Guided by the Social Identity Model of Collective Action, the current research utilizes a three-wave longitudinal study collected pre and post the 2020 U.S. Presidential election to examine the motivations underlying Latino Americans’ group-based social media engagement (N = 1,050). Results revealed that Time 1 group (Latino) identity increased Time 2 perceptions of social media as efficacious in improving

By giving voice to 15 Ukrainian refugees, aged 10–14, who sheltered in a refugee camp in Poland in March 2022, this qualitative study reveals how and why they used smartphones, to cope with the cha...

Extreme weather-related events like wildfires have been increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change. Public online conversations that reflect on these events as climate emergencies c...

Following the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, we sought to explore how two social media platforms were being used concurrently to disseminate far-right memes and discourse. Our study empl...

Much recent scholarship in the field of media phenomenology has investigated the role of temporality in shaping our experience of digital media in everyday life, as well as the ethical and politica...

Civil interaction is a core practice of democratic participation. However, this condition is undermined by a contemporary landscape of online political discourse rife with incivility. Given the see...

Personalized news recommendations shape social media users’ information environment. However, whether news recommendation algorithms asymmetrically influence users’ news engagement remains largely ...

This article examines the role that data-driven technologies play in expanding and reasserting the legitimacy of the US racial state during times of crisis. Specifically, I examine how prison offic...

ABSTRACT Political leaders construct meanings for current events in support of their existing policy goals, but the constructed meanings do not change when policy goals change. Consequently, the established narrative of the past becomes part of the policymaking terrain, justifying existing policies and creating criteria for policy success. It must be navigated by leaders seeking to reach their policy

ABSTRACT Dispositional communication competencies can be assessed in (a) a generic form that does not include any reference to a particular medium of interaction or in (b) a communication medium-specific version. To date, little is known about the specific media that individuals use as a reference and the weights they assign to them when responding to generic communication items – an important research

From US President Donald Trump’s Tweet labeling news media “the enemy of the people” to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s establishment of a politically appointed Media Authority, media freed...

Radio B92 was an iconic independent media institution in Serbia. Founded in 1989, B92 provided Belgrade listeners with subversive rock music, high-quality journalism, and independent perspectives o...

ABSTRACT In this essay, I draw on interview discourses with 22 Sassoi – same-gender-loving men in Ghana – to examine how they discursively deploy “straight,” “gay,” and “bisexual” identifications in specific contexts. Drawing on the work of postcolonial studies and queer intercultural communication scholarship, I show how Sassoi infuse gay, bisexual and straight identifications with alternative meanings

ABSTRACT More adults are dating in later life, yet little is known regarding how older adults navigate conflict in their newly formed relationships. Given theories suggesting that older adults are especially skilled in minimizing negativity within their relationships, the current study utilized data from 81 dating couples (age range 30–88) to examine potential age differences in couples’ behavioral

Abstract For online news organizations trying to improve audience engagement strategies, Facebook Groups and Messenger chats constitute promising avenues. We explore whether these meso news-spaces, with different discourse architectures and group sizes, affect the substance of the discussion and people’s impressions. In this study, we experimentally tested how training and intimate forms of news engagement

Abstract Online personal messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are now hugely popular around the world. Yet their role in the spread and social correction of misinformation remains under-researched. We carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the UK public (N = 102) to explore how social relationships and technological design interact and foster norms regulating how

Published in Digital Journalism (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Abstract This study incorporates the concepts of transparency, innovation, and collaboration within a broader analytic lens of trust-building infrastructure and applies that lens to an examination of the use of GitHub by 124 prominent news outlets over more than a decade. It finds that (a) their use of GitHub is not widespread but several outlets do actively use it; (b) they use GitHub to open-source

Abstract Engineering teams – a form of newsroom innovation labs – have been heralded as survival entities in the news ecosystem as they have the potential to improve where news goes and moves. At The Washington Post, these teams have been around for three years, and they started to implement tools like election models fueled by A.I. and smart data pipelines that can possibly affect the autonomy and

