AbstractEighteen earlier studies have investigated the associations between social media use (SMU) and adolescents’ self-esteem, finding weak effects and inconsistent results. A viable hypothesis for these mixed findings is that the effect of SMU differs from adolescent to adolescent. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a preregistered three-week experience sampling study among 387 adolescents (13–15

AbstractEighteen earlier studies have investigated the associations between social media use (SMU) and adolescents’ self-esteem, finding weak effects and inconsistent results. A viable hypothesis for these mixed findings is that the effect of SMU differs from adolescent to adolescent. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a preregistered three-week experience sampling study among 387 adolescents (13–15

AbstractOver the last two decades, news-oriented comedy programs have risen to compete with traditional hard news media as sources of information about politics. To the extent that a politically knowledgeable electorate is necessary for a thriving democracy, understanding the mechanisms underlying the extent to which political comedy facilitates or inhibits a well-informed citizenry is critical. Across

AbstractUsing the revelation risk model (RRM), we examined factors that might motivate family-undocumented youth (i.e., youth who are undocumented or who have an immediate family member who is undocumented) to confide in a teacher(s). Latent transition analysis with 414 Latina/o/x 9th-12th grade students uncovered three profiles: concerned indirect revealers (i.e., moderate teacher-student relational

AbstractThis article aims to explain learning outcomes of incidental exposure (IE) to political information in online environments. Drawing on the Political Incidental News Exposure Model, we predict learning outcomes by distinguishing between first-level (i.e., scanning of incidentally encountered information) and second-level IE (i.e., effortful processing of incidentally encountered information

This study investigates how successful Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) Twitter accounts constructed the followings that were central to their disinformation campaigns around the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Treating an account’s social media following as both an ego network and an audience critical for information diffusion and influence accrual, we situate IRA Twitter accounts’ accumulation

AbstractThe current meta-analysis synthesizes four decades of research (k = 120) on the antecedents and effects of parasocial relationships (PSRs). In line with contemporary theorization of PSRs as an extension of, rather than as a substitution for social relationships, the meta-analysis does not find a significant relationship between social deficiencies and PSRs. PSRs are also strongly correlated

AbstractResearch identifies contradictory effects of anger in political communication, engendering heuristic processing of information that exacerbates partisan bias in some situations, but increasing attention and deepening information processing in others. This study addressed these contradictions by positing subjective hope as a moderator of anger’s effects on message processing and persuasion.

AbstractStudies of eudaimonic entertainment experiences have primarily examined the effects of exposure to serious content (e.g., tragic movies) rather than lighthearted content that nonetheless harbors personal significance (e.g., beloved movies from childhood). Two experiments investigated the characteristics of these so-called nostalgic entertainment experiences among U.S. adults, using Star Wars

AbstractMany media are associated with masculinity or femininity and male or female audiences, which links them to broader power structures around gender. Media scholars thus must understand how gendered constructions develop and change, and what they mean for audiences. This article addresses these questions through longitudinal, in-depth interviews with female video gamers (2012–2018), conducted

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A central goal of news research is to describe, explain, and predict the dynamic transactions between news and event occurrences (Chaffee & Berger, 1987; Thompson, 1995). Almost 100 years ago, Lippman (1922) began to call attention to how media messages shape the “pictures in our heads” of the outside world, setting the stage for a century of research investigating news media’s role in shaping audiences’

Disrespectful Democracy: The Psychology of Political IncivilitySydnorEmily, Columbia University Press, New York, 2019, paperback £30.00, pp 256

On becoming neighbors: The communication ethics of Fred Rogers. KlarénAlexandra. University of Pittsburgh Press, $35.00, pp. 264Pittsburgh, PA, 2019

Informed by the notion of spillover effects between two phenomena, this study examines how differences in prior attitudes would influence the relationships posited by the influence of presumed media influence (IPMI) model. Specifically, this study examines how pre-existing favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) food are associated with audiences’ intention to consume nano-enabled

This study examines the processes of complex innovation adoption in an interorganizational system. It distinguishes the innovation adoption mechanisms of organizational-decision-makers (ODMs), who make authority adoption decisions on behalf of an organization, from individual-decision-makers (IDMs), who make optional innovation decisions in their own work practice. Drawing on the Theory of Reasoned

AbstractIn the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we

Changes in political perceptions and preferences may result from the combined effects of news from various media. Estimating these combined effects requires the best possible, albeit different, measures of news obtained from self-selected mass media and social media that can be linked to panel survey data concerning perceptions and preferences. For the 2017 Dutch national elections, such data is available

The dyad is an important unit of human interaction found in many settings in life. Research on interpersonal relationships and outcomes that relies on measuring each member of a dyad on putative causes and effects can require complex analyses to illuminate how members of the dyad influence one another. Dyadic mediation analysis is a branch of mediation analysis that focuses on establishing the mechanism(s)

Campaign success is contingent on adequate exposure; however, exposure opportunities (e.g., ad reach/frequency) are imperfect predictors of message recall. We hypothesized that the exposure-recall relationship would be contingent on message processing. We tested moderation hypotheses using 3 data sets pertinent to "The Real Cost" anti-smoking campaign: past 30-day ad recall from a rolling national

