Theorizing regarding parasocial relationships (PSRs) often assumes that findings regarding interpersonal relationships will generalize to PSRs. However, experiences like jealousy may operate differently in a PSR compared to a real romantic relationship. This quantitative survey (N = 309) tests and extends an interpersonal jealousy model to examine the experience of threat and the perception of romantic rivals in parasocial romantic relationships. Specifically, the study explores threats to relational benefits, self-esteem, and the relationship's existence as mediators of the hypothesized relationship between PSR strength and jealousy. The study also examines perceived similarity to the rival as a moderator. The results indicate that perceived threat to the relationship's existence drives jealousy in the context of PSRs. However, the relationship between PSR strength and perceived threat to the relationship's existence is only significant at low levels of perceived similarity with the rival. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Antisocial behavior like harassment, aggression, and cyberbullying is not uncommon in online communities, including in online video games. But games are supposed to be fun, and research suggests games can also generate prosocial experiences. This online experiment examines the normativity of negative and positive experiences for online game players, including by considering descriptive (common) and injunctive (accepted) norms. Findings show players viewed negative behaviors as descriptive but not injunctive norms, whereas positive behaviors were viewed as both. This pattern is particularly clear in competitive games and games with voice chat. Players view positive behaviors as injunctive norms in cooperative games.

Like online dating sites, mobile dating applications are popular technologies for navigating the dating market, whether for seeking romantic relationships or sexual partners. The searching-matching-interacting (SMI) framework describes mate selection in the dating market and how mediated market intermediaries (e.g., dating apps) can aid these functions. We conducted in-depth interviews (N = 37) to explore dating app use during relationship initiation and relationship escalation, examining the SMI framework. For searching and matching, perceptions of affordances such as visibility, searchability, and locatability governed participants' selection and use of apps. Examining the interacting function, our findings provide some of the first empirical support for modality weaving during relationship development. Rather than a simple modality switch from app to face-to-face, participants reported integrating multiple interpersonal and masspersonal channels, including social media, texting, and video. Channel transitions were made based on goals (e.g., relationship escalation, verification, uncertainty reduction) and perceived affordances (e.g., synchronicity, editability, bandwidth, accessibility). Notably, participants' evaluations of the advantages and disadvantages of dating apps revealed several tensions and paradoxes among beliefs and behaviors. These paradoxes indicate why many users may not satisfy interpersonal goals such as hookups or long-term romantic relationships through mobile dating apps. Our findings support the viability of the SMI framework, and we extend its theorizing for studying relationship initiation and relationship development.

Social media platforms like Instagram enable users to share, view, and provide feedback on images, including photographs of oneself (e.g., selfies). In a 3 × 2 between-subjects online experiment, we investigated how women evaluate and react to photographs of their peers on social media and the role that feedback might play in both objectification of others and oneself. U.S. adult young women (N = 256; Mage = 20.06, SDage = 1.57) viewed social media images of sexualized peers, non-sexualized peers, or landscapes (control). Then, they provided feedback on the images via social media hashtags (#) or not (tagging vs. no tagging). Results revealed that participants who viewed sexualized peers demonstrated the highest levels of state self-objectification and were more likely to dehumanize the women in the photos. Hashtags generated by participants indicated that those who viewed sexualized peers engaged in greater appearance-related objectification, specifically related to body parts, and sexual objectification than those who viewed non-sexualized peers. In addition, generating hashtags that specifically focused on body parts heightened viewers’ state self-objectification. These findings illustrate the complexities of social media content production and consumption, particularly for young women.

The widespread adoption of social media, mobile phones, and online dating apps has drawn more attention toward the importance of media technologies in romantic relationships. However, most observed relational functions and effects of digital media are not novel. Rather, they have been documented previously with traditional media such as books, letters, radio, newspapers, recorded music, television, and the telephone. Romantic relational phenomena manifest across both traditional and digital media due to similar affordances. This chapter provides an overview of research on traditional media across relational processes (mate seeking, relationship initiation, relationship escalation, relationship maintenance, relationship disruption, and relationship dissolution), identifying key social affordances, and introducing relevant theories. We discuss how people use media in relationships, how media consumption affects our relationships, and how people foster relationships with media characters (i.e., parasocial relationships).

