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Contains fulltext : 289887.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Previous research mainly linked smartphone use while parenting to adverse consequences. However, smartphones also offer helpful resources for parents, especially in stressful situations. We suggested that negative norms against maternal smartphone use and associated feelings of guilt may inhibit effective smartphone use for coping with stress. In a 1-week experience sampling study with mothers of young children (N = 158), we found that more negative injunctive but not more negative descriptive norms around maternal smartphone use were related to increased situational guilt around smartphone use while parenting. Increased situational guilt was, in turn, associated with decreased perceived coping efficacy but not with less stress decrease. Situational guilt-aggregated on the individual level-related to reduced satisfaction with the mother role. Our results show that positive and negative smartphone use effects are intertwined and that feelings around media use can impact media effects. 11 p.

Communication scholars are increasingly concerned with interactions between humans and communicative agents. These agents, however, are considerably different from digital or social media: They are designed and perceived as life-like communication partners (i.e., as “communicative subjects”), which in turn poses distinct challenges for their empirical study. Hence, in this paper, we document, discuss, and evaluate potentials and pitfalls that typically arise for communication scholars when investigating simulated or non-simulated interactions between humans and chatbots, voice assistants, or social robots. In this paper, we focus on experiments (including pre-recorded stimuli, vignettes and the “Wizard of Oz”-technique) and field studies. Overall, this paper aims to provide guidance and support for communication scholars who want to empirically study human-machine communication. To this end, we not only compile potential challenges, but also recommend specific strategies and approaches. In addition, our reflections on current methodological challenges serve as a starting point for discussions in communication science on how meaning-making between humans and machines can be investigated in the best way possible, as illustrated in the concluding section.

Lightweight evaluations of content, such as thumbs-up, Liking, and favoriting, are an important aspect of social media interactions. Although minimal, these acts can carry a variety of meanings and implications. Prior research has revealed various motives and identified some recurring themes, but is often based on small samples or survey procedures prone to memory bias. In the present research, we asked people to view posts they had recently Liked on Facebook and report motives for each concrete post. We offer insights into the prevalence of previously hypothesized motives, and their associations with the content of posts, the relationship between sender and receiver, and the personality of the sender.

We investigate empirically the impact of spectators' trust in fairness of the sporting competition on TV demand for sports as well as its role in the doping-demand relation.We use data from a two-w...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virologists gained a prominent role in traditional and social media in Germany; several participated in regular podcasts. Using a two-wave survey ( n = 696/361 at Time 1/2), we explore which impact the strong media presence of virologists had on media users and what role parasocial phenomena (asymmetric interactions and relationships with virologists) played. People who favored a specific virologist scored higher on various cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. Exposure to the virologist was related to these outcomes and parasocial phenomena turned out as an intervening variable between exposure and subjective and objective knowledge (time 1), solace, and behavioral engagement (both times). We did not, however, find effects over time when controlling for the time 1 values, which rather speak against more long-term media effects. A higher need for leadership also predicted the formation of parasocial phenomena. We discuss the theoretical implications for the role of parasocial phenomena in science communication via digital media.

Discussions on social media have been considered a contributing factor to the increasing polarization the Western world is witnessing. In this study, we use automated and manual coding to analyze diplomatic behavior in online discussions and its consequences for polarization dynamics. We analyze Reddit forums with differing norms: reddits known for civil debate (N = 4594), reddits considered incivil discussion spaces (N = 2126), and reddits dedicated to social support (N = 1401). The automated content analysis shows diplomatic behavior in all forums, but diplomacy does not affect the subsequent discussion. The manual discourse analysis reveals why: discussions consist of disjointed statements rather than dialogic exchange, which makes diplomacy inconsequential. These results have consequences for the field. First, evidence of online polarization needs to be studied very closely, because what appears to be polarized dialogue might actually be a string of personal viewpoints broadcasted in a shared space. Second, the usefulness of automated content analysis in studying interaction dynamics is limited because of difficulties distinguishing broadcasting from dialogue.

Social communication is omnipresent and a fundamental basis of our daily lives. Especially, due to the increasing popularity of social media, communication flows are becoming more complex, faster and more influential. It is therefore not surprising that in these highly dynamic communication structures, strategies are also developed to spread certain opinions, to deliberately steer discussions or to inject misinformation. The reputation game is an agent-based simulation that uses information theoretical principles to model the effect of such malicious behavior taking reputation dynamics as an example. So far, only small groups of 3 to 5 agents have been studied whereas now we extend the reputation game to larger groups of up to 50 agents also including one-to-many conversations. In this setup, the resulting group dynamics are examined, with particular emphasis on the emerging network topology and the influence of agents' personal characteristics thereon. In the long term the reputation game should thus help to determine relations between the arising communication network structure, the used communication strategies and the recipients' behavior, allowing to identify potentially harmful communication patterns, e.g. in social media.

