Margot Verhelst

Margot Verhelst joined the research group imec-mict-UGent as an intern at the end of January. This internship is part of her master's program in New Media and Society at the faculty of Communication Sciences, which she will be finishing this year. For her master's thesis she is conducting a textual analysis on Hegemonic Masculinity in Popular Media Culture.  

For her internship Margot is conducting an interview study, within the realm of digital inclusion. More specifically, she tries to gain in-depth understanding of the digital practices and experiences of people who are classified or labelled as low digitally skilled by means of survey research. For this study Margot works together with dr. Sarah Anrijs and Floor Denecker. Within this study, language, usability, non-use as meaningful behaviour and societal expectancies are identified as more nuanced reasons for people to not use digital technologies and services. Both Margot’s choices for a thesis and internship study from a critical-constructivistic point of view demonstrates that her interest and strengths lie within qualitative research. However, she is also motivated to explore and engage with quantitative research methods in future research.