Technology, relationships, and well-being represent three influential parts of our daily lives. They also represent a common area of research for scholars in a variety of disciplines. Here, we offer guidance for researchers interested in studying the connections among these issues and introduce the special issue in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships focused on the confluence of these topics. We take each issue in turn, along with their interconnections, and describe some common pitfalls along with ideas to advance research in these areas. After analyzing the body of research on technology, relationships, and well-being, we present the special issue. We explain how our analysis of this body of research along with obstacles we encountered conducting research in this area shaped our approach to the issue. For the edification of future editors, we briefly reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of our atypical editorial process before presenting the articles that compose this issue.

Abstract This chapter examines the emotional experiences associated with a broad range of online aggressive behaviors. The authors begin by conceptualizing online social aggression (OSA) and providing an organizational framework for types of OSA including cyberbullying, online harassment, online incivility, online sexual harassment, online hate speech, online shaming, cyberstalking, digital dating abuse, flaming, trolling, griefing, doxing, and image-based sexual abuse (i.e., “revenge porn”). They explain how technology affordances, such as anonymity, visibility, and social presence, distinguish OSA from aggression in other environments. They discuss relevant theoretical models, including the social identity model of deindividuation effects and the online disinhibition effect. They then review research on emotions in OSA considering perpetrators, targets, and observers (e.g., anger, frustration, jealousy, envy, fear, disgust, sadness, loneliness, amusement, and boredom). After discussing methodological challenges of studying OSA and describing some interventions, they conclude with suggestions for future research.

The Fluid Earth (FE) is an interactive data visualization initially developed for learning about Earth’s atmosphere in informal educational settings. In this study, we tested FE in middle school classes to assess student engagement in a formal educational setting. Using a quasi-experimental design, students were assigned to interact with the data visualization website (high interactivity) or prerecorded videos of the visualization (low interactivity). Students who used the website demonstrated greater engagement and perceived learning than students who used videos, but no differences were observed for behavioral intentions to use FE in the future. Results provide preliminary evidence that the interactive interface provided a more engaging educational experience than videos. Findings suggest that interactivity is an important component of science education visualizations, and there is value in creating interactive tools for students to explore geosciences processes and concepts. Additional work is needed to assess the visualization’s impact on student learning of content knowledge and its applicability to more diverse student groups.

Bowman et al. (2022. How communication scholars see open scholarship. Annals of the International Communication Association, 46(3)) present a survey of ICA members regarding open science beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Rather than an inquiry on open scholarship, it provides a replication of psychology’s approach to open science in content, execution, and reporting. I apply the ethical, inclusive research framework (EIRF) and re-analyze the data, critiquing the inclusiveness and validity of the current survey. Suggestions are offered regarding consent practices, survey design, and open data in future surveys. I close with provocations for ICA regarding their continued pursuit of a problematic open science paradigm.

Affordances of Internet sites and Internet-based applications make personal information about romantic partners, friends, family members, and strangers easy to obtain. People use various techniques to find information about others, capitalizing on online affordances by using search engines to find relevant websites and databases; scouring the target's social media or social networking site presence; accessing information about the target via their links or network association with others on social media; or asking questions or crowdsourcing information through online channels. Researchers have coined an assortment of terms to describe online social information seeking behaviors, such as interpersonal electronic surveillance, social surveillance, monitoring, patient-targeted Googling, cybervetting, websleuthing, human flesh search, lateral surveillance, Facebook surveillance, and Facebook stalking. Although considerable research has examined these behaviors, there has been little effort to clarify the concepts themselves. As a result, the literature is currently full of inconsistent and overlapping conceptualizations. To synthesize these concepts for future research, this review examines 73 online social information seeking concepts extracted from 186 articles. Specifically, the concepts are reviewed in light of their scope; the information seeker or target of information seeking (e.g., romantic partners, parents, children, employees, criminals); motives for information seeking (e.g., uncertainty, threat, curiosity); and the intensity of the behavior. Recommendations are provided for future research, such as employing clear conceptualizations and incorporating affordances. Finally, we offer a decision tree that researchers can use to help select appropriate terms to use in their work moving forward.

