Despite the popularity of social media influencers (SMIs), little is known about how their content reflects and conveys certain values, leaving a gap in understanding their role as value intermediaries. This content analysis examined the representation of Schwartz values in the Instagram profiles of 59 of the most followed Western SMIs, celebrities, and athletes. Relying on 1256 posts and 2936 stories

A recurring finding in communication studies is that political actors with formal-institutional power are highly visible in the media. The relationship between informal power and media visibility remains less understood. This study examines whether central roles in networks of political collaboration—as indicators of informal power—are associated with increased visibility in mainstream news media.

In the so-called post-truth age and the rise of social media, news circulates widely and quickly, leading to information overload. In this context, individuals experiencing high issue involvement tend to engage more with information. Literature has recently focused on news literacy interventions to protect people from fake news. However, few have addressed these initiatives’ immediate and differential

The present study sampled online daters to (a) inductively explore their motives for meeting a potential partner for face-to-face (FtF)-like interaction (i.e. a modality switch [MS]); (b) examine modality-switching motives and pre-MS modality expansion in relation to MS channel choice (e.g. video chat or in person); and (c) investigate whether MS motives, degree of pre-MS modality expansion, and MS

TikTok presents an opportunity for strategic and health communicators. There are more than 300 million views associated with the hashtags #sexualassaultawareness and #sexualassaultsurvivors on TikTok. Using quantitative content analysis, we analyzed 150 TikTok videos about “sexual assault” for trends in self-disclosures (RQ1), message framing (RQ2), types of sexual violence (RQ3), emotions (RQ4), creator

Amid growing ecological threats to wildlife, organizations are increasingly exploring multimedia solutions to spur action. One such strategy involves enabling audiences to embody threatened wildlife (animal embodiment) via augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). Despite AR/VR’s capacity to visualize threats onto one’s virtual body, little is understood about how these platforms differ in their uses

OnlyFans is a patronage platform primarily for sexually explicit content. Unlike professionally produced pornography, OnlyFans allows users to actively select their subscriptions and engage directly with creators. However, little is known about how the use of OnlyFans relates to various satisfaction with oneself and others. This study ( n = 293) explores the association of OnlyFans usage—including

Sharing memes has emerged as a prevalent form of social grooming behavior on digital platforms, yet research has largely focused on the content of internet memes rather than the behavior of sharing them. This study explores whether sharing memes with different humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor styles) relates to subjective well-being through the mediating

In this article, we critically analyze TikTok videos related to the #MelaninMansion trend and the #BlackTikTokStrike. Videos analyzed were posted during the hashtags’ peak engagement, 2019–2020, and the summer of 2021, respectively. Drawing from Black cyberfeminism and literatures on Black cyberculture, platform politics, visibility, affect, resistance, refusal, and copyright, we identified shared

Since social media influencers have become popular and monetize their content with the help of advertising deals, they have been associated with morally questionable, deceptive behavior. The list of misconduct is long. It includes, for example, not disclosing sponsored content, withholding negative experiences with promoted products, buying fake followers, and promoting false ideals of beauty. Building

Publicly visible women in political news are often met with sexist backlash in social media’s comment sections. We take a social norms perspective to argue that the presence of politically active women in the news sets a descriptive norm to increase female social media users’ participation in online discussions (role model hypothesis). However, sexist comments against visible women function as signals

Using relational turbulence theory, this study examined the conditional direct and indirect associations between parent involvement (i.e., facilitation and interference) in emerging adults’ romantic relationships and relational turbulence in the parent-child relationship vis-à-vis the valence of conversations with parents about the romantic partner. Participants included 264 emerging adult children

While research has highlighted the ties between algorithms and culture, this article focuses on how cross-cultural encounters shape developers’ perceptions of their algorithmic work. I ask: How do cultural transitions and intercultural encounters influence people’s perceptions of their algorithms? How do key issues regarding algorithmic production get translated and reinterpreted? Based on 50 semi-structured

Porn studies have a long tradition of researching porn as a cultural artifact in relation to adult audiences. Recently, there has been increasing interest in young people’s uses and perceptions of porn since there is a general concern about its possible harms and dangers. This article aims to shed light on these issues through an ethnographic study carried out in Barcelona and its metropolitan area

This article investigates the presentation and public self-disclosure of sexual content by young people on YouTube’s #storytime genre. Applying Beck’s concept of the “risk biography,” we explore the way these digital narratives recount encounters with pornography in a setting intended to reach other young people. The analysis combines computational text analysis with manual analyses to characterize

The evolving technological and social landscape offers adolescents new avenues for engaging with digital content, particularly in the realm of intimate activities. Public discourse often oversimplifies the intricate relationship between adolescents and online pornography. The prevailing narrative tends to portray pornography as detrimental to health and well-being, relying on a limited exposure and

