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Performing Not-Not-Me in SoMe: A New Theatrical Typology of Self-Presentation Online Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Anne-Britt Gran
Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) is frequently used to analyze online self-presentations in social media (SoMe) and other social network sites (SNS). The term “self-presentation” seems to be here to stay. We argue that Goffman’s dramaturgical model belongs to another era, and that online self-presentation needs new theoretical approaches and new
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Viral Justice: TikTok Activism, Misinformation, and the Fight for Social Change in Southeast Asia Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Nuurrianti Jalli
This study examines the use of TikTok as a platform for youth activism in Southeast Asia, focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Through a mixed-methods approach that includes qualitative content analysis, semi-structured interviews, systematic fact-checking, and digital trace data, the research explores how activists leverage TikTok’s unique features to promote social justice and mobilize
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Jalaiah Effect: A Story of a Stolen Dance on TikTok and Trans-Platformization of Ignorance Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Mariam Betlemidze
This article explores how ignorance becomes a cultural affordance of trans-platformization, focusing on the Renegade dance’s evolution into a viral sensation that fueled TikTok’s rise and launched new teenage influencers. Employing new materialist feminist theory, Actor-Network Theory, and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, this article operationalizes the concept of trans-platformization
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Affordances-in-Practice: How Social Norm Dynamics in Climate Change Publics Are Shaped on Instagram and Twitter Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Nathalie Van Raemdonck, Ike Picone, Jo Pierson
Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this
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The Media Trust Gap and Its Political Explanations: How Individual and Sociopolitical Factors Differentiate News Trust Preferences in Asian Societies The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Yufan Guo, Yuzhe Lei
Despite the increasing reliance on online media for news consumption, people generally exhibit lower levels of trust in online news relative to traditional media. To explain the preference disparities in media trust and their potential cross-national variations, this article examines individuals’ trust gap between newspapers and Internet news across 14 countries and regions in East, South, and Southeast
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Speculative labour: The financialized imagination of creative work and the assetization of digital art through non-fungible tokens (NFTs) New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-08 Ana Alacovska, Christian Fieseler, Victor Renza Avellaneda
This article investigates – based on semi-structured interviews and conversations on cryptoart forums – how digital artists experience the blockchain-enabled assetization of their work through non-fungible tokens, including the transformation of digital artworks (which previously had negligible if any economic value) into assets capable of increasing in price value over time and generating future income
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Book Review: The Illiberal Public Sphere: Media in Polarized Societies by Václav ?tětka & Sabina Mihelj (Eds.) The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-02-06 Marijana Grbe?a Zenzerovi?
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No Better Than Soup? Comparing Null Experimental Effects of Political Facebook Ads Across Persuasive and Instrumental Measures of Effectiveness Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-05 Bridget Barrett, Shannon C. McGregor
Studies on digital advertising effects claim that the primary purposes of online ads are persuasive: They seek to change vote choice or voters’ attitudes toward candidates. But recent scholarship has noted that social media’s unique affordances encourage electoral campaigns to use them in specific ways, such as using Facebook’s ads for email list-building. We conceptualize such strategic campaign goals
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Tell me why: The impact of mindful sharenting explanations by momfluencers: An experimental study with mothers New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-02-05 Elisabeth Van den Abeele, Liselot Hudders, Ini Vanwesenbeeck
Given the number of identified risks associated with influencer sharenting, momfluencers are increasingly adopting a more mindful approach to sharing information about their children online. Prior qualitative research suggests that followers respond positively towards these mindful sharenting practices, especially when motives are communicated. However, there is a lack of experimental exploration into
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Book Review: Conflicted: Making News from Global War by Isaac Blacksin The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-02-04 Stuart Allan
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Book Review: Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood by Lilie Chouliaraki The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-02-04 Yan Yi
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“Cash Masters” Coming Out as “Straight”: Social Media and the Changing Dynamics of Gender and Sexuality Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-31 Sozen Basturk
This article explores a novel concept called “straight cash master” emerging on social media platforms, especially X. The concept refers to relationships where self-identified straight men act as masters and primarily gay individuals take on the role of slaves. Several factors make this concept worthy of examination. First, these relationships are complex, involving dimensions of financial domination
