Society faces several pressing challenges that demand sustained attention as they unfold. Key examples of such persistent social issues include climate change and aging populations, which are characterized by future-oriented, global considerations and uncertainties. Because of this distance, news media play a crucial role in making these issues relevant to audiences. This study illustrates how two existing concepts important for public understanding and engagement, psychological distance and pessimistic versus optimistic scenario framing, can be applied to explore how news media frame persistent social issues. Manual quantitative content analysis of 1,056 articles from Dutch newspapers (2003-2024) on climate change and aging populations identified three distinctive distance & scenario frames using cluster analysis: proximal doom framing (i.e. pessimistic, localized, immediate, and certain), distant doom framing (i.e. pessimistic, global, future-oriented, and uncertain), and uncertainty framing (i.e. uncertain, ambiguous outlooks). Furthermore, quality newspapers relied more on distant doom framing, whereas popular newspapers emphasized proximal doom framing. Framing patterns remained largely unchanged over time. Overall, the findings demonstrate how the concepts of distance and scenario framing can be meaningfully applied to news content and highlight challenges journalists face in balancing proximal reporting with broader, distant perspectives, and varied scenarios when covering persistent social issues.
What affects the appeal of media consumed in the presence of other people: the story resolution, others' opinions, or both? Two studies leveraged the narrative enjoyment and appreciation rationale (NEAR) to demonstrate how social norm cues reinforce or conflict with content cues to influence narrative appraisals. Participants read stories with positive, mixed, or negative endings accompanied by norm cues that indicated others' opinions. Among positive endings, reinforcing social cues (e.g. others' liking of positive endings) increased intuitive enjoyment of the narrative, whereas conflicting social cues (e.g. others' disliking of positive endings) elicited slower evaluations and less enjoyment. These effects were reversed among negative endings: Reinforcing cues promoted disliking and conflicting cues increased liking. When endings were mixed, appraisals aligned with others' opinions. This study informs our understanding of how we consume media in social contexts, and what influence others' opinions have on our own appreciation for stories.
A body of research has explored trust in the media, yet the reasons behind its stability in times of crisis remain unclear. This study examines whether stable trust in public service media (PSM) reflects continuity in the selected drivers of the trust or whether crises alter these effects, with some factors enhancing trust and others diminishing it, effectively balancing each other out. Drawing on three representative cross-sectional surveys from the Czech Republic (2019, 2020, and 2022), we analyze how socio-economic, media-related, and socio-political correlates of trust in Czech Television-the national PSM-evolved before and during overlapping crises, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Despite considerable turbulence, the effects of individual variables remained largely stable. This suggests that trust in PSM may be diffuse in nature-anchored both in long-term experience and perceived public value. The findings contribute to the understanding of trust in PSM under conditions of societal disruption.
This study investigates how media-evoked nostalgia shapes hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences and motivates both prosocial and self-oriented personal goals through self-continuity. Across two studies using experimental and survey designs, participants either watched nostalgic media clips (Study 1) or recalled personally meaningful media experiences (Study 2). In Study 1, nostalgic clips increased enjoyment, appreciation, and self-continuity, and nostalgia indirectly predicted prosocial motivation through self-continuity and appreciation, whereas enjoyment did not predict prosocial outcomes. Study 2 replicated the central role of self-continuity and showed that appreciation predicted prosocial goals and self-oriented goals related to self-growth and popularity, whereas enjoyment primarily predicted hedonism. Overall, these findings suggest that self-continuity plays an important role in nostalgic media experiences, helping explain how nostalgic reflection transforms entertainment responses into future-oriented motivations.
Public perceptions in Western societies often overstate the role of immigration in crime, with important implications for both policy preferences and intergroup relations. Drawing on data from a three-wave experiment in Sweden (N = 1,709), this study evaluates the effectiveness, persistence, and spillover effects of providing corrective information about the risk of being suspected of a crime among individuals with a foreign versus a native background. The results showed that exposure to corrective information improved participants' estimates of risk of crime suspicion for those with a foreign background, including their relative risk compared with natives. At the same time, the correction affected perceived risks associated with specific crime types, not addressed by the same. Taken together, these results suggest that corrective information can improve public knowledge and narrow a perception gap surrounding immigrants' general involvement in crime relative to natives, but also that such corrections might spillover into perceptions about specific crimes, which may not necessarily be more accurate.
The ubiquitous nature of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our daily lives. Beyond simply welcoming or rejecting algorithms, citizens hold complex viewpoints toward AI-powered information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, few studies have explored how ICT users can be grouped by their readiness toward AI, given that individuals have different views and reactions to these new AI technologies. Using latent profile analysis, we identified three subgroups among 512 Singaporean users, showing distinct patterns in their AI-readiness (e.g. a tech-pioneering but AI-reactant subgroup). Also, technology acceptance factors for AI-based applications (e.g. perceived utility, hedonicity, and ease of use) predicted users' likelihood of belonging to each subgroup. We also discovered that user profiles were associated with different levels of attitudinal and behavioral intentions. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Social media algorithms facilitate the visibility of content aligned with users' beliefs, a phenomenon further amplified by individuals who consume and share similar content. This study investigates the dynamics of affective language on 1,493 U.S. Facebook partisan Pages, focusing on social engagement (e.g. comments, shares, likes, and other reactions) over a 13-year period. Linguistic attributes of negativity and incivility were identified using LLM-based classifiers and validated through human review. The findings showed that negativity and incivility were associated with distinct engagement patterns. In static models, negativity was more strongly associated with expressive reactions such as "Angry," but corresponded to lower expected levels of approval-oriented and amplification-oriented engagement, including liking, "Love," and sharing. Over time, the standardized association between negativity and most engagement types attenuated, with trajectories varying across engagement metrics. In contrast, incivility was more strongly and consistently associated with higher expected engagement across multiple behavioral signals and maintained relatively stable associations over time. Comparative analyses highlighted how different forms of affective language were differentially rewarded through engagement across Facebook's platform evolution, underscoring how engagement-based ranking systems may reinforce distinct communicative styles. The discussion considers implications for user behavior, platform incentives, and democratic discourse.