Ongoing discussion between parents and their children, including listening to young people, is essential to enable young people to safely navigate the online sexual ecosystem. Research suggests, however, that parents and their children conceptualise and discuss online risks in different ways. This article documents findings from interviews and focus groups with 40 Australian parents exploring their

Pornography use is often considered harmful, but what constitutes such harm is frequently vague and driven by adult perspectives about risk. This study aimed to explore how adolescents themselves understood harm and risk from pornography use. Thirteen male adolescents, 14 to 15 years old, were interviewed using in-depth interviews to understand their perspectives of risk and harm. Reflexive thematic

Harm—and the ways in which it is interpreted, negotiated, discussed, and unpacked by adolescents themselves—is a key term in almost all debates about young people’s experiences with online pornography. This essay situates the topic of this special issue—adolescents’ perceptions of harm from accessing online sexual content—within a broader context of the discourses and practices that inform research

In 2010, the EU Kids Online project, and aligned AU Kids Online study, interviewed one parent and one child (9–16) from 25,542 families across 26 countries. Information gathered included parents’ awareness of their child’s experiences of sexual content online. This dataset has since been updated by recent ethnographic work in Australia and Ireland, capturing parents’ approaches to managing their children’s

Young people’s experiences with sexual content online are a regularly featured popular topic in news media, feeding heated ongoing policy and academic debates. Concerns and calls for further regulation and youth’s self-regulation are exacerbated when celebrities and popular public figures share statements and confessions about their own sexual lives at a young age. In this article, we study the discursive

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ‘UNCRC’ provides that children should participate in research about matters that concern them. However, this is not always realised, particularly in the context of risky, sensitive and morally complex experiences. Failure to include children causes lacunae in our understanding of the factors that influence their lives and well-being. In this

Sexting is prevalent among adolescents, yet we lack an understanding of adolescents’ responses to its various forms and the factors that may drive those responses. This study adopts an integrative media effects framework and a nationally representative sample of Czech adolescents (11–16 years old, N = 2500, 50% girls) to investigate: (1) the associations between depression, loneliness, self-esteem

Communication science has been criticized for relying on WEIRD samples. One question that arises from such criticisms is whether core communication constructs and measures generalize to different demographic groups. In other words, are measures of common communication variables interpreted similarly across groups? In this study, we assess the measurement invariance of numerous scales that are used

Adolescents’ self-presentation on social media as an expression of identity development is influenced by personal norms and perceived social norms of relevant others. Snapchat is popular and widely used by adolescents to express themselves. A Bitmoji, as an alternative to a traditional profile picture, offers a wide range of self-presentation options through an avatar editor, including body stature

The digitalization of communication practices affords major gains for qualitative methods of communication science. What we term digital qualitative fluidity captures the way traditional boundaries between interviewing and ethnography may dissolve through the use of contemporary, digital technologies. We illustrate how communication scholars have leveraged the digital to open ethnographic spaces within

In the void left by struggling local media, localized social media systems have proliferated on the web as key avenues for the exchange of location-specific information. Yet, as local ecosystems shift, there is a need to understand the types of audiences localized social media spaces attract, and whether these spaces can foster healthy communities. This article presents the results of a multi-national

The governance of online speech is increasingly a battleground shaped by competing social expectations. This study investigates TikTok’s content moderation in Indonesia and Pakistan, two countries with vast market potential and delicate social and moral stances. Through document analysis and in-depth interviews with government officials, industry representatives, and civil society experts, it examines

Research suggests that social media can cause users, especially young adults, to overestimate their knowledge about climate change. Knowledge overestimation may then lead users to communicate more frequently about climate change with others. We test these hypotheses with a four-wave panel survey of respondents aged 18–29 years. We find that social media exposure is positively associated with respondents’

In this multi-platform, comparative study, we analyze social media messages from political candidates ( N = 1,517) running for Congress during the 2022 U.S. Midterm election. We collect data from seven social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Truth Social, Gettr, Instagram, YouTube, and Rumble over the 4 weeks before and after election day. With this unique dataset of posts, we apply computational

Digital platforms have long been understood as important spaces where identity performance takes place with networks and interpersonal interaction forming the basis of many theoretical approaches to self. Due to TikTok’s distinctive technical structure, scholars have argued that processes of sociality and identity construction have changed, calling into question some of the founding principles of how

Digital activists play a pivotal role in fostering local democracy, civic participation, and social advocacy across sub-Saharan Africa. Using technological, social, and discursive layers of communication, these activists navigate complex socio-political environments to amplify marginalized voices and facilitate local governance dialogues. Platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook enable real-time communication

TikTok has become an important digital space for solidarity among underrepresented groups. However, it is also a space where stereotypes and offensive jokes are proliferated through unique affordances such as “Use This Sound.” For this study, I focused on Black-Asian multiracials known as “Blasians” and how they used TikTok. I analyzed 56 videos, 47 by Blasian creators and nine by non-Blasian creators

