The grants come from the NWO’s Open Competition XS for topics in Social Sciences and Humanities for promising ideas; this programme has a fast assessment procedure that asks applicants to act as assessors for each other’s proposals via anonymous peer reviews.
News images and engagement
The project from assistant professor Dainis Zegners from RSM’s Department of Technology and Operations Management awarded around €50,000 in NWO funding is From Pixels to Engagement: Using Multi-Modal AI to Analyze How Images Drive Engagement with News on Social Media. He explains that images influence what news we engage with online, and his project will use uses artificial intelligence to analyse how images in social media posts of major news outlets shape audience engagement. He intends to combine large-scale analysis of social media data using multi-modal AI with controlled experiments to identify which image characteristics drive online news consumption. “My findings will provide insights for policymakers, researchers, and news organisations to better understand how visuals affect engagement, helping them make evidence-based decisions that balance audience engagement with journalistic objectivity,” he says.
Clothing and women’s leadership potential
Assistant professor Maartje Schouten from RSM’s Department of Organisation and Personnel Management was awarded around €50,000 for her project Dressing for influence.
“Outfits impact the impression others have of the wearer. I will look at the impact of clothing of both genders on the perception of influence. The research that will be conducted is not just about how women’s clothing is viewed, but also about how men’s clothing is viewed, although I expect that the effects will be more impactful for women than for men,” she says. “Since women’s outfits are under greater scrutiny than those of men, the clothing women wear could be potent signals for their leadership potential and influence. Yet, how clothing impacts the evaluation of women’s leadership potential is a largely unexplored topic in the field of management.” Her research aims to examine how clothing can help women overcome the double-bind of leadership; namely, to be seen as capable and leader-like as well as woman-like. She proposed a series of studies over 12 months to examine what characteristics of clothing are associated with leadership potential for women and whether adherence to these characteristics affect the actual influence of women in groups.
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