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Truth Default or Generalized Skepticism? The Role of Overconfidence in the Relationship Between Social Media News Use and Traditional Media Use Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-31 Taewoo Kang, Kjerstin Thorson, Chankyung Pak
This article examines a model positing that overconfidence in political understanding resulting from social media use for news and politics hampers traditional media use. It confirms a positive relationship between Facebook political information experiences and overconfidence in political understanding. However, contrary to expectations, there is a positive relationship between overconfidence and traditional
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A Fresh View of the Veracity Effect in Deception Research: Bond and DePaulo Re-examined Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-31 Timothy R. Levine, Kim B. Serota
A reanalysis of Bond and DePaulo’s meta-analysis of deception detection accuracy from the perspective of truth-default theory is reported, focusing on truth bias, the veracity effect, and the implications of the ubiquitous 50%–50% base rates used in primary experiments. Unlike Bond and DePaulo, we examine the relationships among truth bias, the veracity effect, and overall accuracy providing new insights
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Banana Populism: Exploring the Emotionally Engaging, Authentic, and Memeable Rhetoric of Populist Visual Communication Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Zea Szebeni, Ilana Hartikainen, Sophie Schmalenberger, Michael Cole
This study conceptualizes “banana populism,” a novel analytical framework to examine how whimsical imagery functions in in contemporary populism. Banana populism utilizes the ordinary—exemplified by the banana—for its ubiquity, inherent humor, and absurdity, transforming these elements into powerful political tools. These articulations effectively mainstream extreme ideologies, invite affective investment
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Internet Memes as Stabilizers of Conspiracy Culture: A Cognitive Anthropological Analysis Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Emily Godwin, Brittany I. Davidson, Tim Hill, Adam Joinson
Internet memes have emerged as the de facto language of the internet, where standardized memetic templates and characters distill and communicate narratives in simple, shareable formats. While prior research has highlighted their broad appeal as they traverse diverse audiences, their cultural function within online communities has received less attention. To investigate this function, we draw on cognitive
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Twitter (X) and the Commercial Determinants of Health: Characterizing the Most Amplified, Influential, and Connected Voices Driving Twitter Discourse About Tobacco Regulatory Policy From September 2019 to July 2021 Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Nathan A. Silver, Miao Feng, Elexis C. Kierstead, Hy Tran, Steven Binns, Sherry Emery, Barbara A. Schillo
Tobacco content on Twitter (X) generally opposes regulation. Although a near real-time data source of the public’s response to prominent events heightens the allure of extrapolating public sentiment from Twitter content, tobacco policy sentiment on the platform may be more indicative of industry-affiliated top users. We examined 2 years of tobacco policy discussion on Twitter (X) at the user level
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Data solutionism at work: When public institutions meet data-driven firms New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Tamar Ashuri
In recent years, public institutions have turned to data-driven firms for solutions to the many complex operational challenges they face. This study explores the growing ties between public institutions and data-driven firms by focusing on the case of the Tel Aviv Municipality and a (data-driven) startup accelerator it established in the city. Based on semi-structured interviews with the Municipality
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“When pigs fly”: Resources swapping, affordable marketing, and the transformation of Douyin from short video sharing to online shopping New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Shuaishuai Wang
With 600 million daily users in 2020, Douyin faced monetization challenges after increased advertising led to a decline in user engagement. The app pivoted successfully to “shoppable videos” and livestream shopping by operating as a retail infrastructure. This article analyzes this transformation, arguing that Douyin strategically limits data availability, creating an artificial scarcity for capturing
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“GOD IS MY SPONSORED AD!! MY ALGORITHM!”: The spiritual algorithmic imaginary and Christian TikTok New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-29 Sara Reinis, Corrina Laughlin
This article employs Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) to analyze the affective public surrounding the hashtag #christiantiktok. We find that “Christian TikTok” discursively negotiates the unpredictable visibility affordances of TikTok’s algorithm by ascribing layers of spiritual significance to how the algorithm delivers content. Our research uncovered four key themes to this spiritualized
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Media consolidation and news content quality Journal of Communication (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-24 Marcel Garz, Mart Ots
News organizations have been under financial pressure to streamline their activities for decades. Critics argue that this pressure undermines the quality of news, posing a severe threat to democracy. However, the effects of media consolidation on news quality are theoretically ambiguous and empirical evidence is scarce. To address this gap, we study the case of the Swedish newspaper industry between
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No Consistent Evidence for Between- and Within-Person Associations Between Objective Social Media Screen Time and Body Image Dissatisfaction: Insights From a Daily Diary Study Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-24 Adalia Y. H. Goh, Andree Hartanto, K. T. A. Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Nadyanna M. Majeed
