Minderheitsgruppen in einer Gesellschaft, etwa nationale, ethnische oder religiöse Minderheiten, sind häufig auf die Unterstützung anderer Gruppen – sogenannter Outgroups – angewiesen, um ihre Interessen durchzusetzen und sozialen Wandel herbeizuführen. Soziale Medien bieten vielfältige Möglichkeiten für stellvertretenden Intergruppenkontakt, der als niedrigschwelliges Mittel zur Förderung von Fremdgruppenunterstützung angenommen wird. Diese Studie untersucht den Intergruppenkontakt zwischen der gesellschaftlichen Mehrheitsgruppe heterosexueller Personen als Ingroup und der Minderheitsgruppe homosexueller Personen als Outgroup sowie zwischen der Mehrheitsgruppe der White Persons als Ingroup und der Minderheitsgruppe der People of Color (PoC) als Outgroup. Homosexuelle Personen und PoC sind Minderheitsgruppen, die in unserer Gesellschaft systematischer Diskriminierung und sozialer Benachteiligung ausgesetzt sind. Wir untersuchen die Effekte von positiven und negativen Intergruppenkontakten auf verschiedene Formen des Outgroup-Supports sowie die Rolle von Empathie und Perspektivenübernahme gegenüber der Fremdgruppe als potenzielle affektive und kognitive Mediatoren. Die Ergebnisse eines Online-Experiments (N = 477) mit einer stratifizierten demografischen Stichprobe der deutschen Bevölkerung zeigen, dass beobachteter Intergruppenkontakt in Kommentarsektionen sozialer Medien weder Empathie noch verschiedene Formen des Outgroup-Supports beeinflusst. Stattdessen beeinflussen Empathie und Perspektivenübernahme Outgroup-Support unabhängig vom beobachteten Intergruppenkontakt.

Today’s high-choice media environment offers various opportunities for interest-driven news exposure, resulting in highly diverse and fragmented news usage patterns, especially in the digital media environment. Media repertoires provide a suitable theoretical framework for considering these circumstances and investigating the entirety and interrelatedness of individuals’ news sources, rather than focusing on singular news offerings. We explore media repertoires focusing on news by relying on behavioral tracking data from 805 German respondents over eleven weeks (November 2022–January 2023). Conducting a latent class analysis based on news usage frequencies across seventeen news categories, we identified eight digital news media repertoires with distinct usage patterns. Repertoire comparisons via analysis of variance (ANOVA) further revealed differences in the news topics used, users’ diversity of news outlets, news concentration, and news usage duration. Implications for future research on investigating media repertoire compositions are discussed.

Despite the increasing use of the statistical programming language R in statistics and data analysis (SDA), its implementation in communication science education is limited. Experiences, recommendations, and a critical exchange are therefore scarce. The following contribution addresses this very gap. At the Department of Journalism and Communication Research of the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, we have transitioned the SDA education to R. We share our concept and demonstrate its success. The results of an online survey indicate that students perceived most teaching elements as helpful, recognizing both opportunities and challenges. We present key learnings designed to assist others in successfully integrating R into SDA education.

The dual-process perspective in entertainment research differentiates between hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences. Hedonic responses are thought to result from relatively effortless reception of non-challenging (or “light”) media fare. In contrast, eudaimonic entertainment experiences are theorized to depend on cognitively or affectively challenging content (e.g., tragedies) and effortful reflection. The present work builds on the meaning-as-information framework and the meaning-making model to suggest a conceptual alternative. We argue that audience members can have eudaimonic experiences—particularly, meaningful experiences—without intense challenges and cognitive labor by detecting meaning in messages that affirm (or “celebrate”) their core values. An online experiment ( NStudy1 = 275) and a pre-registered replication ( NStudy2 = 253) with viewers of short video clips provided substantial support for this proposition. Our discussion highlights that the analytical differentiation of low-effort hedonic and high-effort eudaimonic modes of entertainment needs revision.

Although social norms are often described as 'communication phenomena', communicative influences on the emergence and development of perceived social norms are rarely considered in empirical research. Drawing upon a communicative perspective integrated into the theory of normative social behaviour, we propose that communication and observation of referent others, as well as mass media exposure, influence perceived social norms. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a four-wave panel study to assess perceived social distancing norms in Germany. The results revealed limited communicative impacts. While mass media exposure influenced perceived social distancing norms only during specific junctures, the observation of and communication with friends and family showed no influence.

