Die Kernfrage dieser Bachelorarbeit ist, ob das Vertrauen in Medien auf die politische Einstellung wirkt und ob Mediennutzung auf diese Wirkungsrichtung Einfluss nimmt. Hierbei werden sowohl Mediengattungen als auch einzelne Medienformate differenziert betrachtet. Die politische Einstellung wird anhand der Einstellungsdimensionen Effektivität der Regierung, Legitimität der Regierung, Einflussüberzeugung, Responsivität der politischen Akteure und Integrität der politischen Akteure operationalisiert. Hierbei wird der Fokus auf junge Erwachsene gelegt, welchen verbreitet Politikverdrossenheit nachgesagt wird. Zur Prüfung des Zusammenhangs zwischen Medienvertrauen und der politischen Einstellung wird eine quantitative Online-Befragung der Studenten/ Studentinnen der Universität Koblenz (N = 496) durchgeführt. Zur Datenauswertung werden Regressionsanalysen sowie die ANOVA angewandt. Die Ergebnisse weisen nicht auf eine allgemeine negative politische Grundhaltung junger Erwachsenen hin. Zudem indizieren die Resultate, dass das Vertrauen in Medien einen signifikanten Effekt auf die politische Einstellung hat (p ≤ .05). Mediennutzung hat hingegen unzureichende Erklärungskraft. Auch in zukünftigen Studien würde es sich anbieten, das Medienvertrauen als zentrale unabhängige Variable zu untersuchen, wobei ein Generationenvergleich unterschiedlicher Bildungsschichten empfehlenswert wäre.

The lasting hype around the mobile internet and the related technology of the mobile applications seem not to drop off. The immense economic potential of this market leads the businesses and ventures to continuously find new ways of monetization. The underlying causes of that phenomenon are rarely challenged. Scientific research in the field of "ubiquitous mobile" has not yet developed a clear overall picture of the causes and effect chains. Attempts of deriving causes by studies in related mass media such as the computer or the internet have been discussed controversially. By combining the research streams of media motive usage and the customer retention, this paper will present a new research model. Based on a quantitative survey in the German speaking the gained data proves the motives for mobility, information gathering and entertainment purposed to be the most important drivers of customer satisfaction in mobile applications. The paper also highlights a significant correlation between the customer satisfaction and the other determinants of customer retention.

Virtual worlds have been investigated by several academic disciplines for several years, e.g. sociology, psychology, law and education. Since the developers of virtual worlds have implemented aspects like scarcity and needs, even economic research has become interested in these virtual environments. Exploring virtual economies mainly deals with the research of trade regarding the virtual goods used to supply the emerged needs. On the one hand, economics analyzes the meaning of virtual trade according to the overall interpretation of the economical characteristics of virtual worlds. As some virtual worlds allow the change of virtual world money with real money and vice versa, virtual goods are traded by the users for real money, researchers on the other hand, study the impact of the interdependencies between virtual economies and the real world. The presented thesis mainly focuses on the trade within virtual worlds in the context of virtual consumption and the observation of consumer prices. Therefore, the four virtual worlds World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Entropia Universe and Second Life have been selected. There are several components required to calculate consumer price indices. First, a market basket, which contains the relevant consumed goods existing in virtual worlds, must be developed. Second, a weighting scheme has to be established, which shows the dispersion of consumer tendencies. Third, prices of relevant consumer goods have to be taken. Following real world methods, it is the challenge to apply those methods within virtual worlds. Therefore, this dissertation contains three corresponding investigation parts. Within a first analysis, it will be evaluated, in how far virtual worlds can be explored to identify consumable goods. As a next step, the consumption expenditures of the avatars will be examined based on an online survey. At last, prices of consumable goods will be recorded. Finally, it will be possible to calculate consumer price indices. While investigating those components, the thesis focuses not only on the general findings themselves, but also on methodological issues arising, like limited access to relevant data, missing legal legitimation or security concerns of the users. Beside these aspects, the used methods also allow the examination of several other economic aspects like the consumption habits of the avatars. At the end of the thesis, it will be considered to what extent virtual world economic characteristics can be compared with the real world. Aspects like the important role of weapons or the different usage of food show significant differences to the real world, caused by the business models of virtual worlds.