With the abundance of social media content that promotes unrealistic beauty standards, there are growing concerns about the potential negative impact of social media use on body image satisfaction. While some studies highlight negative associations, others present null effects, pointing to methodological limitations like biased and unreliable self-reported screen time measures and a focus on singular
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Patient Evaluation of International Medical Graduates’ Verbal and Nonverbal Strategies to Manage Their Lack of Comprehension: Investigating the Role of Goal Inferences Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-24 Danni Liao, Lisa M. Guntzviller
Guided by goal understanding theory, we investigated how U.S. patients evaluate communication strategies international medical graduates (IMGs) adopt to manage their lack of comprehension of patient idioms. Participants ( N = 569) watched a video of an IMG and a patient interacting in a 3 (verbal: being blunt, feigning comprehension, providing rationale) × 2 (nonverbal: higher, lower immediacy) × 2
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The queer vanguard: how television streaming platforms promoted intersectional LGBTQ+ content to establish their brands Journal of Communication (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Katherine Sender
The “queer vanguard” theorizes how Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other television streaming platforms articulated intersectional lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and nonbinary (LGBTQ+) representations with attributes of narrative complexity, hipness, prestige, and authenticity in pursuit of subscribers. Streamers reworked branding strategies innovated in the 1980s and 1990s by cable and
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Toxic Communication on TikTok: Sigma Masculinities and Gendered Disinformation Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Samuel Tanner, Fran?ois Gillardin
A growing body of research highlights digital platforms like TikTok’s pivotal role in shaping meaning for their users, particularly regarding gender perceptions. With TikTok increasingly serving as a search engine for teens, understanding how opinions are formed necessitates examining online content and interactions. Our article focuses on the construction of masculinity and gender dynamics with sigma
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I see a double-edged sword: How self-other perceptual gaps predict public attitudes toward ChatGPT regulations and literacy interventions New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Myojung Chung, Nuri Kim, S Mo Jones-Jang, Jihyang Choi, Sangwon Lee
The double-edged nature of generative artificial intelligence (AI) underscores the importance of understanding complex and paradoxical public views about this emerging technology. Heeding to this call, this study examined how the general public perceives and reacts to Chat GPT and the implications of these perceptions, drawing on the third-person and first-person effect. A national survey in the United
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Predictors of shifts in Internet use and frequency among older adults in Japan before and in later stages of COVID-19: A longitudinal panel study New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Atsushi Nakagomi, Kazushige Ide, Katsunori Kondo
The study identifies the predictors of four patterns of shift in Internet use and frequency among older adults from the pre-COVID-19 to later stages of the pandemic. Our data included 4699 participants from a nation-wide panel study, the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study from 2019 to 2022. The findings demonstrated that 322 of 1884 (17.1%) nonusers initiated Internet use in 2019, while 418 of 2815
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Introduction: The Future of Global Journalism—Relationships, Tools, and Power The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Ruth Moon, Lea Hellmueller, Herman Wasserman
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All The (Fake) News That’s Fit to Share? News Values in Perceived Misinformation across Twenty-Four Countries The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Sami Nenno, Cornelius Puschmann
While there is a strong scholarly interest surrounding the content of political misinformation online, much of this research concerns misinformation in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. Although such research has investigated the topical and stylistic characteristics of misinformation, its findings are frequently not interpreted systematically in relation to
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Cross-cutting families: how parent politics shape political communication and socialization practices Journal of Communication (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-21 Emily Van Duyn, Kirsten Pool
Many families in the United States hold divergent political beliefs, which may cause relational issues between parents and affect the political socialization of their child(ren). Through a mixed-methods approach, we first assess data from in-depth interviews (N = 30) with parents in cross-cutting romantic relationships, or relationships where partners hold different political beliefs, to inductively
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Children as concealed commodities: Ethnographic nuances and legal implications of kidfluencers’ monetisation on TikTok New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Tom Divon, Taylor Annabell, Catalina Goanta
Our article delves into the emergence of ‘kidfluencers’ within the content creator economy, highlighting how children’s participation intertwines their identities with monetisation strategies on platforms. Focusing on TikTok, we blend ethnographic and legal analysis of 215 videos from 23 kidfluencers in Israel, New Zealand and the Unites States, illuminating the complexities of monetising childhood
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“(Virtuous) Wives Don’t Have Anything to Hide”: Understanding Digital Privacy Perceptions and Behavior of Married Women in Rural India Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-18 Debjani Chakraborty, Chhavi Garg