Abstract The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms compares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences translate into distinct practices, especially when examining cross-national

Abstract Trust lies at the heart of the disinformation crisis, as citizens must decide which narratives to follow and whether to accept “alternative truths.” Therefore, trust in institutions that publish reliable information can act as a shield against disinformation. This comparative study investigates the role of trust in news media and political actors and general attitudes toward democracy in the

Abstract Celebrity endorsement is a common advertising strategy, yet, as well-known scandals show, it is not without risk. Studies at the marketing–finance interface investigate how negative publicity surrounding a celebrity endorser affects firm value, though without determining how such events might spill over to the sponsor firms’ competitors and their stock prices. To address this research gap

Social media platforms have been adopted rapidly into our current culture and affect nearly all areas of our everyday lives. Their prevalence has raised questions about the influence of new communi...

Users adapt infrastructures materially to fit their needs, they engage in maintenance and repair, and they learn about the inner workings of infrastructures. Different degrees of user engagement wi...

ABSTRACT The current 14-day diary study among 186 adolescents (56.1% boys; Mage = 15.62 years) examined how daily exposure to positive social media content (i.e., portrayals of individuals’ best possible selves) relates to their daily well-being. The results suggest that exposure to uncommon positive content (i.e., vacations and relationships) positively relates to adolescents’ beliefs about their

Next to popular term Internet addiction, problematic Internet use (PIU) has established itself as an umbrella term for all types of repetitive impairing behaviors associated with new media technolo...

San Diego Comic-Con is North America’s premiere fan convention and a key site for mediating between media industries and fandom. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Comic-Con to abruptly move its...

This article explores the presentation of fake news, the most salient kind of disinformation, focusing neither on its text-based content nor its image-based form, but instead on its overall aesthet...

One of the early democratic promises of social networking sites concerned their potential to break down barriers between elites and citizens and facilitate two-way online interactions. More pessimi...

Because findings in prior research are ambiguous, it remains unclear whether and under which circumstances formal and informal support sources help older adults with their Information and Communica...

Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code requires Google and Facebook to negotiate payments with news publishers for news content appearing on the platforms. Facebook and Google lobbied against the c...

Published in Political Communication (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Feminist hashtags are often studied in the context of concise and highly visible hashtag movements. However, most social media and hashtag use exist outside the narrow confines of such movements. T...

Abstract In an era characterized by the widespread use of algorithmic systems and platforms in news production and distribution practices, the ethical practices of journalists face significant challenges. Drawing on Floridi’s onlife framework, this study aims to shed light on journalist-machine interactions and explores new ways to rearchitect journalism ethical standards through an integrative, object-oriented

This article adopts a feminist relational orientation to investigate the care practices that women develop when producing and engaging with body-focussed content online. We propose and argue for an...

Existing research emphasizes the precarity of workers engaged in the exchange of goods and services through digital platforms. Yet few studies have systematically examined how racial discrimination...

ABSTRACT Most major platforms and news portals use the feed approach to information display, which offers people the ability to engage in continuous scrolling. This affordance, “scrollability,” is an understudied feature that changes how people consume news. The endless scroll presents opportunities to monetize attention for advertisers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of headlines for news consumers

ABSTRACT Although turn-level dynamics involving the back-and-forth exchange of talk between support seekers and providers form the foundation for supportive conversations, they have largely been overlooked by researchers studying the implications of communication technologies for social support. To address this gap, we demonstrate the utility of examining turn transitions using configural frequency

ABSTRACT In the United States, individuals in precarious circumstances navigate numerous programs to supplement their food access. These programs operate in relation to stigmatizing discourses about poverty and food insecurity. This paper explores the sociomaterial meanings of food assistance, including SNAP, food pantries, and nonprofit food distribution. Using qualitative methods, we introduce the

Published in Political Communication (Ahead of Print, 2023)

The influencer industry follows a paradigm of letting go of control, which assumes that collaborations with influencers will only be effective if marketers grant influencers substantial autonomy in...

The rapid rise and fall of digital products and the ebbs and flows of Internet culture may seem antithetical—or at the very least a significant hurdle—to historical investigations. Can media schola...

