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Stress and mental health problems impede social functioning and may also complicate relationship formation with peers. The aim was to investigate whether high perceived stress among young adults is associated with social interaction behaviour both via face-to-face interaction and via smartphone interaction. The data was derived from the Copenhagen Network Study, where 535 first-year students (mean age 21.3, 77% male) self-reported on perceived stress at baseline and were subsequently followed for three months with continuous Bluetooth recordings of face-to-face interactions and smartphone interactions (calls and texts) measuring the network size, frequency, and duration of interactions. Logistic regression was used to assess associations between perceived stress (high/low) and social interactions adjusting for sex, age, and personality traits. Participants with high perceived stress were more likely to engage in a larger call and text network and have a higher call and text frequency compared to individuals with low perceived stress. We found a non-statistically significant tendency that participants with a high perceived stress level spend less time meeting face to face with peers. Stressed students engage in frequent smartphone interaction which may be explained by a social support seeking behaviour, or it may be that accommodating a large network via the smartphone is stress-inducing.

The era of ‘big data’ studies and computational social science has recently given rise to a number of realignments within and beyond the social sciences, where otherwise distinct data formats – digital, numerical, ethnographic, visual, etc. – rub off and emerge from one another in new ways. This article chronicles the collaboration between a team of anthropologists and sociologists, who worked together for one week in an experimental attempt to combine ‘big’ transactional and ‘small’ ethnographic data formats. Our collaboration is part of a larger cross-disciplinary project carried out at the Danish Technical University (DTU), where high-resolution transactional data from smartphones allows for recordings of social networks amongst a freshman class (N = 800). With a parallel deployment of ethnographic fieldwork among the DTU students, this research set-up raises a number of questions concerning how to assemble disparate ‘data-worlds’ and to what epistemological and political effects? To address these questions, a specific social event – a lively student party – was singled out from the broader DTU dataset. Our experimental collaboration used recordings of Bluetooth signals between students’ phones to visualize the ebb and flow of social intensities at the DTU party, juxtaposing these with ethnographic field-notes on shifting party atmospheres. Tracing and reflecting on the process of combining heterogeneous data, the article offers a concrete case of how a ‘stitching together’ of digital and ethnographic data-worlds might take place.

Oplevelsen af intimitet er for de fleste tæt forbundet med det at være fysisk nært et andet menneske. alligevel overses den fysiske dimension ofte i vores forståelse af intimitet. Ved at koble den nu historiske proxemics-litteratur (Hall 1966) med hypermoderne sensordata udforsker denne artikel intimitetens fy- siske dimension i mødet mellem mennesker. Ved hjælp af Bluetooth-sensorer registreres den fysiske afstand i samtlige møder (n=128.490) blandt en årgang af førsteårsstuderende på danmark Tekniske Universitet. analysen viser, hvor- dan forskellige karakteristika ved de studerende og ved mødet selv har betyd- ning for den fysiske nærhed i mødet. Vi finder bl.a., at kvinder står tættere på hinanden end mænd, samt at venskabs-indikatorer, som Facebook-venskab, er forbundet med en øget nærhed i mødet. Ved at udnytte datas tidslige di- mension viser vi yderligere, at den fysiske nærhed stiger i løbet af det enkelte møde. Vi viser også, hvordan den fysiske nærhed varierer over dagens og ugens forløb, og hvordan der sker en generel stigning i mødernes nærhed som seme- stret skrider frem. Undersøgelsen er altså et eksempel på hvordan digitale sen- sordata kan tilbyde socialvidenskaben intime mikrosociologiske detaljer om den fysiske nærhed i vores møder, og videre, hvordan disse nye datakilder åbner op for helt nye måder at studere og forstå sociale interaktioner.