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This preregistration details a survey study that aims to replicate the following study: Lutz, C., Hoffmann, C. P., & Ranzini, G. (2020). Data capitalism and the user: An exploration of privacy cynicism in Germany. New Media & Society, 22(7), 1168–1187. https://doi-org.vu-nl.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1461444820912544

This preregistration details a survey study that aims to replicate the following study: Park, Y. J. (2013). Digital Literacy and Privacy Behavior Online. Communication Research, 40(2), 215-236.

Collaboration with Sarah Siskind and James Caven of Hello SciCom (https://www.hellosci.com/) to test the tone of a joke (negative, no humor, positive) on perceived trustworthiness of the source (scientist) delivering science information in a funny way.

The study examines how TikTok use influences well-being, consumer behavior, and materialism with a 2-wave survey.

Fail videos showing mishaps/accidents are very popular on YouTube. But is this genre affected by sexism, that is, are women portrayed more often than men in an objectifying, sexualized manner in the video clips (H1), and are women more likely than men to be the target of gendered online hate speech in the video comments (H2)? Quantitative content analyses of 500 video clips (derived from 50 videos) and of 1,000 video comments (derived from 5 “male” and 5 “female” videos) from YouTube’s most popular fail video channel FailArmy were conducted. Women in fail videos were portrayed in an objectifying, sexualized manner twice as often (H1), and were the target of gendered hate comments nearly five times more often (H2) compared to men. Future research could analyze videos and comments from additional fail channels and investigate the reasons for the sexualized portrayals as well as for the audience’s hateful reactions.

This project uses a content analysis and online survey to investigate the relationship between production techniques and perceptions of authenticity for brand-related posts on popular social media platforms.

Open material for the research project "Extremism in an Unpredictable World" - Master Project of LMU Munich. (Study course: Communication Science)

This project tests how depictions of fatherhood in advertising are perceived by American and Finnish consumers, and by men and women, and how these perceptions affect ad persuasiveness.

Project documents for our research on the influence of video game controllers on video gamers' feelings of personal and historical nostalgia. Core data collection was performed in late Fall 2019 and early Spring 2020. This project was partially funded by a grant from German Psychological Association for being named "Best Preregistered Study" in a presentation at MediaPsychology 2019. Funds from that grant were used to recruit and pay study participants.

This project addresses several overarching research questions. Are first-time fathers more responsive to advertisements portraying fatherhood? Does fatherhood anxiety produce stronger ad responses including emotion, boundary expansion, recognition of fatherhood norms, and wishful identification? Are these effects moderated by more nurturant and competent portrayals in the ad, and moderated by individuals’ own beliefs about masculinity? Finally, are these responses consequential for ad persuasiveness?

This project addresses several overarching research questions. How do first-time (new and expectant) fathers respond to advertisements portraying fatherhood? Does fatherhood anxiety produce stronger ad responses including emotional response, recognition of fatherhood norms, and wishful identification? Do these effects interact with more nurturing and progressive (vs. hypermasculine and traditional) portrayals in the ad? Finally, are these responses consequential for ad persuasiveness?

How does the original source of a brand-oriented social media post, as well as a secondary source that re-posts, impact credibility, attitudes, engagement intentions, and beliefs about post-engagement? User-generated content posted by peers, influencers, and brands (and re-posted by a different source) will be examined in both Facebook and Instagram contexts.

Study Abstract: Game streaming is an increasingly popular form of social gaming in which players broadcast their play to either synchronous or asynchronous audiences. Audiences in turn can comment on the player’s performance and otherwise engage with the player. The current research examined the potential impact of streaming on players’ feelings of closeness with audiences, as well as the social demand these audiences elicit, across both US and German players in two separate studies. Results indicate that while players could recall details of the conversations, synchronous streaming had no impact on feelings of propinquity with, or social demand from, the audiences.

Supplemental analysis and data files to accompany the manuscript, "Development of a Video Game Demand Scale" (Routledge, 2018). Full citation: Bowman, N. D., Wasserman, J. & Banks, J. D. (2018). Development of the Video Game Demand Scale. In N. D. Bowman (Ed.), Video games: A medium that demands our attention. New York: Routledge.

