Based on the principles of bilingual accommodation, the purpose of this research report is to map the causes of convergence, that is, linguistic accommodation to Swedish, among young Finnish speakers. The empirical material was collected from students in Finnish upper-secondary schools in municipalities in southern Finland (N = 154). The data were analyzed using regression analyses with robust standard errors. The results suggested that affective motivation (i.e. using Swedish to express positive attitudes toward Swedish speakers) plays a more prominent role in convergence than cognitive motivation (i.e. using Swedish to facilitate understanding). At the same time, we found that cognitive motivation had a meaningful effect on convergence only among individuals who perceived their Swedish proficiency as sufficiently high. We discuss the results and their implications for communication accommodation in bilingual contexts.
Artificial intelligence is becoming integrated into various aspects of daily life, including everyday communication. Guided by relevant human-computer interaction frameworks, this research used a U.S. nationally representative sample (N = 588) to examine casual social interactions between humans and chatbots. Results show that communication contingency is useful in determining perceptions of responsiveness, involvement, and communication satisfaction. Companionship moderated the association of communication contingency and involvement. Communication contingency is likely important to understanding everyday interactions between humans and chatbots.
This study examines how the interaction between crisis type and storytelling in a crisis apology influences message authen-ticity and company evaluations. Guided by construal level the-ory and narrative persuasion, a 2 (crisis type: individual vs. societal) x 2 (storytelling use: storytelling vs. non-storytelling) online experiment revealed that storytelling enhanced message authenticity only in societal-level crises. Mediation analyses showed that storytelling affected company attitudes and trust through message authenticity, but only in psychologically dis-tant crises. These findings highlight the role of psychological distance in narrative effectiveness and identify message authen-ticity as a key mechanism in storytelling-based crisis communication.
Sexual violence is an enduring public health problem, but terminology used to describe it varies. We asked U.S. young adults (n = 799) terms they use to describe sexual violence via a digital questionnaire. We recruited our sample as part of a larger study where participants had to be 18-29 years old; use social media; and identify as a Black young adult, Hispanic young adult, or have lower subjective social status (not mutually exclusive). We first asked for open-ended responses to the question "What word or phrase would you use to describe an unwanted physical sexual encounter?" before asking participants to choose the single closed-ended word or phrase they would use "most often" from a provided list of terms. In open-ended responses, the most common terms used were rape (21%) and sexual assault (18%). However, many participants (42%) provided a reaction or thoughts about sexual violence instead of terms, including four major themes: descriptions, examples, hypothetical responses, and feelings. From closed-ended terms, participants most often selected sexual assault (42%) then rape (24%) as the term they would use. Young people have nuanced perspectives on terms to describe sexual violence, necessitating refinement of language in prevention measures. We recommend sexual assault over alternative terms to mirror language young people use most often.
In this brief report, we show that when performing structural equation modeling, substantive conclusions may differ drastically depending on the statistical program that is used. This can occur because some programs assume that certain model errors are correlated by default, whereas others do not. We argue that the uncritical use of statistical software can lead to situations in which incorrect inferences are made.
This study examined disclosures about sex safety in extradyadic sexual encounters in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) partnerships. Two-hundred and one adults in a self-defined committed CNM relationship completed an anonymous survey assessing individual and relational characteristics and their associations with message characteristics in these disclosures as informed by the logic and propositions of Information Manipulation Theory 2 (IMT2). Significant associations emerged between ego-focused sexual needs satisfaction and risk assessment and violation of some of Grice's conversational maxims (e.g. quality), but not others (e.g. indirectness).
Sport-related concussion is a crisis that practitioners have sought to manage for decades. This article considers the efficacy of the "Team Up Against Concussion" (TUAC) campaign, which encourages athletes to report SRC signs observed in teammates - a shift from traditional self-report interventions. A two-group posttest experimental design was employed with 255 high school athletes who played contact or semi-contact sports in the southeastern United States. Data revealed that exposure to TUAC did not increase attitudes, subjective norms, self-efficacy, or self-reported behaviors at season's end, nor did treatment schools yield more reported or other-reported concussions based on athletic trainers' field notes. A post-hoc analysis revealed that athletes' reports of other-reporting were determined by perceived subjective norms. These findings highlight the importance of testing health interventions within the field, even for widely adopted campaigns, and underscore that other-reporting efforts do not negate subjective norms that hinder concussion management.
When cyberbullying incidents occur in public online environments, bystander interventions can alter the progression of these events. Defending behavior serves as a pivotal factor in resolving cyberbullying, yet its triggering mechanisms and behavioral outcomes remain underexplored. Grounded in social bond theory, this study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey over six months with 1176 university students. A random intercept cross-lagged model was employed to examine the longitudinal relationships among bystanders' cyberbullying victimization experiences, social relationship closeness, and defending behavior. The findings suggest that bystander intervention reflects a balance between personal interests, the well-being of others, and collective benefits. Over time, bystanders' prior victimization experience positively influenced their defending behavior, and a lagged effect emerged between defending behavior and social relationship closeness. These results highlight the importance of fostering strong group relationships in educational settings and cultivating individuals' sense of responsibility toward peers and communities. This may mitigate cyberbullying and encourage proactive resistance against such behavior.