This study explores digital privacy perceptions and behaviors among married women in rural India, a rapidly expanding demographic of mobile media and Internet users in the Global South. This ethnographic study found that women’s experience of privacy entails balancing between norms related to “hide” and “having nothing to hide.” Specifically, conflicting practices of avoiding online visibility while
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Oscillation Between Resist and to Not? Users’ Folk Theories and Resistance to Algorithmic Curation on Douyin Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-18 Hui Lin
An increasing number of users are aware of algorithmically driven content curation. Yet, while numerous studies have examined how people understand algorithmic power, there are insufficient numbers of studies about how people respond to and resist algorithmic curation in different sociocultural contexts. This article adopts a walk-through method and a diary-interview approach with 31 participants to
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From Volunteerism to Corporatization: Analyzing Participation in the 2015 and 2023 Reddit Blackouts Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Andreas Schmitz, Mattia Samory
Reddit, one of the largest global social media platforms, has undergone significant transformations since its inception in 2005. From a loosely structured, niche platform to a globally recognized company with a standardized and regulated governance system, Reddit’s evolution has been marked by a shift in the power dynamics between its owners, moderators, and users. 2015 and 2023 were marked by the
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From prejudice to marginalization: Tracing the forms of online hate speech targeting LGBTQ+ and Muslim communities New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Ali Unlu, Sophie Truong, Nitin Sawhney, Tuukka Tammi, Tommi Kotonen
This study investigates online hate speech in Finland, particularly Twitter messages targeting people of Muslim faith and the LGBTQ+ community, using a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative text classification with a BERT model and qualitative thematic analysis via BERTopic and examination of highly interacted posts from 2018 to 2023. The study shows increasing instances of hate speech
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Journalists’ Perceptions About Public Trust in East African Media: Comparative, Cross-Country Surveys from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Meghan Sobel Cohen, Karen McIntyre
Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which the public trusts an array of media content, outlets, and platforms. However, the bulk of this work has focused on audience research in Western democracies. This study uses surveys of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya in 2019 to examine the metajournalistic discourse surrounding how press freedom levels, technological advancements
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The effect of positive and negative daily social media emotional experiences on older adults’ subjective age: Unveiling the negativity bias in WhatsApp groups New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-16 Tali Gazit, Yoav S Bergman, Yaakov Hoffman, Gali Weissberger, Amit Shrira
Social media has become instrumental for older adults in maintaining social connections, which are an integral component of older adults’ well-being. However, little is known about how daily positive/negative social media emotional experiences are associated with older adults’ subjective views of aging. The current study examined daily emotional experiences related to WhatsApp groups and their association
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Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community Social Media + Society (IF 5.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Common to scholarly analyses of the “digital revolution” is their inclination to deploy technology—the platforms, their affordances, the virtual spaces they create—as the main entry into evaluations of digital media’s impact on socio-cultural organization. While certainly useful in helping us understand the dynamics of digital practices and spaces, these narratives often fail to provide a fuller portrait
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Covert political campaigning: Mapping the scope, scale, and cost of cross-platform election influence operations New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Fatima Gaw, Jon Benedik A Bunquin, Jose Mari H Lanuza, Samuel I Cabbuag, Noreen H Sapalo, Al-Habbyel Yusoph
This study investigates gray areas of contemporary political campaigning from a political economy perspective. Using qualitative field and digital methods, computational methods, and economic modeling, it analyzes the scope, scale, and cost of commissioning social media influencers in the 2022 Philippine Elections across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. The researchers find that there is a high
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Culture in online anonymous interaction: Negotiating imageboard group style on Ylilauta New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Arttu Siltala, Tuukka Yl?-Anttila, Eeva Luhtakallio
We suggest that the theory of group styles, based on the pragmatist idea of people creatively using cultural tools for meaning-making, can be a fruitful way forward to study the cultures of anonymous online communities such as imageboards. We argue that users creatively build these ‘glocal’ cultures on affordances but also globally disseminated cultural toolkits of, in this case, imageboards. We present
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Data disaffection: Toward a relational and affective understanding of datafication New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Rohan Grover, Josh Widera, Mike Ananny
Research on user experiences with datafication, the transformation of social life into data, identifies “digital resignation” and “privacy cynicism” as rational responses to feeling overwhelmed and disempowered. But how, exactly, do shared feelings and emotions mediate relationships between datafication and disengaged responses – both individually and institutionally? We develop a relational analysis