Influencers are semi-professional microcelebrities on social media platforms such as YouTube. They occupy a midpoint between peers who produce user-generated content and professional media celebrities. A key part of the influencer business model is sponsored partnerships with brands, in order to promote lifestyle products to the influencer’s followers. Influencers navigate several opposing tensions between their authenticity and relatability and their carefully crafted personas and commercial interests. Audiences must also make sense of these contradictions. We draw from warranting theory to propose that trustworthiness and expertise would be differentially affected by several key message cues: production modification, self-disclosure, and sponsorship disclosure. A 2x2x2 between-subjects experiment with original influencer videos was designed to test effects on trustworthiness and expertise, as well as downstream effects on attitudes and intentions.

This project tests the first half of a conceptual model developed to understand how incidental exposure to self-improvement content on Instagram may inadvertently lead to overall negative feelings of dejection. Specifically, we test how being incidentally exposed to fitness-related content on Instagram affects users’ self-discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves and how individual differences such as social comparison orientation, self-awareness, and impulsivity moderate this effect.

In this project, we are going to replicate three keys communication studies in the field of privacy and self-disclosure on social network sites.

Coming across news on social network sites (SNS) largely depends on news-related activities in one’s network. Although there are many different ways to stumble upon news, limited research has been conducted on how distinct news curation practices influence users’ intention to consume encountered content. In this mixed-methods investigation, using Facebook as an example, we first examine the results of an experiment (study 1, n = 524), showing that getting tagged in comments to news posts promotes news consumption the most. Based on this finding, we then focus on actively tagging users by investigating news tagging motives/practices with interactive qualitative interviews centered on participants’ Facebook activity logs (study 2, n = 13). Overall, the findings show how news tagging, albeit a strong catalyst for reading and interacting with news, mostly favors users already interested in news, thus challenging the optimistic assumption that SNS might foster incidental learning among less interested audiences.

Data set belongs to the open-access journal article: Schneider, F. M., & Hitzfeld, S. (2019). I ought to put down that phone but I phub nevertheless: Examining the predictors of phubbing behavior. Social Science Computer Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439319882365 Abstract: Smartphones are ubiquitous and frequently used in co-present interactions. This behavior is often seen as inappropriate and thus has been termed phubbing, compromising the words “phone” and “snubbing.” Although being a worldwide phenomenon, little is known about what predicts phubbing behavior in the first place. Drawing on injunctive norms (i.e., what ought to be done), the study’s aim was to shed light on the relationship between mobile phone norms (MPN) and phubbing behavior. Furthermore, the role of being permanently online/permanently connected (POPC) and fear of missing out (FoMO), reflecting approach and avoidance orientations respectively, as additional predictors and moderators was investigated. As expected, the findings of an online survey (N = 278) supported the assumption that MPN were negatively related to phubbing behavior. Moreover, results showed that both FoMo and POPC were significantly positively connected to phubbing behavior but did not play significant moderating roles concerning the norm–phubbing relationship.

How do users of neighborhood-oriented social media (e.g., Nextdoor), specifically baby boomers, respond to native advertisements resembling interpersonal messages? This study is a replication and extension of an Instagram study by Johnson et al. (2019), and experimentally tests credibility and emotion alongside persuasion knowledge as mechanisms for effects on ad attitudes, brand attitudes, and behavioral purchase intentions.

Supplemental files (stimulus materials and other study content) to accompany the published manuscript: Bowman, N. D., Knight, J., Schlue, L., & Cohen, E. (in press). What if it happened to me? Socially conscious music videos can address campus assault: Narrative comprehension and rape myth acceptance. Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

The connection between player and avatar is understood to be central to the experience and effects of massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming experiences, and these connections emerge from the interplays of both social and ludic characteristics. The comprehensive social/ludic measure of this player-avatar interaction (PAX), however, features some dimensions with theoretical/operational gaps and limited reliability, and is available only in English (despite evidence of potential cultural variations in player-avatar relations). The present study aimed to a) enhance and refine the PAX metric, and b) translate and validate a common metric that bridges English, German, and traditional Chinese languages to facilitate future comparative research. Through exploratory factor analysis of data from MMO players in each of these language-based populations, an improved 15-item common Player Avatar Interaction (cPAX) scale is presented, with four dimensions: relational closeness, anthropomorphic autonomy, critical concern, and sense of control. The metric is shown to be reliable within and across populations, and construct validity tests show expected associations between scale dimensions and both player-avatar relationship types and senses of human-like relatedness.

This study examines the effect message sources have in reducing attitude extremity within individuals. More specifically, when comparing celebrities as message sources and influencers (“content creators”) as message sources, there are qualities in nontraditional content creators that will have a greater impact in reducing attitude extremity within individuals than traditional celebrities.

