Search

AbstractAmidst an explosion in anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation and hate crimes in the United States, this study examines public discourses around legislation that suppress LGBTQIA+ rights. We conducted a computer-assisted content analysis of 25,711 posts on Twitter (now called X) collected during the time when bans on youths’ access to gender-affirming care were beginning to proliferate across the country. We identified five topics: education, legislation, medical, Disney dispute, anti-LGBTQIA+ attacks, and assessed the sentiments and toxicity levels of each topic. Findings reveal a fractured virtual public sphere in which discussions about LGBTQIA+ rights are contentious and toxic. We found that education was the most salient topic—whether children should be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools—and tweets on this topic were also the most toxic. Overwhelmingly, the tone of the tweets was negative, although this varied by the topic of the tweets. We discuss the implications of our findings for a healthy online public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a conjoint experiment in three countries (Brazil, n = 2038; Germany, n = 2012, and the United States, n = 2005), this study demonstrates that journalistic transparency can cue trust at the level of the entire news outlet—or domain level—using a Google Knowledge Panel that comes up when people search for a news outlet. In Brazil and the United States, two pieces of information in a Knowledge Panel provided the strongest heuristics that a news outlet was trustworthy: a description of the news outlet and a description of other sites accessed by people who frequent that news outlet's website. In Germany, information about journalists and the description of the news outlet were the strongest cues. Results offer insights into how people heuristically process online news and are discussed in relation to the heuristic-systematic model of information processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A US experiment (n = 1506) demonstrated how a new approach to writing protest stories challenges press patterns in the United States of underrepresented groups. News stories that explain the goals and background of a protest—a concept called legitimizing—and that humanize—rather than criminalize—a person whose death sparked a protest led news audiences to better understand the protest and those involved in the social movement. We also found that those with conservative political beliefs perceived these stories as less credible than those written following journalistic norms typical in the United States that tend to cast protesters and their causes in a negative light, although the opposite was true for those with liberal views. Results are discussed in relation to the protest paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hateful content online is a concern for social media platforms, policymakers, and the public. This has led high-profile content platforms, such as Facebook, to adopt algorithmic content-moderation systems; however, the impact of algorithmic moderation on user perceptions is unclear. We experimentally test the extent to which the type of content being removed (profanity vs hate speech) and the explanation given for its removal (no explanation vs link to community guidelines vs specific explanation) influence user perceptions of human and algorithmic moderators. Our preregistered study encompasses representative samples (N = 2870) from the United States, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that algorithmic moderation is perceived as more transparent than human, especially when no explanation is given for content removal. In addition, sending users to community guidelines for further information on content deletion has negative effects on outcome fairness and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most research has examined incivility in political contexts, few studies have explored the role of online incivility in contexts where partisan cues are lacking. Integrating insights from selective exposure, media salience, and serial position effects, we proposed the concept of "incivility salience" and examined how its two manifestations—position and proportion of uncivil messages in a comment thread—affected news engagement behavior. Through two conjoint experiments in the United States, we found that people avoided engaging with comment threads starting with uncivil content and the ones with a higher proportion of uncivil content. Furthermore, we identified that the salience of uncivil content could influence the extent to which people perceive such content as uncivil, which in turn impacts engagement behavior. Overall, this study offers a novel framework that considers incivility salience as a core element for understanding the perceptual and behavioral effects of online incivility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncivil user comments have been found to have a negative effect on how people perceive an issue featured in the news, a news story, or a journalist who reports a news story. To advance this line of research, we draw on expectancy violations theory and the concept of heuristic cues to theorize the toxic atmosphere effect. We theorize that incivility in online comment threads could pose an even larger challenge to news organizations by cuing news audience members to perceive an entire news outlet—not just an individual story—as lacking in credibility. Based on two experiments in the United States (Study 1, n = 520; Study 2, n = 1056), we show that exposure to incivility can lead people to perceive a news outlet as less credible even though the incivility did not directly attack the news outlet. Such effects hold true even when people are exposed to comment threads in which the first several comments are civil. Democratic and business implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends the literature on how transparency influences news credibility perceptions by examining trust signals at the news outlet level, rather than at the story level, as earlier research has done. Experiments in the United States (n = 1,037) and Germany (n = 1,000) found that exposure to trust signals in a Google search about a known news brand, rather than an unknown brand, and the German cultural context increased news credibility perceptions. Participants were more likely to click on trust signals that gave background about the news brand or offered ways to engage with a news outlet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This three-study project sought to test how news organizations can boost perceptions of credibility of their news outlet by improving journalistic transparency. Three experiments (Study 1: n = 753; Study 2: n = 599; Study 3: n = 321) tested whether adding a transparency box to news stories that explained why and how journalists covered each story would improve credibility perceptions. Study 1 used a mock news site, and the box did not increase credibility perceptions. Study 2 made the box more prominent and used the real audiences of two news sites, USA TODAY and the Tennessean, and the box increased credibility perceptions. Study 3 used a less prominent box on the real audiences of three McClatchy newspapers, and the box did not increase credibility perceptions regardless of where it was placed on the news story. Results suggest transparency boxes may have limited influence on news outlet credibility, but they must be very prominent to have an effect and do not work consistently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News organizations have a long history of covering civil rights protests in delegitimizing ways, and scholars have found that this coverage negatively affects public opinion. However, most media effects work has minimized the perspectives of Black people, and little is known about how racial identity might affect how protest coverage is perceived. We both survey (n = 1,052) and interview (n = 27) Black Americans to provide a rich understanding and interpretation of how they see and experience media coverage and how that influences them. We contribute to the literature by showing that Black Americans are dissatisfied with how news media cover their communities and covers protests, and they feel this coverage reifies harmful stereotypes and perpetuates invisibility politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study put forth a new concept, which we call engagement moderation, that is defined as community managers or journalists interacting with commenters to improve the comment threads, rather than deleting comments. We then tested this concept using an experiment (N = 798) on a mock Facebook page of a news site. Results showed that if journalists employed engagement moderation and used what are called high-person-centered responses to incivility—messages that acknowledge the emotional pain or upset people may feel—it produced more positive attitudes toward the news outlet's Facebook page, online community, and handling of incivility. Our findings provide guidance to news outlets regarding what type of messages are most beneficial if community managers or journalists enact engagement moderation by responding to uncivil commenters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two online experiments examined whether news labels attract reader attention and affect news story credibility. Both studies showed that labels garner little attention from newsreaders and do not influence perceptions of news story credibility. However, Study 2 demonstrated that a label that explained the type of news story produced better recall of labels and more accurate recommendations of what the label should be. Findings suggest that if labels act as cognitive heuristics, they are weak ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested whether different negatively valenced emotional reactions—feeling angry or depressed—to incivility produce varying intentions to speak out. A related goal was to assess whether these emotional responses led to intentions to speak out regardless of whether one holds a minority or majority viewpoint. Results of an online experiment (N = 1126) showed that intentions to speak out varied based on the intensity of the emotional responses people had after being exposed to incivility. Specifically, when uncivil messages produced lower levels of either emotion—anger or depression—people were less likely to speak out, regardless of opinion climate. However, if emotional responses were more intense for either emotion, people were more likely to speak out, regardless of opinion climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]