Political Communication 2019 Abstracts
Advancing a Communication Mediation Model of Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa • Oluseyi Adegbola; Melissa Gotlieb, Texas Tech University • This study uses data from the 2015 Afrobarometer survey to advance a communication mediation model in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to examining an O-S-R-O-R model across 30 countries, this study also considered potential cross-country differences resulting from variation in level of democracy and economic development. Results suggest the overall suitability of the model, but also suggest some key departures from previous studies conducted in western, democratized nations as well as some key differences across countries.
Pathways to Polarization: Mediated Social Comparison, Affective Polarization and the 2016 U.S. Election • German Alvarez, University of Texas Austin • Op-eds, politicians, and the public alike are quick to blame social media for increasing political polarization. Social media alone, however, is not inherently political. Instead, the degree to which political information is found on these networks is bound by users, algorithms, and microtargeted advertisements. Add the spectacle of a presidential election campaign to the mix and partisan identity is made salient. As a result, people use other’s social media behavior as reference points for social comparison. The social identity theory explains that people make social comparisons between in-group and out-group in order make sense of who they are and how they are evaluated. The current study examines social networks as an online extension of offline social networks that allows for mediated social group comparison. The results indicate that mediated social group comparison is related to affective and issue polarization. The study concludes with a discussion on the permanence of past social connections online theorizing that these connections are no longer best conceptualized as strong or weak ties, but rather as gray ties.
‘Political Hooliganism.’ Political Discussion Attributes Effects on the Development of Unconditional Party Loyalty • Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu, Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Universidad de La Laguna; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • This study extends existing research on the influence of political discussion on attitude change. To do so, we introduce the concept of political hooliganism and explore its antecedents. Results from a multi-country, two-wave survey show that discussion network size, discussion disagreement, and offline discussion negatively predict of hooligan attitudes. On the contrary, online discussion fosters political hooliganism. The study also examines the moderating role of exposure to disagreement and discussion network size on these relationships.
Perceptions of Media Influence Among Radicalized Individuals: The Characteristics, Causes, and Effects of Islamists’ Perceptions of the Media • Philip Baugut; Katharina Neumann, Department of Communication Studies and Media Research at LMU Munich • This study examines for the first time the characteristics, causes, and consequences of radicalized persons’ perceptions of media effects, using the example of Islamists. Based on interviews with 34 Islamist prisoners and 9 former Islamists, we found that radicalized individuals perceived themselves as being immune to influence by the news media, which they generally perceived as being hostile and untrustworthy. In contrast, they believed that the media had a relatively strong effect on the general public, on political and media elites, and on judges and prison officials. This third-person effect can be explained primarily by radicalized individuals’ consumption of propaganda blaming the media for the societal rejection of their ingroup. Consequently, these perceptions contributed to the Islamists’ cognitive and behavioral radicalization by serving as a breeding ground for propaganda effects. Future research should therefore consider the use of propaganda attacking the media as a cause of individuals’ media effects perceptions.
Who paid for what? The role of visual attention to content and disclosures in Facebook political advertising • Matt Binford, University of Georgia; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia; Yen-I Lee, University of Georgia; Shuoya Sun, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA; Andrea Briscoe • Recently, Facebook has changed the way they display the disclosure language regarding political advertisements in an attempt to increase transparency. The goal of this study was to use eye- tracking to determine the effectiveness of the new disclosure language and to assess other important factors dealing with how users look at political ads. Findings suggest that Facebook’s new political ad disclosure language is not effective at enhancing users comprehension of who paid for the advertisement.
Media Civic-Efficacy: Predicting Civic Engagement Among Secondary-School Journalism Students • Peter Bobkowski, University of Kansas; Harrison Rosenthal, University of Kansas • This study proposes a communication model wherein school context factors—climate, principal, and advisor—relate to students’ confidence in their abilities to use media for civic change: a concept we label media civic-efficacy. We find media civic-efficacy (1) relates positively to, and partially mediates the relationship between, political interest and prospective civic engagement, and (2) increases when journalism students feel a supportive school climate and when journalism instructors exert little control over their students’ journalistic output.
Social Computing for Generalized Trust: The Value of Presence for Establishing Contact Theory Online • Brandon Bouchillon • A web survey matched to U.S. Census parameters tests whether efforts of sociability on Facebook and perceiving of interactions as realistic contribute to generalized trust. Interacting with new people on Facebook is related to social presence. Presence contributes to generalized trust in turn. The size of the indirect association between sociability and trust through social presence decreases with age as well. Younger users are more adept at converting realistic interactions into feelings of trust.