Although research showed that media consumption during COVID-19 is related to preventive behaviors, we know less about why people turn to quality or alternative media. We focus on the role of different fears. More specifically, we assumed that fears focusing on health threats were positively associated with the consumption of quality media and negatively with the consumption of tabloids and alternative media. We expected the opposite pattern for fears focusing on economic and societal threats, and that media consumption mediated the relationship between fears and vaccination acceptance. A survey among a representative sample of Germans (N = 1080) showed that the fears correlated as expected positively with the consumption of the respective media type. However, the predicted negative relationships turned often out as non-significant. The fears were differentially related to vaccination acceptance via media consumption, indicating the theoretical and practical value of differentiating between different types of fears.

In this review, we systematize work on the relationship between social media use and stress by providing a functional perspective that distinguishes between three functions that social media can have in the stages of the stress-coping process: as stressors, as resources, and as coping tools. Current research provides evidence that social media can cause stress, serve as resources, and can be used as a tool for various coping strategies, but it remains unclear when social media can successfully mitigate stress. Future research should use more fine-grained research designs that consider the timing of social media use, the situational context, and the encountered content to determine when social media serves which function and when social media reduces or increases stress.

Job applicants’ self-presentation in their profiles on professional networking services (PNS), such as LinkedIn, may be crucial for the evaluation of their expertise for a job. Importantly, on PNS ...

This chapter focuses on the role social media can play in eliciting jealousy in romantic relationships. First, I define the term “jealousy” and describe the dynamic functional model of jealousy by Chung and Harris (2018) that is used as an overarching framework in the chapter. Subsequently, I discuss how the affordances of social media can influence the elicitation and manifestation of jealousy, for example by increasing the perceived number of potential rivals and threat appraisals. In the next section, I present data on the prevalence of social media induced jealousy and empirical data on influencing factors as well consequences of social media induced jealousy. Individual differences in traits, like trait jealousy, self-esteem, need for popularity, or attachment style also influence the experience of social media induced jealousy, which is in turn related to lower relationship satisfaction. After pointing out several methodological issues, I discuss practical implications of the findings and research gaps that should be addressed in future research.

How-to videos on YouTube have become a popular source for procedural learning. An important difference to traditional educational videos is that the instructor is often not a professional educator,...

Peer review has become the gold standard in scientific publishing as a selection method and a refinement scheme for research reports. However, despite its pervasiveness and conferred importance, relatively little empirical research has been conducted to document its effectiveness. Further, there is evidence that factors other than a submission’s merits can substantially influence peer reviewers’ evaluations. We report the results of a metascientific field experiment on the effect of the originality of a study and the statistical significance of its primary outcome on reviewers’ evaluations. The general aim of this experiment, which was carried out in the peer-review process for a conference, was to demonstrate the feasibility and value of metascientific experiments on the peer-review process and thereby encourage research that will lead to understanding its mechanisms and determinants, effectively contextualizing it in psychological theories of various biases, and developing practical procedures to increase its utility.

Significance Cooperation is key to well-functioning groups and societies. Rather than addressing high-cost cooperation involving giving money or time and effort, we examine social mindfulness—a form of interpersonal benevolence that requires basic perspective-taking and is aimed at leaving choice for others. Do societies differ in social mindfulness, and if so, does it matter? Here, we find not only considerable variation across 31 nations and regions but also an association between social mindfulness and countries’ performance on environmental protection. We conclude that something as small and concrete as interpersonal benevolence can be entwined with current and future issues of global importance., Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