Media content can shape people's descriptive norm perceptions by presenting either population-level prevalence information or descriptions of individuals' behaviors. Supervised machine learning and crowdsourcing can be combined to answer new, theoretical questions about the ways in which normative perceptions form and evolve through repeated, incidental exposure to normative mentions emanating from

Concerns about the low public trust in U.S. media institutions have recently deepened amid increasing partisan polarization, large-scale digital disinformation campaigns, and frequent attacks on the press from political elites. This study explores the social factors that shape our trust in mainstream news sources. An examination of longitudinal network data from thirteen residential student communities

Many hoped that social networks would allow for the open exchange of information and a revival of the public sphere. Unfortunately, conversations on social media are often toxic and not conducive to healthy political discussion. Twitter, the most widely used social network for political discussions, doubled the limit of characters in a Tweet in November 2017, which provided a natural experiment to

Misinformation can influence personal and societal decisions in detrimental ways. Not only is misinformation challenging to correct, but even when individuals accept corrective information, misinformation can continue to influence attitudes: a phenomenon known as belief echoes, affective perseverance, or the continued influence effect. Two controlled experiments tested the efficacy of narrative-based

Published in: Journal of Communication DOI: 10.1093/joc/jqz006 Publication date: 2019 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Document license: CC BY-ND Citation for published version (APA): Hjorth, F. G., & Adler-Nissen, R. (2019). Ideological Asymmetry in the Reach of Pro-Russian Digital Disinformation to United States Audiences. Journal of Communication, 69(2), 168-192

This study investigated the longitudinal relationship between children’s digital game use and fluid and crystallized intelligence. Specifically, this study examined whether digital games affect children’s fluid and crystallized intelligence (an effects perspective), whether children with higher levels of fluid or crystallized intelligence are more attracted to digital games (a selection perspective)

By analyzing the “mass idols” (Lowenthal, 1944) of contemporary media culture, this study contributes to our understanding of popular communication, branding, and social media self-presentation. Leo Lowenthal, in his well-known analysis of popular magazine biographies, identified a marked shift in mass-mediated exemplars of success: from self-made industrialists and politicians (idols of production)

This study analyzes reinforcing spirals between online media usage and political interest among adolescents. By applying a two-dimensional conceptualization of online media usage that distinguishes between content and interactivity characteristics, the study focuses on the mechanisms and processes stimulating the long-term development of political interest during adolescence. Findings from a unique

Changes to the media environment have increased polarized voting in America through both addition and subtraction. We argue that the decline of local newspapers has contributed to the nationalization of American politics: as local newspapers close, Americans should rely more heavily on available national news or partisan heuristics to make political decisions. We assess the impact of newspaper closure

Structured, intergroup communication that occurs in a deliberative discussion context can be an effective method for improving intergroup relations. Conceptualizing this unique kind of communication as deliberative contact, this study experimentally examined its effect and mechanisms based on two Deliberative Polling projects, conducted in two different countries: Australia (N = 339) and Bulgaria (N

Flow is characterized by a high level of intrinsic reward that results from a balance between task difficulty and individual ability. The Synchronization Theory of Flow offers an explanation for the neural basis of this process. It predicts an energetically-optimized, brainnetwork organization between cognitive control and reward regions when task difficulty and individual ability are balanced. While

Networked content flows that focus or fragment public attention are key communication processes in multimedia ecologies. Understandings of events may differ widely, as networked attention and frami ...

In order to serve as an antidote to extremist messages, counter-messages (CM) are placed in the same online environment as extremist content. Often, they are even tagged with similar keywords. Given that automated algorithms may define putative relationships between videos based on mutual topics, CM can appear directly linked to extremist content. This poses severe challenges for prevention programs

We appreciate the chance to respond to Webster and Taneja’s comments to our article (Mukerjee, Majó-Vázquez, & González-Bailón, 2018). We take this as a welcome opportunity to engage in the always-pertinent discussion on why measurement and methods are so important to reach meaningful theoretical conclusions from empirical work. For the sake of transparency, we would like to begin by stating that we

Abstract Disclosing personal information to another person has beneficial emotional, relational, and psychological outcomes. When disclosers believe they are interacting with a computer instead of another person, such as a chatbot that can simulate human-to-human conversation, outcomes may be undermined, enhanced, or equivalent. Our experiment examined downstream effects after emotional versus factual

Interpreting the Internet: Feminist and queer counterpublics in Latin America [book review)

In social media, sharing posts exposes a larger number of users to the preferred content of their peers. As users select or discard content, they collectively highlight facets of events or issues as to promote a particular interpretation. This article describes how social media users frame political events by selectively sharing content that is cognitively congruent with their beliefs. We model cognitive

Interest in the meaningful sides of media entertainment has blossomed over the last decade, with numerous scholars examining how certain media content can enhance social good and well-being. Because social scientific work in this area is relatively new and is rapidly evolving numerous conceptualizations of meaningful media experiences have been introduced. In this paper we argue for the importance

