With the ongoing digitization of communication, older adults are increasingly integrating social media and messenger apps into their everyday information repertoires. However, fine-grained knowledge of their information use on these services remains scarce. This study investigates how older adults perceive social media and messenger apps as sources of information and news (RQ1), and what types of information they use, as well as the underlying information needs (RQ2). It reports findings from an innovative within-method qualitative interview study conducted with n = 41 German users of these services aged 60 and over. The study reveals older adults' distinct perceptions of these services' characteristics, such as personalization and incidental exposure, as well as their diverse information uses, extending well beyond domains like health or family. Having implications for both the use and production of digital messages aimed at older adults, our study offers valuable insights for communication researchers and practitioners across various subfields.

TikTok has become an important information source for young adults, yet little is known about how they assess the credibility of content encountered on the platform. This study builds on a combination of a 7-day diary study with semistructured qualitative interviews with 46 young adults (aged 18–24), providing nuanced insights into credibility assessments during everyday platform use. The findings reveal that participants are generally skeptical of TikTok’s overall credibility, but rely heavily on source authority as a heuristic for judging individual posts. Message characteristics play largely supportive roles, as TikTok’s affordances—particularly its entertainment orientation and aesthetics—make many cues ambiguous. Participants predominantly employ internal verification strategies, drawing on their own knowledge and intuition, and use external strategies only occasionally, mainly by checking on-platform comment sections. Our findings challenge the applicability of traditional credibility models and demonstrate the importance of considering platform affordances when studying credibility assessments.

Older adults—individuals aged 60 and above—are increasingly integrating social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram into their everyday information repertoires. Yet, little is known about how they actually interact with information encountered on these platforms. To address this gap, the present study examines which navigation, selection, and engagement practices are prevalent among older adults when using social media for information. We employed a within-method triangulated qualitative design that combined stimulus-based observations with self-confrontation and semi-structured interviews. Specifically, we recruited n = 41 German social media users aged 60 and above, who were observed interacting with a personalized social media feed and subsequently reflected on their behavior. Our findings reveal a diverse range of information practices: while some mirror those observed among younger adults—such as information snacking—others differ notably, including a general tendency toward passivity. We discuss how these practices are shaped by older adults’ media socialization, thus offering broader implications for research at the intersection of digital technology and aging. Our study enriches the conceptual vocabulary for describing (older) adults’ social media practices and highlights a methodological approach well suited to studying usage behavior in personalized media environments.

This study explores how basic psychological needs and personality traits relate to the types of information that older adults use on social media platforms. Relying on a nationally representative survey of 1100 German Facebook and Instagram users aged 60+, it examines the relationship between three psychological needs-autonomy, competence, and relatedness-and four types of information use: undirected, topic-related, group-related, and problem-related. The study also explores associations with fear of missing out (FOMO), political interest, and openness to experience. Findings indicate that the need for relatedness and FOMO are key predictors of older adults' information use, emphasizing the social motivations behind their social media engagement. Notably, Facebook is more frequently used than Instagram across all types of information use. These insights provide a deeper understanding of the interactions between psychological needs, personality traits, and information behaviors among older adults, informing future research on their social media usage.

Social media have become essential for crisis communication. While past research has focused on their role in corporate communication, studies largely ignored how public organizations use social media. Among these, the police are a particularly relevant case due to their responsibilities in society. Using a sequential mixed-methods design that combines qualitative interviews with an automated content analysis, this study analyzes how the German police use social media during community (e.g. mass shootings) and organizational-level crises (e.g. misdemeanors within the police). The results demonstrate that Twitter and Facebook are the primary platforms for crisis communication, with their unique affordances shaping the communicative styles of the police. We also find police communication strategies to differ between the two crisis types. During community-level crises, the main goal of the police is to provide information in a largely unidirectional manner, while communication during organizational-level crises is more dialogue-oriented to prevent reputational damage.

Although many social media users have reported encountering hate speech, differences in the perception between different users remain unclear. Using a qualitative multi-method approach, we investigated how personal characteristics, the presentation form, and content-related characteristics influence social media users' perceptions of hate speech, which we differentiated as first-level (i.e. recognizing hate speech) and second-level perceptions (i.e. attitude toward it). To that end, we first observed 23 German-speaking social media users as they scrolled through a fictitious social media feed featuring hate speech. Next, we conducted remote self-confrontation interviews to discuss the content and semi-structured interviews involving interactive tasks. Although it became apparent that perceptions are highly individual, some overarching tendencies emerged. The results suggest that the perception of and indignation toward hate speech decreases as social media use increases. Moreover, direct and prosecutable hate speech is perceived as being particularly negative, especially in visual presentation form.