This article examines social media’s role in the “online-offline nexus,” focusing on how digital interactions translate into sustained, large-scale, right-wing protests. Using Brazil as a case study, the research combines document analysis with non-participant observation in open right-wing Telegram groups and participant observation at the largest of Brazil’s 100 protest camps. At this camp in Brasília

In the everyday context, the term “hate speech” has become increasingly politicized and emotionally charged, yet these vernacular constructions of hate speech remain under-explored. Used as both a rhetorical weapon and an object of genuine concern, various understandings of hate speech circulate within interactive everyday cultures of digital media, shaped by the digitalised media environment. With

Digital social interactions differ in many ways from face-to-face interactions. This study examines four preregistered hypotheses on the within-person interplay between interaction mode (i.e., digital vs. face-to-face interactions), interaction quality, and momentary well-being. Young adults from Spain ( N 1 = 216) and the Netherlands ( N 2 = 22)—provided 5,116 and 1,386 Ecological Momentary Assessments

Drawing on Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT), we predict that news content that is inconsistent with out-party media’s ideological stance forms a positive expectancy violation and thus leads partisans to view these outlets more favorably. To test this prediction, we conducted two online experiments where participants viewed source-consistent or source-inconsistent news headlines from in-party (CNN

Emotionally charged messages can distort truth perception, and recent research highlights the impact of emotional language on news beliefs. While past studies have focused on emotional valence, the role of emotional arousal in shaping beliefs remains underexplored, particularly regarding its long-term effects. This research investigates both immediate and delayed beliefs in response to headlines with

This study revisits the original four research questions of Williams et al.’s “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games” to investigate if mainstream videogame representations have changed over time. In addition, this study expands on the original by including a fifth question examining the intersection of representations within videogames. Using a sample of the top

The implementation of warning labels has been shown to slow the spread of harmful content on social media, but the mechanisms by which these interventions affect individuals' sharing decisions are not yet known. This study sought to establish the efficacy of these interventions and to explore the mechanisms of their influence using two parallel studies conducted within the United States: an online

When using social media, adolescents encounter various types of appearance-related content. Yet, no research has explored how daily exposure to such types of content, including idealized content, body positivity (BoPo) content, and a mixture of both, links to adolescents’ body image states. With the present 14-day daily diary study among French adolescents ( N = 108, 1,434 daily assessments, M age

Resilience to disinformation on social media relies on the user’s ability to critically assess disinformation and even counter it. Active users, who, with their actions, can curate the information environment of others, can play a crucial role in stopping the dissemination of disinformation. Their activities, such as correcting or reporting, in the decentralized social media environment may prove more

This article investigates how social media can enable and constrain civil society organizations’ (CSOs) discharge of accountability. Based on a comparative analysis of the Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (X) posts of the Swedish Red Cross during 1 year ( N = 1014), we propose a framework of affordances that illustrate how platform features, practices, norms, and perceptions about audiences jointly

Grassroots activism constitutes the backbone of civil society across political regimes. While many studies explored the role of social media and digital platforms in social movements, we focus on the ways local activists use these social media platforms to organize collectively against unwanted urban development. Localized (place-based) contention differs from large-scale social movements: it is less

In developing and least developed economies, traditional and spatially bound communities play a critical role in bridging the gap when formal social welfare systems fall short in meeting essential needs. While the role of traditional communities in addressing societal issues is well recognized, research on imagined communities as agents of social welfare is a new and rapidly developing area of study

Wayfair, an American furniture and home goods retailer, garnered sudden attention across social media in 2020, particularly Twitter and Reddit, due to a conspiracy theory linking the company to child trafficking. The short-lived, well-delineated nature of this theory, coupled with its simultaneous emergence across multiple platforms, makes it a distinct case for studying the dynamics of online conspiracy

Online hostility poses a growing societal challenge, yet quantitative evidence on how social media users respond to different kinds of hostility targeting different identities is limited, even though insights into bystander perceptions are detrimental to combat the online hate endemic. This online experiment ( N = 461) examines cognitive (perceived acceptability), affective (negative emotions), and

We gain exposure to news across a range of platforms and, within each platform, across a range of sources. How does a multi-platform media environment shape the news choices we make and the gaps that result from those choices? We address this question tracking news exposure across TV, the web, and YouTube for approximately 55,000 unique US panelists over a period of 39 months. We find important variations

Media coverage of political actors and debates is a crucial avenue for voters to learn about political parties and their policies. However, nowadays party-media agenda-setting is increasingly shaped by large-scale transformations and the fragmentation of political communication across various party channels (e.g., press releases, social media, speeches) and media types (e.g., newspapers, television