AIMS The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of a social media-based, health literacy-sensitive diabetes management intervention on patient activation, self-care behaviors, and glucose control compared to telephone-based, health literacy-sensitive diabetes management intervention and usual care. Additionally, this study aimed to identify how patient health literacy influenced the effectiveness of health literacy-sensitive diabetes management interventions. DESIGN 3 (treatment condition) × 2 (health literacy level) randomized factorial trial. METHODS In total, 151 patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to the social media-based or telephone-based, health literacy-sensitive diabetes management interventions or the usual care control. The health literacy-sensitive diabetes management intervention consisted of an initial face-to-face diabetes nurse education using easy-to-read educational materials, the teach-back method, and eight weekly action-planning sessions guided with the use of social media or phone calls for each group. FINDINGS Patients with high health literacy at the 9-week follow-up showed higher levels of patient activation than those with low health literacy in the control group, but the effect of health literacy was no longer significant when patients were provided with social media-based or telephone-based interventions. Patients who received the telephone-based, health literacy-sensitive diabetes management intervention had a significantly higher score for self-care behaviors than the usual care control group at 9 weeks' follow-up. No other effects for self-care behaviors or glycated hemoglobin were significant at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS The social media-based, health literacy-sensitive diabetes management intervention was effective at mitigating the disadvantages faced by people with low health literacy when attempting to improve self-care activation. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Social media-based self-management interventions accommodating low health literacy have the potential to help people overcome their disadvantages associated with low health literacy.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of video conferences in professional settings increased rapidly. Here, we examine how individual and situational characteristics jointly predict active behavior in video conferences (i.e., activating one’s webcam, small talk, contacting other attendees) between strangers. We focus on external networking as well as proactive and reactive online networking and social anxiety as individual characteristics and investigate how these interact with social norms (operationalized as proportion of other attendees using the webcam), in predicting our outcome variable active video conference behavior. An online vignette experiment with three conditions (social norms: 25 vs. 75% of other attendees using the webcam vs. offline) was conducted to analyze the self-reported likelihood of active video conference versus active offline behavior. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Results indicate that external networking is a positive and social anxiety a negative predictor of self-reported active video conference behavior. Furthermore, the likelihood of engaging in active (video conference) behavior differed between the three scenarios, with highest values in the offline scenario and lowest in the online scenario with only 25% of other attendees using the webcam. However, no interaction effects of social norms with social anxiety were found. Overall, the findings suggest that individual differences in networking tendencies and social anxiety and social norms influence active behavior in video conferences independently.

Prior longitudinal studies on the effects of Facebook use on well-being often found no or only small effects. One reason could be that well-being indicators are often remarkably stable over time. In the present study, we looked therefore at people who experienced financial hardship, a stressful life event, and examined whether Facebook users differed from non-users in how they reacted and adapted to the life event over time and which role social support played in this process. We used multilevel models to examine the recovery process to the negative life event. Facebook users experienced a larger drop of satisfaction with their financial situation during the life event (= the reaction phase) than non-users, but showed higher levels of satisfaction after the life-event (= the adaptation phase). Online social support was also beneficial for adaptation to the life event. Next, we examined within the subsample of Facebook users to what extent frequency of posting and reading were related to receiving online social support and in turn financial satisfaction. Frequency of posting and reading were positively related to online social support. However, only posting was related to higher financial satisfaction and only at the end of the adaptation phase, indicating that Facebook use might mainly contribute positively to people's well-being some while after stressful life-events., Highlights • The relationship between Facebook use and adaptation to a life-event was examined. • Facebook users reacted more extremely than non-users. • Online social support was positively related to adaptation. • Posting on Facebook predicted online social support.

Professional networking has mostly been researched in offline contexts. With professional social networking sites (SNS), such as LinkedIn or the German platform XING, professional networking can be extended to online contexts. Therefore, this study examines if people differ in the intensity of offline and online networking and if influence factors differentially predict offline and online networking. An exploratory online survey of working people (N = 326, Mage = 37 years, 56% women) revealed that mean values among the four different networking types did not differ significantly. However, people can be divided into four clusters of networkers (the minimal, the heavy, the mainly offline, and the mainly online networkers). When looking at influence factors, there is a positive association of people’s knowing about the benefits of networking and their networking intensity for all types of networking offline and online. Beyond that, the negative affective influence of anxiety towards unknown people on networking shows an interaction effect with networking type as it is stronger for offline networking than it is for online networking. The results indicate that professional social networking sites might help people with their networking pursuits by reducing negative emotions associated with networking, thereby contributing to a social compensation effect.

Contains fulltext : 226720.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In 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 propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices. 26 p.