Despite extensive research on what causes social media users to recognize hate speech and what motivates their reactions to it, little is known about a crucial intermediate step that leads to users’ engagement or non-engagement with hate speech online. In our study, drawing on the uses and gratifications approach, we theoretically derived motives representing affective and entertainment, personal identity and social-integrative as well as cognitive dimensions for social media users to engage or not engage with hate speech. To empirically investigate those motives, we conducted a quota-based online survey of adult social media users in Germany ( N = 4,020) and subjected the responses to exploratory factor analysis. We found that a range of personal and social gratifications, far beyond simple expressions of approval or disapproval, encourage social media users to engage with hate speech online, whereas intentions to protect oneself and others from potential harm discourage such behavior.

For researchers interested in studying users' perceptions and immediate reactions to digital media content-even from a distance-this article introduces the remote self-confrontation interview method. This adapted version of the self-confrontation interview method uses videoconferencing software and combines four interrelated steps: First, participants are observed scrolling through/using a stimulus, which allows the assessment of attention, emotional reactions, and the intensity of participants' engagement. Second, self-confrontation interviews are conducted, discussing and re-evaluating participants' observed behavior. Third, further research aims are addressed in semi-structured interviews, and fourth, in problem-focused tasks. Weighting up advantages and challenges for participants and researchers, we discuss the method as an effective and broadly applicable approach to examine digital media users' perceptions and evaluations.

Building on recent research that challenges the notion that norm violations in online discussions are inherently detrimental, this study relies on a distinction between incivil and intolerant user comments and investigates how online users perceive and react to these distinct forms of antinormative discourse online. Conducting a preregistered factorial survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of n = 964 German online users, we presented participants with manipulated user comments that included statements associated with incivil (profanity; attacks toward arguments) and intolerant discourse (offensive stereotyping; violent threats). The results show that intolerant statements consistently lead to higher perceptions of offensiveness and harm to society as well as an increased intention to delete the comment containing the statement, whereas incivil statements do not. An exploratory multiverse analysis further suggests that these effects remain robust across a variety of analytical decisions. Lay Summary Online discussions often violate social norms. People can be rude, use offensive language, or even make threats. But research shows that not all norm violations are equal. Incivility (e.g., using profanity) is primarily a way of getting attention and can still allow for meaningful discussions. Intolerance (e.g., using violent threats), on the other hand, is meant to cause harm and goes against what is accepted in a democratic society. Our study asks whether online users react differently to incivil and intolerant statements in user comments. The results show that users find intolerant comments worse and consider them more harmful than incivil comments. These findings are consistent even when looking at the data in different ways.

This article compares the communication strategies of party and candidate accounts on Instagram during the 2017 German federal election. Building upon previous research, we conceptualize how the digital architecture of the platform determines its communication norms and how the actual communication practices implemented by parties and candidates follow or violate these norms. Therefore, we analyze how Instagram is used to implement different campaign strategies, focusing on (1) the use of network-related Instagram features-like Hashtags-, (2) text-integrated images, (3) dominant visual themes, (4) visual personalization, and (5) the addressing of policy issues. Since Germany's voting system rewards both candidate- and party-focused campaigning, the country is an ideal case study for an appropriate comparison of party and candidate accounts. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all 581 posts published on party and candidate accounts during the four weeks before the election. The results suggest that parties and candidates used complementary communication strategies instead of relying on a single tactic. We are able showing that parties in parts strategically violated Instagram's communication norms to convey hard-to-visualize policy messages while candidates prefered to post professional personalized posts. The presented findings provide a starting point for future studies on the perceptions and behavioral outcomes of different campaign strategies.

EDITORIAL article Front. Polit. Sci., 08 June 2023Sec. Politics of Technology Volume 5 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1227005

The use of information has changed in recent years—particularly among young adults, for whom social media are now the most important gateway to engage with news and various other types of information. Focusing on Instagram, this multi-method research project takes an audience-centered approach and investigates how young adults use the platform for (which kind of) information, the information needs that guide their use, and the contextual dynamics that shape their understandings of "information (use)." Empirically, the study builds on a combination of a seven-day diary study with semi-structured qualitative interviews with 48 German Instagram users aged 18 to 24. Analyzing the diaries in conjunction with the interview transcripts allowed us to gain rich insights into information usage practices and how these are influenced by the characteristics of (audiovisual) social media platforms as well as the motives and needs of using them. The findings suggest that Instagram is an integral part of young adults' information repertoires, although information is usually not actively sought. Moreover, platform characteristics and affordances not only shape possible and actual information behaviors but also matter for whether participants understand their Instagram use as information use.