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When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Petter T?rnberg, Juliana Chueri
The spread of misinformation has emerged as a global concern. Academic attention has recently shifted to emphasize the role of political elites as drivers of misinformation. Yet, little is known of the relationship between party politics and the spread of misinformation—in part due to a dearth of cross-national empirical data needed for comparative study. This article examines which parties are more
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Empowered by Curation: Spatial Differentiation in the Interrelationship Between Social Media Political Curation, Political Competence, and Trust—The Case of Michigan Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-11 Taewoo Kang
This study examines geographic variations in the relationship between social media political curation and political trust. Analyzing survey data from the U.S. state of Michigan, findings reveal a positive relationship between social media political curation and internal political efficacy, which is stronger among rural residents compared to urban counterparts. Moreover, this geographic pattern extends
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Social digital dilemmas: Young people’s and parents’ negotiation of emerging online safety issues New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-10 Justine Humphry, Jonathon Hutchinson, Olga Boichak
This article examines emerging online safety issues for Australian teenagers (12–17 years) in their use of social media, apps and online games drawing on findings from a multi-phase, mixed-methods research project carried out from January 2022 to July 2023. Based on the research, we develop a new understanding of ‘social digital dilemmas’, situating our analysis within the rapidly changing social media
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Authoritarians Do It Better? Belief in Misinformation in Turkey The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-10 Simge And?, Ali ?arko?lu, Lemi Baruh, Zsofia Bocskay
Misinformation poses a significant threat to the integrity of political systems, particularly in competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs), where it can distort public perception and undermine democratic processes. This study focuses on the 2023 Turkish general elections—a context characterized by widespread misinformation. While extensive research has been conducted on misinformation in democratic
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Mitigating Information Insecurity: An African Perspective on Satisfaction With Democracy The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-10 Jimmy Ochieng, Maria Elizabeth Grabe, Kioko Ireri, Kevin C. Mudavadi
While Africans are committed to democracy, governments across the continent have failed to deliver on the democratic aspirations of the populace, with declinatory outcomes for satisfaction with democracy (SWD) over the past decade. A number of reliable variables (e.g., economics, political participation, democratic performance) have been used over the past 50 years to study trends in SWD worldwide
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When Visual Communication Backfires: Reactance to Three Aspects of Imagery Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-09 Fabienne Bünzli, James Price Dillard, Yuwei Li, Martin J. Eppler
Although many persuasive messages include imagery, relatively little is known about the potential for the visual components to induce reactance. This research examined the effects of three message variations—camera angle (low vs. eye-level), antithesis (vs. thesis) (i.e., the juxtaposition of contrasting images), and facial expression of emotion (anger vs. happiness)—on reactance and subsequent persuasion
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The reproduction of structural inequalities in online job search strategies and outcomes New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-08 Stefano De Marco, Guillaume Dumont, Ellen Johanna Helsper
Does digital stratification foster inequalities in access to work and employment? We address this question by examining inequalities related to online job search skills and the outcomes of the online search process. Results from a representative survey of 1103 Spanish jobseekers show that online job search skills positively affect the chances of getting an interview through employment platforms but
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A “drop in the ocean”? Emerging adults’ experiences and understanding of targeted political advertising on social media New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-06 Melanie Hirsch, Alice Binder, J?rg Matthes
Political microtargeting practices aim at exposing social media users to political content that aligns with their preferences and interests. Hence, such exposure becomes a personal experience, dependent on individual perceptions. So far, research has rarely investigated young social media users’ personal experiences with targeted political advertising (TPA). In the present study, five qualitative focus
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Video games as spaces for providing information and awareness of algorithmic control in the gig economy New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-04 Marta Fernández-Ruiz, Martina Pi?a, Júlia Vilasís-Pamos
The gig economy has been explored recently in the media through videos, films, and series. Similarly, different video games have shown the ideology, values, and mechanisms that govern the gig economy. This article applies six mechanisms of algorithmic control at work to achieve a dual objective: to analyze how platform workers experience algorithmic control and to examine the extent to which video
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Talking about problems in online health communities: examining verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination Journal of Communication (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2025-01-03 Stephen A Rains, Shelby N Carter, Levi S Ross, Michelle I Suarez