In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, difficult decisions such as the distribution of ventilators must be made. For many of these decisions, humans could team up with algorithms; however, people often prefer human decision-makers. We examined the role of situational (morality of the scenario; perspective) and individual factors (need for leadership; conventionalism) for algorithm preference in a preregistered online experiment with German adults (n = 1,127). As expected, algorithm preference was lowest in the most moral-laden scenario. The effect of perspective (i.e., decision-makers vs. decision targets) was only significant in the most moral scenario. Need for leadership predicted a stronger algorithm preference, whereas conventionalism was related to weaker algorithm preference. Exploratory analyses revealed that attitudes and knowledge also mattered, stressing the importance of individual factors.

Previous research on stress and media use mainly concentrated on between-person effects. We add to this research field by additionally assessing within-person associations, assuming that experiencing more stress than usual goes along with more nomophobia (“no-mobile-phone phobia”) and more passive and active Facebook use than usual, cross-sectionally and over time, and by exploring potential age differences. We conducted a secondary analysis of three waves of a representative multi-wave survey of adult Dutch internet users (N = 861). Specifically, we used two subsamples: (1) smartphones users for the analyses on nomophobia (n = 600) and (2) Facebook users for the analyses on social media (n = 469). Employing random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, we found within-person correlations between nomophobia and stress at one time-point, but not over time. For the younger age group (18–39 years), more passive Facebook use than usual was associated with more stress than usual six months later, and more stress than usual was followed by less passive Facebook use six month later. There were no longitudinal relationships for active Facebook use across the different age groups. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed., Highlights • We study the relationships of nomophobia, Facebook use and stress over time. • Nomophobia and stress correlate on the within-person level at one time-point. • Passive Facebook use is associated with more stress over time for younger adults. • Stress relates to less passive Facebook use six months later for younger adults. • There are no longitudinal effects for nomophobia, active Facebook use, and stress.

Organizations are increasingly flooded with large amounts of data on which they base their business decisions. It is thus crucial to visualize relevant data efficiently so that employees are able to extract relevant information most accurately and quickly. However, at present, information visualization research lacks a coherent and evidence based theoretical framework providing clear guidelines on how to design efficient visualizations. When it comes to the use of redundant elements in charts like commonly used data labels, cognitive fit theory and cognitive load theory make different predictions. Whereas the latter assumes that redundant labels generally reduce visualizations’ efficiency due to increased cognitive load, cognitive fit theory predicts increased efficiency for some task types that shall be solved by means of the visualization. In the online experiment presented in this paper, we investigated the effect of data labels in line and bar charts on users’ accuracy and speed in solving chart-related business tasks dependent on different task types. Our results reveal that users perceive charts with redundant labels as significantly more efficient and answer related questions significantly more accurate and faster, which we explain by the help of cognitive fit theory. We provide valuable insights into cognitive processing of charts and encourage graph designers to consider redundant elements as a possible means to increase efficiency under particular circumstances.

Social network users often see their online friends post about experiential purchases (such as traveling experiences) and material purchases (such as newly purchased gadgets). Three studies (total N = 798) were conducted to investigate which type of purchase triggers more envy on Social Network Sites (SNSs) and explored its underlying mechanism. We consistently found that experiential purchases triggered more envy than material purchases did. This effect existed when people looked at instances at their own Facebook News Feeds (Study 1), in a controlled scenario experiment (Study 2), and in a general survey (Study 3). Study 1 and 2 confirmed that experiential purchases increased envy because they were more self-relevant than material purchases. In addition, we found (in Study 1 and 3) that people shared their experiential purchases more frequently than material purchases on Facebook. So why do people often share experiential purchases that are likely to elicit envy in others? One answer provided in Study 3 is that people actually think that material purchases will trigger more envy. This paper provides insight into how browsing SNSs can lead to envy. It contributes to the research on experiential vs. material purchases and the emotion of envy., Highlights • Users report that experiential purchases trigger more envy than material purchases. • This is because experiential purchases are more self-relevant to most Facebook users. • Experiential purchases are shared more frequently than material purchases. • Readers prefer to see other's experiential purchases more than material purchases. • Posters wrongly think material purchases should trigger the most envy.

Low health literacy has been recognized as a potential barrier to obtaining knowledge and maintaining self-care in older people. However, little is known about information-seeking preference in relation to health literacy among older people. The aim of the present study was to understand the influence of health literacy on the information-seeking preference of older people. A total of 129 community-residing Korean older people completed a survey in 2016. The findings revealed that health literacy was a significant predictor of information-seeking preference in older people after controlling for demographic and illness variables. Our study highlights the important need to incorporate strategies to increase the desire for information seeking in older people, in addition to adopting communication strategies that address low health literacy.