Obwohl die Inhaltsanalyse eine der wichtigsten Methoden der empiri- schen Sozialforschung ist, findet der Codier-Prozess bislang nur wenig Beachtung. Dies ist besonders gravierend angesichts aktueller Entwicklungen, wie dem vermehrten Einsatz von Crowdworker*innen als Codierer*innen. Die vorliegende Studie zielt daher darauf ab, den Codierprozess genauer zu beleuchten. Konkret wird untersucht, wie a) die Codierqualität hinsichtlich Reliabilität und Validität zwischen studentischen Codierer*innen, die häufig zum Codieren genutzt werden, und neuerdings sehr beliebten Crowdworker*innen vari- iert, b) Merkmale der Codierer*innen, konkret Persönlichkeitsmerkmale und Soziodemo- grafika, die Codierqualität beeinflussen und c) manifeste und latente Kategorietypen, die für Codierer*innen unterschiedlich schwer zu codieren sind, die Qualität der Codierung beeinflussen. Zur Überprüfung der Forschungsfragen wurden von Studierenden und Crowdworker*innen Tweets zum Thema Abtreibung codiert. Ein deskriptiver Vergleich offenbart, dass die Validität in beiden Codierer*innengruppen für manifeste, also einfache, Kategorietypen ausreichend, für latente, also schwierige, Kategorietypen jedoch unzurei- chend ist. In Bezug auf die Reliabilität schneiden die studentischen Codierer*innen etwas besser ab als die Crowdworker*innen, insbesondere wenn strengere Kriterien wie Krippen- dorffs Alpha angelegt werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen darüber hinaus, dass die Eigenschaf- ten der Codierer*innen nur einen geringen Einfluss auf die Codierqualität haben, während die Kategorietypen einen signifikanten Einfluss haben.

Standardized manual content analysis is an important methodology to capture the messages in journalistic and social media. Specifically, for supervised machine learning aproaches, human-generated training data is needed. The process of coding as well as the selection of suitable coders is crucial for obtaining good data quality. However, little research has been done on how the coding process should be designed and how personal characteristics of the coders might influence data quality. This blind spot becomes even more crucial because coding is nowadays increasingly performed with the help of crowdworkers. When working with such anonymous coders, the process of coding can then be less controlled by the researchers, which can lead to loss of quality. In our comparative mixed-methods study we compare data from a content analysis on the topic of legalizing abortion (n = 300 tweets). We conducted this in two ways: Firstly, with a team of four student coders who also received training and secondly with 150 crowdworkers. All coders had to complete a short survey on their socio-demographics and personality traits. The results show that both validity and reliability are higher for the student coders, especially for tricky coding tasks. Further, multivariate (logistic) regression analysis reveals that personal characteristics such as formal education and emotional sensitivity also have an impact on coding quality. Hence, with a reflective selection of coders as well as a thoughtful design of the coding process and the codebook, the quality of data collection can be increased—even when relying on crowdworkers.

Entrepreneurship and start-up activities are seen as a key response to recent upheavals in the media industry: Newly founded ventures can act as important drivers for industry transformation and renewal, pioneering new products, business models, and organizational designs (e.g. Achtenhagen, 2017; Buschow & Laugemann, 2020). In principle, media students represent a crucial population of nascent entrepreneurs: individuals who will likely become founders of start-ups (Casero-Ripolles et al., 2016). However, their willingness to start a new business is generally considered to be rather low (Goyanes, 2015), and for journalism students, the idea of innovation tends to be conservative, following traditional norms and professional standards (Singer & Broersma, 2020). In a sample of Spanish journalism students, Lopez-Meri et al. (2020) found that one of the main barriers to entrepreneurial intentions is that students feel they lack knowledge and training in entrepreneurship. In the last 10 years, a wide variety of entrepreneurship education courses have been set up in media departments of colleges and universities worldwide. These programs have been designed to sensitize and prepare communications, media and journalism students to think and act entrepreneurially (e.g. Caplan et al., 2020; Ferrier, 2013; Ferrier & Mays, 2017; Hunter & Nel, 2011). Entrepreneurial competencies and practices not only play a crucial role for start-ups, but, in imes of digital transformation, are increasingly sought after by legacy media companies as well (Kung, 2015). At the Department of Journalism and Communication Research, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany, we have been addressing these developments with the “Media Entrepreneurship” program. The course, established in 2013, aims to provide fundamental knowledge of entrepreneurship, as well as promoting students‘ entrepreneurial thinking and behavior. This article presents the pedagogical approach of the program and investigates learning outcomes. By outlining and evaluating the Media Entrepreneurship program, this article aims to promote good practices of entrepreneurship education in communications, media and journalism, and to reflect on the limitations of such programs.

The rise of digital communication brings about dramatic challenges for theories of communication (and social sciences in general), but also opportunities and problems regarding the expansion of empirical methods employed to study human communication and its manifold digital traces. A team of German communication scholars at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and at the University of Mainz held an international conference in Hanover with both young and experienced scholars in February 2018 to promote the development of collective, cross-institutional strategies for computational communication science (CCS). The key findings and learnings from the conference are documented in this conference report. We intend to stimulate organizational and collaborative efforts in establishing infrastructures, knowledge bases, standards of best practice, and a spirit of solidarity among interested scholars to push the field's digital-methodological progress and to compensate for different starting conditions that scholars and institutions are facing on their journey into the digital future.