Have You Heard? Testing the Warranting Value of Third-Party Employer Reviews

The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of Social Media TestDrive, an educational intervention, on youth (ages 9-13) social media literacy and self-efficacy for using social media. To test the effect of Social Media TestDrive on youth social media literacy and self-efficacy, study participants will be assigned to either an intervention group or a comparison group.

A few years ago, Slater, Johnson, Cohen, Comello, and Ewoldsen (2014) proposed an interesting perspective about people’s impetus to engage with narratives: the temporarily expanding the boundaries of the self (TEBOTS) model. The TEBOTS model suggests that the self is composed of three psychological elements, which are self-esteem, self-control, and self-presentation (Baumeister, 1998), and is inherently restricting individuals’ self-realization. To deal with those inherent limitations of the self, people turn to narratives for temporary self-expansion to satisfy fundamental intrinsic needs (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Utilization of the TEBOTS model has already generated promising findings (Eden, Daalmans, & Johnson, 2017; Johnson, Ewoldsen, & Slater, 2015; Johnson, Slater, Silver, & Ewoldsen, 2016; Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2018), indicating that it has the potential to explain psychological processes that were not previously fully disclosed. That said, past research on the TEBOTS model has not looked into self-esteem as a predictor of narrative engagement, even though “[s]elf-esteem is arguably one of the most important constructs in psychology” (Rhodewalt & Tragakis, 2003, p. 66). For the TEBOTS model, Slater et al. (2014) used Baumeister’s (1998) definition of selfhood, which postulates that the self consists of three psychological aspects: self-esteem, self-presentation, and self-control. Given the importance that Slater et al. (2014) hereby assigned self-esteem as a potential predictor of narrative engagement in their TEBOTS model, it seems inevitable to scrutinize it in the realm of TEBOTS research. To fill the gap, a preliminary study (Study 1) was preregistered and conducted (see Explanation of Existing Data for more details). Results of Study 1 found that decreased state self-esteem did not predict greater narrative engagement, thus falsifying the study’s predictions based on the TEBOTS model. To test if state self-esteem influences narrative engagement, like Study 1, this follow-up study will test the same hypotheses by implementing a slightly altered research design which includes two narratives instead of one. In doing so, the follow-up study serves the general need for a replication to test the explanatory power of the results of Study 1 and launches further investigation of the hitherto elusive role that state self-esteem plays in the context of self expansion. Additionally, the incorporation of a second narrative allows for more adequate inspection of the limitations of Study 1 regarding the narrative (see Hypotheses for more details). References: Baumeister, R. F. (1998). The self. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed., pp. 680–740). New York: McGraw-Hill. Eden, A., Daalmans, S., & Johnson, B. K. (2017). Morality predicts enjoyment but not appreciation of morally ambiguous characters. Media Psychology, 20(3), 349–373. doi:10.1080/15213269.2016.1182030 Johnson, B. K., Ewoldsen, D. R., Slater, M. D. (2015). Self-control depletion and narrative: Testing a prediction of the TEBOTS model. Media Psychology, 18(2), 196–220. doi:10.1080/15213269.2014.978872 Johnson, B. K., Slater, M. D., Silver, N. A., & Ewoldsen, D. R. (2016). Entertainment and expanding boundaries of the self: Relief from the constraints of the everyday. Journal of Communication, 66(3), 386–408. doi:10.1111/jcom.12228 Krakowiak, K. M., & Tsay-Vogel, M. (2018). Are good characters better for us? The effect of morality salience on entertainment selection and recovery outcomes. Mass Communication and Society, 21(3), 320–344. doi:10.1080/15205436.2017.1407797 Leary, M. R. (2004). The sociometer, self-esteem, and the regulation of interpersonal behavior. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), The handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and application (pp. 373–391). New York: Guilford. Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1–62). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Leary, M. R., Haupt, A. L., Strausser, K. S., & Chokel, J. T. (1998). Calibrating the sociometer: The relationship between interpersonal appraisals and state self- esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1290–1299. Mruk, C. J. (2006). Self-esteem research, theory, and practice: Toward a positive psychology of self- esteem (3rd ed.). New York: Springer. Rhodewalt, F., & Tragakis, M. W. (2003). Self-esteem and self-regulation: Toward optimal studies of self-esteem. Psychological Inquiry, 14(1), 66–70. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 58–78. doi:10.1037110003-066X.55.1.68 Slater, M. D., Johnson, B. K., Cohen, J., Comello, M. L. G., & Ewoldsen, D. R. (2014). Temporarily expanding the boundaries of the self: Motivations for entering the story world and implications for narrative effects. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 439–455. doi:10.1111/jcom.12100

In the context of social distancing and virtual coursework during a pandemic, how much and how effectively do university students use media to cope with stress, anxiety, and loneliness?