ABSTRACT Prejudice and discrimination toward Black individuals in the U.S. serves to maintain White privilege. This research integrated the tenets of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977 Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. General Learning Press. [Google Scholar]) and White racial identity theory (Helms, 1990 Helms, J. E. (Ed.). (1990). Black and White racial identity: Theory, research, and

ABSTRACT Prior work has found that early corrections are often more effective than corrections encountered sometime after exposure to misinformation. However, these studies have generally considered only brief delays between misinformation exposure and correction, and do not explore processing style as a potential moderator of correction timing. We conducted a two-wave online experiment randomly assigning

ABSTRACT This paper joins a growing effort within mis/disinformation research to better address the transnational spread of misinformation and, in particular, the impact of political mis/disinformation on historically marginalized and immigrant communities. While misinformation spreads across cultural, sociolinguistic, and geo-political contexts, it impacts communities differently according to preexisting

Research has supported the effectiveness of narratives for promoting health behavior, but different narrative presentation formats (serial vs. episodic) have seldom been compared. Suspense theories...

Research on political partisans suggests that social media offer ideal playing fields for the group game of politics. This study considers how political and social identities interact to influence ...

Social media metrics allow media outlets to get a granular, real-time understanding of audience preferences, and may therefore be used to decide what content to prioritize in the future. We test this mechanism in the context of Facebook, by using topic modeling and longitudinal data analysis on a large dataset comprising all posts published by major media outlets used by American citizens (N≈2.23M

Swipe-based dating apps characteristically provide quantitative social feedback in the form of mattches. Surveys suggest a link between dating app success and well-being, but the nature of this cor...

Abstract In this commentary, I look back on ten years of Digital Journalism, and our shared efforts to define a field of Digital Journalism Studies. In doing so, I reflect on the strengths of our field as a socialized space as it has matured, and address two focal points, balance and uncertainty, which have centered my thinking about Digital Journalism Studies research. I then offer three recommendations

ABSTRACT Participants read English-based online texts from fictional organizations that either included no code-mixing, Hawaiian words without glosses (i.e., parenthetical translations), or Hawaiian words with English glosses. Relative to no code-mixing, code-mixing without glosses disrupted processing fluency, leading participants to feel less welcome in the organization. Code-mixing with glosses

ABSTRACT Body-worn camera and citizen device videos capturing police use-of-force are shared and commented upon widely within social media. This study investigated how point-of-view (POV: onlooker vs. officer perspective) and citizen skin color (dark skin vs. light skin), interacted to affect emotional responses, likelihood to comment and share, and comment on content. A predominantly White sample

The COVID-19 pandemic created a period of social and economic crisis that introduced two distinct problems for social media influencers. At the same time that the pandemic made their work economica...

This study aimed to examine the effects of commenting on a Facebook misinformation post by comparing a user agency–based intervention and machine agency–based intervention in the form of artificial...

ABSTRACT Contention over COVID-19 is only a recent example of increasing social division around science in the U.S. Many blame these divisions on actors who have strategically sowed doubt and distrust around expert supported positions and policies. However, this overlooks how scientists have fueled narratives of social and political conflict around science. This study explores how science influencers

Numerous studies have shown that individuals’ belief sensitivity—their ability to discriminate between true and false political statements—varies according to psychological and demographic characteristics. We argue that sensitivity also varies with the political and social communication contexts in which they live. Both battleground state status of the state in which individuals live and the level

This study expanded the communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA) to include communication about religion. Older adults (N = 272, MAge = 64.96 years) reported on the most important me...

Much research documented the influence of music on various behaviors, including substance use and delinquency. Yet, less is known about its influences on dimensions that are crucial for behavioral ...

We propose a three-pronged framework to study discourses surrounding social media activism initiated by networked counterpublics: personalized expressions that share stories and support, demands fo...

Recent studies demonstrate how violence, social media, and protest intertwine. This article complements this body of knowledge and indicates how social media enables new modes of small-scale protes...