Effects of Candidate Lateral Location and Eye Gaze Direction in Political Ads: Evidence from Self-Report and Eye Movement Patterns • Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University; Esther Thorson, Michigan State University; Weiyue Chen; Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Duygu Kanver; Mengyan Ma; Na Rae Park; Jessica Hirsch; Alan Smith • Two visual elements in a political were manipulated: lateral location of the candidate image (left vs. right) and his eye gaze direction (inward vs. direct vs. outward). Political affiliation of the candidate and of participants were also examined in an online survey sample and a lab-based study of eye movement (time to first fixation and total fixation duration on the candidate). Theoretical propositions from grounded theory and visual processing fluency were tested.
Malaise Effect or Virtuous Effect? The Dynamics of Internet Use and Political Trust in China • Xiaoxiao Cheng, School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University • The rise of the Internet has led to debates about the direction of its effect in terms of eroding or enhancing political trust. Current research puts aside the dispute and focuses on the dynamic relationship between the Internet use and political trust in China. Using multilevel analysis with pooled data, the results show that the impacts of Internet use on political trust vary across generations, and that the changing social-historical context and Internet context are responsible for the dynamic Internet-trust relation. This article also bridges the gap in existing theory by showing that both the short-term malaise effect of Internet use and the long-term virtuous effect of the Internet context act together to impact political trust.
Third-Person Effect and Hate Speech Censorship On Facebook • Lei Guo; Brett Johnson, University of Missouri • By recruiting 368 U.S. university students, this study adopted an online posttest-only between-subjects experiment to analyze the impact of several types of hate speech on their attitudes toward hate speech censorship. Results showed that students tended to think the influence of hate speech on others was greater than on themselves. Their perception of such messages’ effect on themselves was a significant indicator of supportive attitudes toward hate speech censorship, and of their willingness to flag hateful messages.
Who Becomes Politically Active? Linking Personality Traits, News Use and Economic Macro-Variables to Political Participation around the World • Brigitte Huber; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James Liu • Scholars are increasingly investigating the role of citizens’ personality traits to explain political behavior. Using survey data from 19 countries, we test whether the Big Five traits-dimensions are related to offline political participation, online political participation and voting. Results indicate that extraversion, agreeableness and openness help understand people’s participation and voting behavior, and that news use partially mediates some of the relationships. In addition, the between-country variation is related to specific country economic indicators.
From political satire to political discussion: Satire talk as mediator and affinity for political humor as moderator • Min Seon Jeong; Jacob Long; Simon Lavis • This study tests the indirect effect of exposure to political satire on political discussion, mediated by talking about political satire (program). We also test this indirect effect when individuals incidentally exposed to political satire via shared posts on social media. Given the interest of this study, we also test the moderating role of social cohesion dimension of affinity for political humor in the relationship. The results support our predictions. Implications of the findings are discussed.
The Impact of Social Media Use on Mass Polarization in Hong Kong • Tetsuro Kobayashi, City University of Hong Kong • By using survey data collected in Hong Kong, where Chinese and Hong Kongese identities are dynamically constructed in a non-mutually exclusive way, this study demonstrates that the political use of social media polarizes the attitudes and affect of those who have single Hong Kongese identity, whereas it has depolarizing effects among those who have dual identities of Hong Kongese and Chinese. These contrasting effects on polarization between single and dual identifiers have downstream consequences on political participation.
Who do we Trust More? Analyzing Public Trust to Determine which Government entities are more Trustworthy, and how Communication Techniques Might Build Confidence • Jennifer Kowalewski, Georgia Southern University; Marcel Maghiar, Georgia Southern University; Cheryl Aasheim, Georgia Southern University; Gustavo Maldonado, Georgia Southern University; Meg Elwood, Savannah Technical College • Scholars have investigated the constructs of Political Cynicism, Efficacy, and Knowledge to determine the relationship on Public Trust. In a survey, researchers investigated how people trusted the Georgia Department of Transportation, as compared to its national counterpart, the United States Department of Transportation. Findings indicate that although residents had more Public Trust in the state agency, GDOT suffered from issues of trust. Findings indicated residents wanted better communication from GDOT about potential projects.
Fuel to the Fire?: The Influence of Social Media Rumors on Political Participation and Knowledge • Nojin Kwak; Daniel Lane, University of Michigan; Qinfeng Zhu; Slgi Lee; Brian Weeks • Existing research suggests that political rumors on social media can fuel political misperceptions. Yet rumors may also more fundamentally influence how citizens engage in political life. Using original panel survey data from the 2017 South Korean election, we find that rumor communication on the instant messaging app KaKaoTalk predicts increased political participation but not political knowledge and may ultimately exacerbate participatory inequality between those with weak and strong political attitudes.
