection as a deliberate strategy to balance the benefits and drawbacks of digital engagement to improve well-being. However, this field has been criticized for focusing on privileged subjects while overlooking how structural inequalities shape minoritized youths’ (dis)connection practices. Our 15-month ethnographic study addresses this gap by examining how ethno-racial minoritized young women navi…
Exploring children’s perspectives on parental surveillance in Belgium
Academics have warned against the normalization of invasive monitoring of children. Limited effort, however, has focused on the perspective of children and their preferences. In this article, we shift our attention to children’s view on parental surveillance. Using an in-depth interview study with 31 children (aged 9 to 12) we found how new media and surveillance technology, somewhat paradoxically, may actually pave the way to more autonomy and p…
The ambivalences of digital disconnection for life coaches: Navigating discrete and performative disconnecting in the creator economy
This study examines how life coaches navigate the tension between the authenticity of digital disconnection and the selective, strategic performance of that disconnection on Instagram, either through discrete (unpublicized) or performative (publicly framed) practices. Drawing on interviews with 15 Flemish-Belgian and Dutch life coaches and a qualitative analysis of their Instagram content, the study shows how disconnection emerges as an ongoing n…
Real Men Do the Work!”: How Life Coaches Perform Masculinity in Online and Offline Settings
Life coaches claim to offer men pathways to “authentic” masculinity through self-development. Despite their growing popularity, scholars have paid little attention to how these coaches negotiate and perform masculinity. In addressing this gap, we examine how male-oriented life coaches understand, construct, and perform masculinity—both online and offline. Drawing on a hybrid ethnographic approach—analyzing Instagram content from 15 life coaches a…
Psychology (19 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (9 works) · Internet privacy (9 works) · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (7 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (7 works)