Following a defeat in the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro mounted an anti-democratic campaign that culminated in attacks on the capital, Brasilia. While scholars have long studied the relationship between media use and support for left-leaning movements in the Global North, this survey-based study (N = 1,225) examines how this relationship operates for non-democratic movements in Brazil. We found a strong relationship between media use and political attitudes, polarized along pro- and anti-Bolsonaro lines for news consumption, and marked by cross-platform differences on social media. Results show that the relationship between legacy news and movement support is moderated by attitudes toward military intervention, with the association becoming stronger among individuals with more authoritarian inclinations. Instagram and YouTube use is associated with lower levels of movement support, while messaging apps are linked to greater support. These results suggest that rather than understanding anti-democratic movements as imported from recent Western populist ideas, scholars must consider how these movements operate through both universalizing and particularizing tendencies. Our findings indicate that the local political history of military interventionism is central to understanding the spread of contemporary authoritarian movements in the region, with legacy media still playing a key role in promoting democratic outcomes.
This study explores the nature of adolescents' posts on social media using a data donation approach within three different European countries. Adolescents (NBelgium = 106, NFrance = 118, NSlovenia = 114) donated screenshots from their most recent posts/stories on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. The various themes present in the visuals of the screenshots were coded, and data were linked to survey measures to explore individual differences. The results demonstrated the prevalence of nature, friends, and travel themes across platforms, whereas mental health, substance use, and romantic relationship themes were only limitedly featured. One-way repeated measures ANOVAs showed some significant platform differences for education (more prevalent on Snapchat), memes/jokes (more prevalent on TikTok) and nature (more prevalent on Instagram). Zero-one inflated beta regression models indicated individual differences in terms of gender, age, country of residence, and social media mind-sets. These results may guide the focus of future research interested in social media posting dynamics within adolescence.
Anti-Asian racism has intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and recent political events, fueling media hate and adversely affecting Asian communities. We investigate how anti-Asian racism exposure via media influences Asian activism across five dimensions-collective, financial, dialogic, online, and symbolic. Analysis of survey responses from nearly 800 Asians across the United States indicates that media racism exposure was positively associated with Asian activism and indirectly linked to engagement through higher racial self-esteem and greater perceived severity of anti-Asian racism.
This paper explores how digital disconnection is negotiated, encountered and experienced in the context of the mega platform WeChat. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with WeChat users in China, I argue that WeChat users inhabit and negotiate a complex continuum of (dis)connection, in which reluctant engagement constitutes a modality of living with and within a WeChat-saturated environment. This paper makes three important contributions. First, it advances understandings of disconnection as a pathway to digital balance in which individuals responsibly engage for their wellbeing. Second, it contributes to our understanding of the ways in which people make sense of online practices as well as some of the complex dynamics inherent in contemporary digital disconnection work. Third, it identifies the need for platform specificity in and the de-Westernization of discussions on social media disconnection.
In today's platform-dependent news environment, assessing content diversity requires attention to how news outlets add new information to the broader ecosystem. Because much news production involves reusing material already in circulation, examining the extent to which each outlet introduces information not previously available offers a practical way to understand external content diversity. We propose information contribution as an empirical indicator of how news stories expand the system's informational scope. Using a dataset of approximately 700,000 news stories distributed through a major South Korean news aggregator over one month, we analyzed how organizational characteristics and news subjects relate to the introduction of new information at scale. The results showed that more institutionalized outlets with larger reporting staffs tended to contribute more original information rather than relying on others. Institutionalization was positively associated with original reporting in Economy and Society news, but played a more limited role in Culture/Entertainment and Sports, where emergent outlets contributed actively. These findings suggest that a platform-based media system may generate uneven patterns of information contribution across news subjects, shaped by interdependencies among news providers. Understanding these imbalances offers insight into how content diversity is formed within news environments.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine presented citizens with unique challenges in navigating strategically disseminated falsehoods. On one hand, by accessing first-hand information on the ground and sharing it via social media and messaging apps, they could bypass conventional gatekeepers and emerge as epistemic agents-that is, legitimate producers of public knowledge-in their own right. On the other hand, increasingly punitive legal measures surrounding the dissemination of war-related information in Ukraine have restricted citizens' ability for cross-verification, a core epistemic practice. This study explores shifting epistemic boundaries within that volatile information climate. Drawing on an analysis of online memes-a form of vernacular communication widely used by pro-Ukrainian users to express their epistemic judgment-the study finds that online audiences have evolved into resourceful agents who can deploy a varied epistemic repertoire to evaluate competing claims from domestic and foreign stakeholders, while remaining mindful of their own biases and limitations. The findings indicate that when empirical validation becomes inaccessible to citizens and traditionally privileged epistemic agents, online audiences may attain a comparatively advantageous position by leveraging memetic language-tapping into visual and linguistic cues grounded in shared cultural knowledge that serve as heuristic credibility shortcuts and reduce the need for thorough independent verification.