Social Media, News-Finds-Me Perception, and Political Knowledge: Panel Analysis of Lagged Relationship • Sangwon Lee, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The primary aim of this study was to examine the causal effects of social media use on political knowledge as well as the underlying mechanisms through which such an effect occurs. To this end, we adopted different modeling strategies based on panel data, which allowed us to more rigorously test the causal structure of the data when compared to cross-sectional data. Our findings suggest that despite all the learning opportunities provided by social media platforms, social media use actually hinders rather than enhances an individual’s knowledge and understanding of politics. However, this simple main effect does not reflect the full picture. Further cross-lagged path analysis suggests that using social media for news fosters the “news-finds-me” (NFM) perception, which may in turn have a detrimental impact on individuals’ learning about politics. However, those who use traditional media to a substantial degree to complement their news consumption via social media are less negatively affected. We conclude with some caveats and directions for future research.
Political Talk Shows in Taiwan: Attitudinal Antecedents and Consequences of First- and Third-Person Effects • Scott Liu, University of South Florida; Shou-Chen Hsieh, University of South Florida; Lei Chang, Kunming University of Science and Technology • This study examined the perceived influence of political talk shows on the Taiwanese audience themselves (first-person effect) and others (third-person effect), the attitudinal antecedents of the perceived influences, and attitude toward restrictions on political talk shows. A sample of 645 Taiwanese citizens responded to an online survey. Results supported the hypothesized relationships between attitude toward political talk shows and perceived influence of the shows on self and others. Also supported was the looking glass hypothesis whereby the perceived influence of political talk shows on oneself was projected onto that of others. The perceived influences on self and others were unrelated to attitude toward restrictions, however.
#Donatenow!: A computer-assisted analysis of musician’s political engagement on Twitter • Josephine Lukito, UW Madison; Luis Loya, UW Madison; Carlos Davalos, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jianing Li, UW Madison; Chau Tong, UW Madison • This study employs a computational content analysis of 2,286,434 tweets, posted by 881 musical artists from the past decade, to understand how musicians discuss politics on Twitter. A human-coded corpus is constructed, from which supervised machine learning is used to code the remainder of the dataset. Results of our study show that musicians can be grouped into three categories of political engagement on Twitter: not engaged (the majority of artists), circumstantial engagement, and active political engagement. We examine the latter categories in detail with two qualitative case studies. Moreover, we find that musicians from different genres have distinct patterns of political engagement.
Political Activist, Citizen’s Helper, and Entertainer: A Study of Professional Role Perception of Journalists in Azerbaijan • Rashad Mammadov • This study seeks to partially fill a gap in knowledge about the practice of journalism in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic. The study proposed here represents the first time Azerbaijan has been studied in a systematic fashion consistent with the literature of comparative journalism as represented by The Global Journalist (Weaver & Willnat, 2012) and Worlds of Journalism (Hanitzsch, 2011), studies well recognized as the standards against which all such efforts should be measured. One of the primary goals of the project is to explore the roles these journalists believe they play in the controlled, post-Soviet environment. Data, collected through an online survey of journalists indicate that several identifiable, perceived professional roles existed along the dimensions of Hanitzsch’s (2007) journalistic milieus. In addition, three other dimensions were identified that did not fit the model, but proved to be specific to the Azerbaijani media environment: Political Activist, Citizens’ Helper, and Entertainer.
The Rationalization of Anti-intellectualism: News as a Recursive Regime in Political Communication • Michael McDevitt, University of Colorado Boulder • In a zeitgeist of punitive populism, social science still lacks a framework to account for journalism’s unique contribution to anti-intellectualism. This paper models news as a recursive regime in political communication to account for journalism’s role in the activation of antipathy; alignment of anti-rationalism with anti-elitism in symbolic action; and return to equilibrium. Long after the news responds to an intellectual breach, residual resentment is left behind, awaiting reactivation when the climate is ripe.
Faked Out: Facebook, Fox News, and Exposure to and Perceived Accuracy of Fake News • Patrick Meirick, University of Oklahoma; Amanda Franklyn, University of Oklahoma • In the wake of the wide-reaching disinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it is important to identify what contributed to people seeing and/or believing fake news. This study examined data from an Ipsos survey (N = 3,015) conducted shortly after the 2016 election. Facebook was a vector for exposure to fake news in 2016. However, contrary to our expectations, reliance on Facebook as a news source was not associated with the perceived accuracy of fake news. Fox News reliance was associated both with exposure to fake news and perceiving it as accurate. This is likely because of its centrality in the dense conservative media ecosystem. Stronger affiliation with the Republican party also was related to both seeing and believing these pro-Trump, anti-Clinton fake news stories. Partisanship moderated Fox News reliance to contribute to greater perceived accuracy for both Democrats and Republicans, but more so for the former, a far cry from the polarization that motivated reasoning would predict. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Can online news consumption predict election participation? A path analysis of predictors of local and national voting • Bumgi Min, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications; Yang Bai; Ryan Yang Wang; Jenna Grzeslo; Krishna Jayakar • This paper explores the causal relationship between demographic characteristics, the platforms on which people access news disaggregated by national and local news, and local and national voting. Using a survey database from the Pew Research Center and a path analysis methodology, it investigates whether a preference to consume news on online platforms affects local and national news consumption, and in turn, local and national voting. Results suggest that news consumption has significant impacts on political participation, defined in this paper as local and national voting. There are significant direct effects between local news consumption and local voting, local news consumption and national voting, and national news consumption and national voting. In addition, there is no direct impact of a preference for online news on local voting or national voting. However, there is an indirect effect with news consumption patterns being a significant mediator.
