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In this paper, we reflect on the implementation of a gamified application for helping students learn important facts about their study program. We focus on two design features, of which different configurations were tested in a field experiment among Dutch university students (N = 101). The first feature is feedback, which is expected to increase engagement, with personalized ("tailored") feedback being more effective than generic feedback. The second feature is a session limit that was designed to prevent users from "binging" the game, because this could prevent deep learning. Results showed that generic feedback was more effective than tailored feedback, contrasting our expectations. The session limit, however, did prevent binging without reducing the overall number of sessions played. Our findings suggest that careful consideration of game properties may impact sustaining and encouraging play via a gamified application.

Satirical news presents a critique of current affairs through humor. Previous research suggests that satirical news can have different humor forms (e.g. linguistic strategies) and humor contents (e.g. news topics, targets), and that such differences in humor characteristics can influence audience effects of satirical news. This paper extends this research by analyzing these relationships across different types of outlets in a content analysis (Study 1) and audience engagement analysis (Study 2). In Study 1, we compared humor forms and contents of satirical news headlines posted on Facebook (N = 5,775) between outlets from different countries (United States and the Netherlands) with different political leanings (liberal and conservative). Findings showed that the coded humor forms reasonably consistently characterized satirical news across outlet types, while humor contents did not. In Study 2, we examined associations of the humor characteristics with the number of likes and comments the Facebook posts received. Results were often outlet-specific, especially in case of the coded humor contents. This paper thus reveals that when satirical news' audience effects differ by humor characteristics, this may be attributed less to differences in humor form, and more to differences in humor content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satirical news and its effects on outcomes such as appreciation and persuasion have gained considerable currency as a topic of research in mass communication studies. Through the framework of construal level theory, we investigated whether different levels of spatial distance influence these effects. In a between-subjects experiment, participants in the United Kingdom (UK; n = 282) and New Zealand (NZ; n = 370) read a satirical or non-satirical news text summarizing a study reporting on the negative impact of increased digital device screen time on young children. Depending on condition, the texts referred to entities and locations in either the participant's own country (spatially close) or a foreign country (spatially distant). Results showed significant main effects of satirical news on audience perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. While there were no significant interactions between article type (satirical vs. regular news) and spatial distance (close vs. distant), our results indicated that satirical news was associated with higher perceptions of spatial distance for both the UK and NZ participants as well as higher perceptions of social distance for the NZ participants. Exploratory indirect-effects analyses found several indirect effects of satirical news through increased perceptions of spatial and social psychological distance on audience emotions, text perceptions, and attitudes. We take these results as initial evidence suggesting spatial and social distance are potential variables to consider in future investigations of satirical news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satirical news blends entertainment with information and opinion. Satire can thus impact various audience responses, such as positive and negative affect, learning, and persuasion. However, the presence and size of these communicative effects have been debated. We conducted a three-level random-effects meta-analysis on the impact of satirical news (k = 70, Ntotal = 22,969). We compared satirical news to two reference categories: (1) control messages with no or irrelevant information, and (2) regular news with similar informational content. Results demonstrate that satirical (vs. regular) news increased positive affective responses and message discounting. By contrast, satire increased learning compared to control messages, but not compared to regular news. We find limited evidence for a positive main effect of satire on persuasion. However, we find different moderating effects, indicating that persuasion effects are stronger for Republicans (vs. other voters), student (vs. general-population) samples, TV satire (vs. online and print satire), and for satire targeting social actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that a defining characteristic of satirical news shows (e.g. The Daily Show) is discursive integration: a creative blend of genre conventions of regular news and fiction. This study aimed to extend the concept of discursive integration to another popular form of satirical news: written satirical news. We focused on both liberal (e.g. The Onion) and conservative (e.g. The Babylon Bee) online outlets of satire. We collected texts published in 2018 by a total of 36 satirical news, regular news and fiction websites (65,530,647 words). Discursive integration was measured by means of linguistic register, because genres can be effectively identified through patterns of linguistic features. Four linguistic register dimensions were identified. Findings showed that written satirical news is indeed characterised by discursive integration because written satirical news' register scored in between the registers of written regular news and written fiction. No differences in discursive integration levels were found between liberal and conservative satirical news. This study demonstrates the value of discursive integration for understanding the genre of satirical news across partisan lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]