In this paper we make an argument for why thinking critically about neoliberalism is important for media and communication studies. We advance a case for a critical media analysis that will take seriously the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism as an increasingly central means of governing and producing people’s desires, attachments, and modes of “getting by.” To illustrate our broader theoretical

The Communications field must challenge traditional understandings of media in the face of a transformation in the dynamics of capitalism which prioritizes the generation of value from data based on continuous surveillance. New advertising and data-processing developments mean that while the term media may continue to attach to the distribution of narratives, researchers must now conceive it as the

Intergroup relations have been studied systematically for more than 60 years and have become embedded in mainstream communication studies. The intergroup communication (IGC) approach provides a crucial level of understanding beyond the interpersonal and the societal, highlighting the interconnections and mutual influences between groups and individuals. In this paper, we briefly describe the main features

Journal of Communication (JoC) published its special issue “Ferment in the Field” in 1983 (vol. 33, no. 3). Thirty-five years later there still is a great interest in discussing the origins, current state, and prospects of our field. This special issue titled Ferments in the Field: The Past, Present and Future of Communication Studies presents 20 articles, plus this introduction, with the intention

The seminal 1983 "Ferments in the Field" collection made limited reference to environmental issues and concerns. Considering communication media and technological artifacts as both nature and cultu ...

In this article, we employ the lens of distributed creativity to explore how youth use online creativity to express themselves politically and engage in political dialogue with peers. We examine youth participation around the 2016 U.S. presidential election results on three online affinity networks representing different creative genres (games, fan fiction, and collaborative multimedia production)

Although it has been argued that populist communication only appeals to a specific audience, extant research has exclusively studied the effects of populist communication in forced-exposure media environments. Responding to this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments (N = 562 and N = 558) in which we manipulated the core idea of populist messages—attributing blame—in forced and selective exposure

Digital inequalities undermine the democratizing potential of the Internet. While many people engage in public discourse through participatory media, knowledge gaps limit engagement in the networked public sphere. Participatory web platforms have unique potential to facilitate a more equitable production of knowledge. This paper conceptualizes a pipeline of online participation and models the awareness

How do people consume news online? Here, we propose a novel way to answer this question using the browsing behavior of web users and the networks they form while navigating news content. In these networks, two news outlets are connected if they share a fraction of their audiences. We propose two crucial improvements to the methodology employed in previous research: a statistical test to filter out

Book Review - The Digital Difference: Media Technology and the Theory of Communication Effects W. Russell Neuman Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2016, pp. 369

By studying letters written to the dead published in the popular Israeli press between 1997 and 2014, this paper examines the practices that constitute communicative acts toward a deceased person using interpersonal and mass media, in order to embody the recipiency of the dead. Using an analytical framework that draws on media ecology, communication theory, and discourse analysis, the paper demonstrates

Collective action and community ecology theories frame this study of longitudinal interorganizational networks in Croatia during the country's political transition. As time progresses toward political stability, grass-roots organizing activities shift through participation in new networks. Although engaged cross-sector communication was important in early stages of the transformation, homophilous partnering

Influential research on comparative media systems identifies distinctive models according to which certain countries—particularly advanced democracies—share key features in their journalistic cultures. Revisionist literature has not only emphasized the limitations of such models, but also highlighted the hybridization of journalistic cultures elsewhere. This article tests the hybridization thesis,

Researchers have started to demonstrate that media exposure to outgroups can reduce prejudice. However, in contexts of segregation a bias to select ingroup-rich media might hinder exposure and prevent those positive effects. We conducted a survey study (n = 1,095) in South Africa, a context with a notorious history of racial separation and persisting informal segregation. In accordance with the social

Media literacy interventions partly aim at preventing undesirable media effects at a later point of time. However, longitudinal research on the interaction between media literacy education and media effects is lacking. In this longitudinal study among 1,947 13–25-year-olds, we started to address this lacuna by examining the potential of porn literacy education at schools to attenuate the longitudinal

How human beings think about, talk about, and organize around sexuality is changing. Growing social legitimization for sexual minority relationships and a more fluid social understanding of sexual identities has shifted how we bound “normal” sexuality. In the workplace, these shifting norms affect employees of all sexual identities who must make sense of new policies and complex daily practices. This

This study explores how news messages carrying parts of the populist ideology contribute to a polarization of public opinion about populism. It combines a content analysis of news coverage on two policy areas (N = 7,119 stories) with a two-wave panel survey (N = 2,338) in four European metropolitan regions (Berlin, Paris, London, and Zurich). In three regions, unopposed media messages with a populist

This is a review of the following book: Musolff, A. (2016). Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London (UK) and New York (USA): Bloomsbury.

Scholars have long observed that presidential communication about a marginalized group can help shape that group's reality. Yet most analyses of such communication focus on a relatively small number of texts, making it difficult to identify important changes over time and analyze factors that might explain those changes. The present study proposes an analytic framework that specifies 4 measurable parameters

Despite the increased attention to eudaimonic media experiences, to date scholars have paid little attention to the specific portrayals responsible for those experiences. Study 1 of this project reports the first systematic content analysis of self-transcendent media—a particular type of eudaimonic media—using a sample of 100 “inspirational” YouTube videos. The presence of 20 specific elicitors associated