This study examines emoji usage in text-based communication through the frameworks of social information processing and media richness theories. A sample of 472 undergraduate students, enrolled in an introductory communication course, participated in the research. Through a Qualtrics survey, the study investigates various aspects of emoji usage, including frequency, motives, and its impact on computer-mediated communication (CMC) effectiveness. The findings unveil a nuanced relationship between emoji usage and CMC effectiveness, contingent upon user intentions. By shedding light on these dynamics, this research contributes to the burgeoning literature on emojis, offering valuable insights into their efficacy across diverse communication contexts.
The purpose of this study was to identify the journalistic frames used in print media's coverage of medical errors. Print news articles about medical errors published in U.S.-based newspapers between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2019, were coded for frame type and journalistic frame dimensions. One thousand two hundred journalistic frame dimensions were identified. Articles were primarily episodic, and the most popular journalistic frame dimensions were reporting about hospital policies, malpractice cases, and legislation and government initiatives to address medical errors. News coverage primarily frames medical errors as an individual provider issue and rarely presents the common systems-based approach used in healthcare.
The presumed importance of source credibility has left a mark on communication theory and practice. However, increased polarization and distrust in scientific authority raise questions surrounding the contemporary usefulness of source credibility. The present study (N = 248) examines how scientific trust influences perceptions of source expertise and trustworthiness. Results demonstrate a significant moderating effect of trust in science on the dimensions of perceived source expertise and trustworthiness. These findings highlight the consequences of widespread structural erosion of trust in science, potentially pointing to the conditions required to enhance persuasive scientific appeals using source credibility.
During economic uncertainty and partisan division, this study explores whether emotional strain, operationalized through retrospective economic evaluation, relates to partisan patterns of news media consumption. Analysis of 15,458 U.S. adults from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study indicates that perceiving the national economy as having worsened over the past year is associated with a sharper alignment between political identity and ideologically congruent TV news consumption, with stronger Republican identification linked to more Fox News viewing and stronger Democratic identification to more CNN/MSNBC viewing. The findings suggest economic concerns may coincide with more pronounced partisan differences in news consumption.
This study examines the extent to which citizen-initiated contact with elected representatives and perceived responsiveness of representatives to citizens are related to government approval ratings, trust in political institutions, satisfaction with democracy, and turnout across 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Findings from a multilevel analysis of Afrobarometer survey data (N = 42,684) support existing work indicating that responsiveness is crucial to government-citizen relationships. Heightened benefits appear for responsive representatives in less democratic countries. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.
Vicarious interactions refer to active online users serving as surrogates, allowing passive users to observe and experience online interactions without directly participating. A 2 x 2 experiment examined how vicarious interactions within online support communities affect observers' attitudes toward online social support and influence their behavioral intentions to support others. The result shows that only when observers see the support providers they can identify with receiving positive feedback from the support seeker can their attitudes lead to more positive behavioral intentions toward social support. The findings contribute to the line of studies in vicarious interactions and reinforcement theory.
Conducted four years after the COVID-19 pandemic's onset, this study investigates Americans' continued pandemic-related anger and their reactions to mass media messages calling for societal forgiveness. A preregistered experiment (N = 938) applies moral emotions theorizing to predict Americans' emotions and message responses. Results show that political identity (Republicanism) and vaccination status (being unvaccinated or regretting their vaccination) positively predict pandemic-related moral-condemning emotions (i.e. anger, moral disgust, and contempt) and retribution judgments. In contrast, loss of a loved one to COVID-19 does not predict moral-condemning emotions or retribution judgments. Further, persuasive message interventions may have the potential to decrease societal pandemic anger and to increase support for moving on and forgiving.
The authors examined subordinates' (N = 276) personal-relational and enacted-relational identity gaps as mediators for the relationship between their supervisor trust and displaced dissent scores. The findings indicated that participants' enacted-relational identity gap served as an explanatory variable that partially mediated the relationship between their supervisor trust and displaced dissent based on their supervisor-subordinate relationship. The results align with the leader-member exchange theory and the communication theory of identity. The authors provide an overview of implications, limitations, and make recommendations for supervisors.
This study explored whether subordinate artificial intelligence (AI) anxiety moderates the indirect effect of supervisor's AI use in email writing on subordinate burnout through the mediation of perceived immediacy. Results showed that the mediation of perceived immediacy between supervisor AI use in email writing and subordinate burnout was significant only when subordinates had moderate or high levels of AI anxiety. These findings suggest that supervisors should exercise caution when using AI to write emails.
This study examines the portrayal of Canada-China relations in three prominent Canadian newspapers-the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post-between 2016 and 2023, a pivotal period marked by significant diplomatic tensions. By applying computational textual network analysis to a corpus of 2,000 news articles, the study reveals that the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in December 2018 marked a turning point. This event led to a notable increase in the salience of negative media frames concerning China, with negative sentiments in coverage of China rising from 58% in 2016 to a peak of 76% in 2018. Overall, the Canadian media's portrayal of China has been predominantly negative between 2016 and 2023, reflecting Western political-media elites' concerns about China's expanding global influence.