Recently, virtual reality (VR) has emerged, but a conceptual framework explicating potential foundational pillars of VR entertainment is still missing. The present chapter aims to fill this gap by introducing, based on a review of the related literature, such a conceptual framework. It proposes that the typical VR experience is characterized by the interaction of three core mechanisms or affordances (that, albeit in different constellations and to a different degree, also underlie other media channels), namely a profound sense of embodiment, spatial presence or a sense of physical co-location of other entities and events, and users’ cognitive distancing. It argues that these factors jointly affect the extent users experience VR as immediately self-relevant and consequential. By linking these three foundational pillars of the VR experience to users’ entertainment experience and related research on media entertainment, it derives five propositions about entertainment in VR (and other channels that support these affordances).

Social media users post an endless stream of life updates, commentary, and other content. This online self-presentation constitutes a narrative that can be examined as a shared account. In this study, we tested the applicability of Duck's model of relational dissolution (Duck, 1982; Rollie & Duck, 2006) to participants' personal and public accounts of their romantic breakups on social networking sites (also referred to as social network sites). We adopted mixed methods (content analysis, survey, and interview) to examine emerging adults' (N = 97) account-making during romantic relationship dissolution and the role of social media, specifically Facebook, in the process. Over 3500 posts and comments from before and after users' breakups were quantitatively and qualitatively content analyzed. Synthesizing these three data sources revealed patterns regarding users' selective self-presentation in masspersonal channels. Their dissolution accounts were shaped by perceptions of Facebook's social affordances, such as the visibility and persistence of posts, comments, and relational artifacts; social feedback (e.g., comments and "likes" from the online social network, usually for social support); conversational control (e.g., blocking and defriending); and network association, which created a diverse imagined audience and context collapse. Findings suggest that some of Duck's relational dissolution model manifests on social media, particularly social, gravedressing, and resurrection processes. Users consider and capitalize on perceived affordances of computer-mediated communication channels to construct, curate, or avoid public accounts of their breakups. Our study also provides a methodological framework for investigating user experiences and selective self-presentation on social media over time synthesizing quantitative and qualitative methods.

Humanoid social robots (HSRs) are human-made technologies that can take physical or digital form, resemble people in form or behavior to some degree, and are designed to interact with people. A common assumption is that social robots can and should mimic humans, such that human-robot interaction (HRI) closely resembles human-human (i.e., interpersonal) interaction. Research is often framed from the assumption that rules and theories that apply to interpersonal interaction should apply to HRI (e.g., the computers are social actors framework). Here, we challenge these assumptions and consider more deeply the relevance and applicability of our knowledge about personal relationships to relationships with social robots. First, we describe the typical characteristics of HSRs available to consumers currently, elaborating characteristics relevant to understanding social interactions with robots such as form anthropomorphism and behavioral anthropomorphism. We also consider common social affordances of modern HSRs (persistence, personalization, responsiveness, contingency, and conversational control) and how these align with human capacities and expectations. Next, we present predominant interpersonal theories whose primary claims are foundational to our understanding of human relationship development (social exchange theories, including resource theory, interdependence theory, equity theory, and social penetration theory). We consider whether interpersonal theories are viable frameworks for studying HRI and human-robot relationships given their theoretical assumptions and claims. We conclude by providing suggestions for researchers and designers, including alternatives to equating human-robot relationships to human-human relationships.