This survey explores how American university students use and perceived TikTok, and associations with consumer behavior, personality, and well-being.

What factors explain whether online information sharing (e.g., about healthy, environmental, or prosocial behaviors) leads to slacking/licensing versus growth/change? One possibility is the should/want distinction. Specifically, we propose that sharing “should” behaviors leads to slacktivism (because the external obligation is now satisfied) and sharing “want” behaviors leads to reinforcement (via identity shift). This hypothesis is tested with an experiment in the context of Instagram stories that share posts from high-credibility sources about health and the environment.

The goal of this study is to develop and validate the Youth Social Media Literacy Scale (YSML) for children aged between 9 to 13 years. Based on an extended literature review and a continuous validation with both educators and youth, we have developed a 90-item pool that covers factual and critical knowledge in relation to social media and digital citizenship in six areas: advertisement, cyberbullying, digital footprint/privacy, news/fake news, phishing, and media balancing. After qualitative pretests and initial evaluations by experts, this survey study now aims to evaluate all 90 items (15 per dimension) and develop a 42-item scale (7 per dimensions) that exhibits good reliability and validity.

The study examines how African-American women aged 25-49 perceive and respond to beauty brand products and advertising.

Within- and between-subjects experiment with American women university students, examining how impartiality claims made by influencers or celebrities about their brand-oriented social media posts may influence persuasion knowledge, credibility, attitudes, and intentions.

Pre-conference notes, schedule, and repository for Getting Results that Survive: Improving Communication Science.

Project files and other study materials (survey drafts and data outputs) as part of a two-month survey (November 2018 to January 2019) of Fallout 76 players. The study's broad focus considered players' entertainment experiences, social relationships, digital tourism and sense of place, and other reactions to the game. Folders are divided up into different work packages, with descriptive labels to represent the outlet for those presentations (for example, conference submissions). CITATION: Bowman, N. D., Banks, J., & Rittenour, C. (in press). Country Roads through 1s and 0s: Sense of place for and recognition of West Virginia following long-term engagement with Fallout 76. Technology, Mind, & Behavior.

Cross-cutting exposure (i.e., the exposure to dissonant views) is a central component of political discussion among citizens. Although political discussion is a crucial form of political engagement and a well-known source of dissonance, little is known about the impact of cross-cuttingness (vs. like-mindedness; CCLM) elicited by media news on political discussion. In the present pre-registered online experiment (N = 725), news stories were manipulated to induce CCLM and investigate its positive effect on political discussion via a specific path: deliberative thinking and the repertoire of arguments. Although no total effect of CCLM on participating in a political discussion (operationalized as discussion intent) was found, a structural equation model showed specific indirect positive effects via our hypothesized paths. Our study therefore lends support to the positive democratic implication of cross-cutting exposure.

Abstract: An increasing number of studies indicate that individuals have difficulties in exerting self-control over media use, such as mobile messaging. Specifically, individuals frequently experience that their messenger use conflicts with primary goals (e.g., work tasks), which may cause negative self-conscious emotions such as guilt. At the same time, not checking and answering messages violates a now widely established availability norm, which may trigger negative self-conscious emotions as well. The current study, therefore, tests how goal conflicts and connection cues interact in influencing users’ negative self-conscious emotions about their messenger usage behavior. Drawing on self-control research in conjunction with self-determination theory and theoretical approaches to social norms, we derived hypotheses on the boundary conditions under which the frequency of messenger use causes negative self-conscious emotions. We thereby significantly extend previous research on the self-regulation of mobile media use, which largely assumes that self-control failure results from users’ intrinsic motivation to experience need satisfaction and pleasure and tends to overlook the fact that mediated communication is often extrinsically motivated due to the availability norm. The hypotheses were tested based on a preregistered laboratory experiment.

Experimental research project investigating how subdimensions of incivility (profanity | attacks towards arguments) and intolerance (offensive stereotyping | violent threats) in user posts influence participants’ perceptions of the post (regarding its offensiveness and harm to society) as well as their intention to delete the post.

