Disponible en Dadun la tesis «Digital Media use in the everyday social interactions» de Aurelio Fernández Zapico.

Resumen: The rise of digital communication has profoundly transformed the landscape of everyday social interactions, altering their structure and potentially shaping their quality and psychological consequences. In this thesis, I argue that a comprehensive understanding of how individuals experience and benefit from digital media use in everyday interactions requires an integrated, ecologically valid, and unbiased approach one that captures the momentary and dynamic nature of interactions, encompasses both online and offline modalities, and accounts for situational- and individual-level differences. Specifically, this thesis addresses three key gaps in the literature on media effects and everyday social interactions: (1) a theoretical gap, (2) a methodological gap, and (3) a situational gap. After outlining these gaps in the introduction (Chapter 1) and reflecting on the methodology (Chapter 2), I present four empirical studies that collectively form the core of this work. My first study (Chapter 3) proposes a novel, theory-driven operationalization of interaction quality based on a triadic valuing framework, tested across three studies examining its momentary outcomes, universality, and dyadic dynamics. My second study (Chapter 4) investigates how social interaction quality mediates the association between modality (digital vs. face-to-face) and momentary well-being. My third study (Chapter 5) shifts the focus to moderations, examining how the situation influences the impact of interaction modality on perceived quality. My fourth and final study (Chapter 6) investigates how individual differences specifically social anxiety moderate these associations. Together, this thesis advances both interpersonal and computer-mediated communication research by applying best practices in research design and analysis, and by offering new theoretical and empirical insights into how interaction quality across digital and face-to-face contexts shapes everyday social experience.

La tesis ha sido defendida en septiembre de 2025 y ha sido dirigida por Charo Sádaba, Mariek Vanden y Javier García-Manglano.