Drawing from theory about rumination, we examine the impact of verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination in online health communities. Our analyses show that when users verbally ruminated in a message starting a thread (compared to when they did not), they were more likely to again verbally ruminate and to report a negative mood in the next thread they started. These relationships
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Which Visuals Really Matter? Effects of (Counter) Stereotypical Visual Information on Candidate Evaluations Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Jennifer Bast, Corinna Oschatz
Building on research on gender stereotypes and a parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory on impression formation, this project investigates the effects of gender stereotypical and counter-stereotypical visuals on voters’ evaluations of political candidates with two pre-registered experimental studies. Study 1 ( N = 1,225) is a conceptual replication of an online experiment on the effect of visual communication
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Is There an Easy Path to Eudaimonia? Novel Insights on the Dual-process Perspective in Media Entertainment Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Daniel Possler, Jule Scheper, Arthur A. Raney, Christoph Klimmt
The dual-process perspective in entertainment research differentiates between hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences. Hedonic responses are thought to result from relatively effortless reception of non-challenging (or “light”) media fare. In contrast, eudaimonic entertainment experiences are theorized to depend on cognitively or affectively challenging content (e.g., tragedies) and effortful
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Toward a More Powerful Experimental Communication Science: An Assessment of Two Decades’ Research (2001–2023) Communication Research (IF 4.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Ye Sun, Lijiang Shen, Zhongdang Pan, Sijia Qian
Low statistical power undermines a credible scientific discipline. This paper presents a statistical power assessment of experimental communication research based on a random sample of 416 studies published in five central communication journals over the last two decades (2001–2023). Our analyses showed that there was a lack of attention to power and power analysis, with the majority of studies not
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The expression of values on social media: An analytical framework New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Limor Shifman, Tommaso Trillò, Blake Hallinan, Saki Mizoroki, Avishai Green, Rebecca Scharlach, Paul Frosh
Social media is a central arena for the articulation of values, shaping what people around the world deem important and desirable. However, traditional value typologies struggle to capture the dynamic nature of value expression in digital spheres and overlook new communication-related values prevalent in these environments. Addressing these gaps, we developed an analytical framework for investigating
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Peripheral creator labor: Navigating regional marginalization and resistance in social media entertainment New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Errol Salamon
This article examines how social media creators in the United Kingdom navigate regional labor dynamics in small urban cities and towns and their perceptions of potential resistance strategies. Grounded in a creator workers’ inquiry and thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with creators ( N = 53), it expands the notion of peripheral creator labor. It reveals how digital factors and historically
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Mobile and platform users’ mediatized rituals in response to terrorist attacks: a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshots Journal of Communication (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-12-31 Andrew A Fitzgerald
This article conducts a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshot data capturing responses from US mobile users and their broader ecosystems to a series of Daesh (ISIS) terrorist attacks in Europe and North Africa in 2017. It identifies four genres of mediatized rituals in observed responses. Three micro-ritual genres focus on individual reparative action detached from systemic analysis
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“Or They Could Just Not Use It?”: The Dilemma of AI Disclosure for Audience Trust in News The International Journal of Press/Politics (IF 4.1) Pub Date : 2024-12-31 Benjamin Toff, Felix M. Simon
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the production and distribution of news has generated theoretical, normative, and practical concerns around the erosion of journalistic authority and autonomy and the spread of misinformation. With trust in news already low in many places worldwide, both scholars and practitioners are wary of how the public will respond to news generated
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“The algorithm is like a mercurial god”: Exploring content creators’ perception of algorithmic agency on YouTube New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2024-12-25 Roland Verwiebe, Claudia Buder, Sarah Weissmann, Chiara Osorio-Krauter, Aaron Philipp
Algorithmic systems wield substantial influence in contemporary society. Since it is mostly unknown how algorithms specifically work, content creators (CCs) on YouTube who rely on them for economic reasons are in a constant state of sensemaking regarding the characteristics and perceived preferences of the algorithm. To understand these perceptions, we draw from previous research on technological agency
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Becoming Red-Pilled: Affective production in online countercultural collectives New Media & Society (IF 4.5) Pub Date : 2024-12-25 Mikael Andéhn, Joel Hietanen, Alice Wickstr?m
Advances in information and communication technologies present remarkable potential for globally dispersed people to connect and engage around a variety of interests. While online communities seemed to initially offer vast potential for social cohesion, their ephemeral nature continues to raise doubts about their ability to facilitate meaningful togetherness. It has also been suggested that the largely