This experiment compares the casual sex relationships and experiences of (a) back burners, (b) hookups, and (c) friends with benefits relationships across various relationship-oriented outcomes, e.g., passion, friendship quality, frequency of sexual activity, frequency of communication, self-disclosure, and more.

Research on parasocial interaction (PSI) has a long tradition in non-interactive environments such as watching TV or listening to radio speakers. In the last years, researchers have started to apply PSI on videogame streaming environments, where the audience can interact with the observed media persona and get immediate feedback on their messages and requests. In a 3×2 online experiment (N = 251), we manipulated how a streamer addressed participants (individual vs. collective vs. no addressing) and whether he paid attention to and answered messages in the chat (attention vs. no attention to the chat). Findings show that the more individually participants were addressed and whether the streamer reacted to messages in the chat affected experiences of PSI. Further, alongside their overall enjoyment, PSI predicted viewers’ commitment to social norms. We discuss these findings regarding their implications for the conceptualization of PSI in light of interactive novel technologies.

While conspiracy ideation has attracted overdue attention from social scientists in recent years, little work focuses on how different pro-conspiracy messages affect the take-up of conspiracy beliefs. In this study, we compare the effect of explicit and implicit conspiracy cues on the adoption of conspiracy beliefs. We also examine whether corrective information can undo conspiracy cues, and whether there are differences in the effectiveness of corrective information based on whether a respondent received an explicit or implicit conspiracy cue. We examine these questions using a real-world but low-salience conspiracy theory concerning Zika, GM mosquitoes, and vaccines. Using a preregistered experiment (

Democratic election campaigns require informed citizens. Yet, while the Internet allows for broader information through greater media choices, algorithmic filters, such as search engines, threaten to unobtrusively shape individual information repertoires. The purpose of this article is to analyze what search results people encounter when they employ various information orientations, and how these results reflect people’s attributions of issue ownership. A multimethod approach was applied during the 2017 German Federal Election campaign. First, human search behavior depicting various information orientations was simulated using agent-based testing to derive real search results from Google Search, which were then manually coded to identify information sources and ascribe issue ownerships. Second, a survey asked participants about which issues they attribute to which party. We find that search results originated mainly from established news outlets and reflected existing power relations between political parties. However, issue-ownership attributions of the survey participants were reflected poorly in the search results. In total, the results indicate that the fear of algorithmic constraints in the context of online search might be overrated. Instead, our findings (1) suggest that political actors still fail to claim their core issues among political search results, (2) highlight that news media (and thus existing media biases) feature heavily among search results, and (3) call for more media literacy among search engine users.

Experts have recently argued that guidelines to take the full course of antibiotics are due for revision, instead recommending that patients stop when they feel better. It is unknown how communicating revised guidelines from medical experts about how long to take a course of antibiotics will affect beliefs, behavior, and trust in guidelines more generally.This study seeks to understand how revisions to long standing advice impacts the beliefs, behavior, and trust toward such guidelines from medical experts.In a pre-registered experiment, we use a national sample of UK participants (N = 1,263) to test the effects of a message that reverses the prior full-course guideline (versus a status quo message to take the full course). We also test a secondary intervention that emphasizes that medical guidance and evidence may change over time.Early stoppage messages significantly shifted personal beliefs and perceived expert consensus about early stoppage (a shift of 16%, 95% CI: 13.8% to 17.9%, p.001) and behavioral intent (a shift of 19%, 95% CI: 15.3 to 21.8%, p.001) in the intended direction. Yet, the new guideline also slightly decreased acceptance of uncertainty about future guidelines (a decrease of 2%, 95% CI: 0.2% to 3.1%, p = .022) and general intention to comply with other guidelines in the future (a decrease of 6%, 95% CI: 2.6% to 8.4%, p.001); it did not affect perceptions of medical researchers' or doctors' credibility or respondents' epistemic efficacy. Prior belief about early stoppage did not moderate receptivity to messages. Notably, though, we also find receptivity to early stoppage messages was contingent on deference to experts. We find no effect of a secondary intervention that emphasizes that medical guidance and evidence may change over time.Overall, our findings suggest the (U.K.) public is likely to accept new guidelines that change long standing advice to take a full course of antibiotics. While respondents show wariness about further future revisions, these data do not show that changing guidelines undermines trust in the experts that produce them.