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps toward OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Some recommended open science practices increase the potential for harm for marginalized participants, communities, and researchers. We elaborate how OS can serve a marginalizing force within academia and the research community, as it overlooks the needs of marginalized scholars and excludes some forms of scholarship. We challenge the current instantiation of OS and propose a divergent agenda for the future of Communication research centered on ethical, inclusive research practices.

Social media users post an endless stream of life updates, commentary, and other content. This online self-presentation constitutes a narrative that can be examined as a shared account. In this study, we tested the applicability of Duck’s model of relational dissolution (Duck, 1982; Rollie & Duck, 2006) to participants’ personal and public accounts of their romantic breakups on social networking sites (also referred to as social network sites). We adopted mixed methods (content analysis, survey, and interview) to examine emerging adults’ (N = 97) account-making during romantic relationship dissolution and the role of social media, specifically Facebook, in the process. Over 3500 posts and comments from before and after users’ breakups were quantitatively and qualitatively content analyzed. Synthesizing these three data sources revealed patterns regarding users’ selective self-presentation in masspersonal channels. Their dissolution accounts were shaped by perceptions of Facebook’s social affordances, such as the visibility and persistence of posts, comments, and relational artifacts; social feedback (e.g., comments and “likes” from the online social network, usually for social support); conversational control (e.g., blocking and defriending); and network association, which created a diverse Ohio State University, USA Illinois State University, USA Asbury University, USA University of Texas at Dallas, USA Corresponding author: Jesse Fox, School of Communication, Ohio State University, 3084 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1339, USA. Email: fox.775@osu.edu imagined audience and context collapse. Findings suggest that some of Duck’s relational dissolution model manifests on social media, particularly social, gravedressing, and resurrection processes. Users consider and capitalize on perceived affordances of computer-mediated communication channels to construct, curate, or avoid public accounts of their breakups. Our study also provides a methodological framework for investigating user experiences and selective self-presentation on social media over time synthesizing quantitative and qualitative methods.

The computers are social actors framework (CASA), derived from the media equation, explains how people communicate with media and machines demonstrating social potential. Many studies have challenged CASA, yet it has not been revised. We argue that CASA needs to be expanded because people have changed, technologies have changed, and the way people interact with technologies has changed. We discuss the implications of these changes and propose an extension of CASA. Whereas CASA suggests humans mindlessly apply human-human social scripts to interactions with media agents, we argue that humans may develop and apply human-media social scripts to these interactions. Our extension explains previous dissonant findings and expands scholarship regarding human-machine communication, human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, human-agent interaction, artificial intelligence, and computer-mediated communication.

Call for Papers: “Theoretical Consolidation and Innovation in Media Psychology”A Special Issue of the Journal of Media Psychology, Curated by the EditorsNicholas D. Bowman, Allison Eden, Jesse Fox, Christoph Klimmt, Özen Odağ, Ivar Vermeulen, and Catalina TomaNicholas D. Bowman Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA Search for more papers by this author, Allison Eden Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Search for more papers by this author, Jesse Fox The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Search for more papers by this author, Christoph Klimmt Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK), Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, Hannover, Germany Search for more papers by this author, Özen Odağ Touro College, Berlin, Germany Search for more papers by this author, Ivar Vermeulen University of Wisonsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA Search for more papers by this author, and Catalina Toma Vrije Universitteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:February 26, 2020https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000277PDFView Full Text ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInReddit SectionsMoreFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byInnovating the Media Psychology of Interpretation, Identity, Interactivity, and IntersectionalityNicholas David Bowman and Emily Bohaty31 March 2022 | Journal of Media Psychology, Vol. 34, No. 2Inspiring, Regulating, Multitasking, Modeling, and Shifting Moving Media Psychology Forward Through Theoretical InnovationChristoph Klimmt and Nicholas David Bowman18 November 2021 | Journal of Media Psychology, Vol. 33, No. 4 Volume 32Issue 1January 2020ISSN: 1864-1105eISSN: 2151-2388 InformationJournal of Media Psychology (2020), 32, pp. 46-47 https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000277.© 2020Hogrefe PublishingPDF download