Der Band bietet vielfältige Einblicke in die aktuelle kommunikationswissenschaftliche Rezeptions- und Wirkungsforschung rund um das Thema Nachhaltigkeit. Die Beiträge beschäftigen sich etwa damit, wie die Thematik in den (sozialen) Medien verhandelt wird, wie sich verschiedene Botschafts- und Kontextmerkmale auf nachhaltiges Verhalten auswirken oder auch welche Rolle etablierte und ‚neue‘ Akteurinnen und Akteure – wie Influencerinnen und Influencer oder die eigenen Social-Media-Kontakte – für die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation spielen. Ausgehend von einem breiten Nachhaltigkeitsbegriff dokumentieren sie den derzeitigen Forschungs- und Wissensstand, beantworten auf empirischer Grundlage aktuelle offene Fragen und geben Impulse für künftige Forschung. Mit Beiträgen von Jasmin Baake, B.A.; Dr. Marko Bachl; Janine N. Blessing, M.A.; Dr. Sandra Diehl; PD Dr. Marco Dohle; Caroline Eichner, M.Sc.; Anna Freytag, M.A.; Mareike Gensich, B.A.; Tanja Habermeyer, M.Sc.; Rebecca Hellmeier, B.A.; Elisabeth Hopfe, B.A.; Dr. Imke Hoppe; Dr. Anja Kalch; Dr. Ole Kelm; Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw; Dr. Isabell Koinig; Theresa Kraus, B.A.; Anica Lammers, B.A.; Filipa Lessing, B.A.; Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jörg Matthes; Carolina Müller, B.A.; Dr. Brigitte Naderer; Mag. Ariadne Neureiter, M.Sc.; Sophie Przyklenk, B.A.; Anna Schorn, M.A.; Dr. Felix Reer; Dr. Sabine Reich; Prof. Dr. Patrick Rössler; Dr. Desirée Schmuck; Chelsea Walpert, B.A.; Gregor Willenbrock, M.A.; Anne Marie Zang, B.A. und Dr. Masoumeh Zibarzani.

Social media have become a central source for news and current affairs information. This article focuses on the overarching attributes that shape how people come in contact with news, engage with news, and are affected by news on social media. Although all social media are different and change constantly, news experiences on these platforms can consistently be characterized as personalized, incidental, non-exclusive, as well as granularized and social (PINGS). Accordingly, this article introduces the PINGS framework, which acts as a systematization of social media news experiences and can be used to map key opportunities and challenges of using news across various social media platforms. In addition to presenting the framework components, the article also discusses how researchers can investigate PINGS in empirical studies.

With social media now being ubiquitously used by citizens and political actors, concerns over the incivility of interactions on these platforms have grown. While research has already started to investigate some of the factors that lead users to leave incivil comments on political social media posts, we are lacking a comprehensive understanding of the influence of platform, post, and person characteristics. Using automated text analysis methods on a large body of U.S. Congress Members' social media posts ( n = 253,884) and the associated user comments ( n = 49,508,863), we investigate how different social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter), characteristics of the original post (e.g., incivility, reach), and personal characteristics of the politicians (e.g., gender, ethnicity) affect the occurrence of incivil user comments. Our results show that ~23% of all comments can be classified as incivil but that there are important temporal and contextual dynamics. Having incivil comments on one's social media page seems more likely on Twitter than on Facebook and more likely when politicians use incivil language themselves, while the influence of personal characteristics is less clear-cut. Our findings add to the literature on political incivility by providing important insights regarding the dynamics of uncivil discourse, thus helping platforms, political actors, and educators to address associated problems.

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger are an essential part of people's communication practices, but have thus far received only little attention as a tool for data collection. In this article, it is argued that using established messaging apps in audience research can help to better make sense of everyday information and news use practices. Being already integrated into most smartphone users' daily routines, providing easy-to-use solutions for the sharing of rich and context-sensitive data as well as an instant feedback channel, messaging apps make the documentation of one's information/news use a familiar and convenient experience for participants that can easily be incorporated into their day-to-day life. Drawing on insights from two research projects focussed on young adults' information and news use practices, it is illustrated how messaging apps can be utilized in qualitative and mixed-methods diary study designs. Reflecting on methodological and epistemological issues, the advantages and challenges of using messaging apps in audience research are discussed from the researchers' and the participants' perspectives.