Laugh till I seek: A re-assessment of the gateway hypothesis • Michaele Myers, University of Minnesota; Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University • As the media becomes more fragmented, it is important to understand how one form of communication leads to use of other types of communication. In particular, scholars should expand on this line of inquiry by examining how communication behaviors predict one another within genres of communication (e.g., news), but also how these different forms of communication might work together across genres (e.g., entertainment and news). In this paper, we re-visit the gateway hypothesis, which argued that political satire programs opened the door to people using more hard news content. In this paper, we utilize over-time survey data to provide a more rigorous test of this hypothesis. Although our cross-sectional analyses show results consistent with the gateway hypotheses, our over-time data suggest that satire does not lead to increased used of news programing. However, we did find support for the gateway hypothesis when looking at a mediation model where political attitudes serve as the intervening variable between satire use and news use.
Linking Judgments of Network Characteristics With Political Social Media Use via Perceived News Trustworthiness • Rachel Neo • Little research has examined how political characteristics of online social networks influence perceived social media news trustworthiness, and how perceived news trustworthiness affects political social media use. To address these research gaps, I use two nationally representative panel survey datasets to show that network homogeneity has positive indirect effects on expressive but not informational political social media use via perceived news trust. Interestingly, these positive indirect effects tend to be stronger among Democrats than Republicans.
Conservatives trust algorithms: How mainstream media trust, discourse, correspondence, and partisanship shape attitudes towards news aggregators and search engines • Craig Robertson, Michigan State University; Rachel Mourao, Michigan State University • This study analyzes trust in algorithmic curators and how this relates to mainstream media trust. Through two surveys, we find that news aggregators and search engines benefit from a carry-over effect, with trust in mainstream media among liberals transferring to curators. For conservatives, there is a greater disjuncture in trust ratings for journalistic and algorithmic actors. Findings suggest algorithms add a perceived layer of rationality to the sorting/ranking of news produced by other actors.
The political consequences of unfriending: Social network curation, network agreeability, and political participation • Craig Robertson, Michigan State University; Laleah Fernandez, Michigan State University; Ruth Shillair, Michigan State University • This study is a theoretical and empirical probe into the political consequences of unfriending people on social media. It explores the relationship between unfriending, perceived social network agreeability, and forms of political participation. Findings from a representative survey of US adults (N=2,018) indicate a path from social network curation, through expressive participation, to demonstrative forms of participation. The study contributes to our understanding of the links between social media use and political outcomes.
Interacting with the Ordinary People: How Populist Messages and Styles Trigger Engagement on Social Media • Michael Hameleers; Desiree Schmuck, University of Vienna; Lieke Bos; Sarah Ecklebe • We conducted a comparative content analysis of Twitter and Facebook posts (N = 1010) of political candidates in two countries to investigate the driving forces of user engagement on social media in response to populist political communication. Findings show that it is rather styles conductive to populism than the actual content of populist communication that trigger user interaction. Overall, right-wing populist politicians are most successful in spreading their message via social media.
Avoiding the Other Side? An Eye-Tracking Study Investigating Selective Exposure and Avoidance of Political Advertising • Desiree Schmuck, University of Vienna; Miriam Tribastone; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna; Franziska Marquart, University of Amsterdam; Eva Maria Bergel • This study investigates selective exposure and avoidance of political advertising using eye-tracking methodology. We exposed participants to political ads by liberal and conservative parties placed next to neutral political ads and tracked eye-movements unobtrusively. Findings showed that individuals paid more visual attention to political ads that were consistent with their partisan ideology, while they tended to avoid political ads that were inconsistent with their partisan ideology, which provides evidence for selective avoidance processes.
Drifting Further Apart? How Exposure to Media Portrayals of Muslims Affects Attitude Polarization • Desiree Schmuck, University of Vienna; Raffael Heiss, Management Center Innsbruck; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • We employed a two-wave panel survey (Nw2 = 559) to investigate how positive and negative portrayals of Muslims in traditional media and on social networking sites influence attitudes toward Muslim immigration. Exposure to negative but not positive portrayals of Muslims contributes to attitude polarization. While attitude-congruent negative portrayals of Muslims reinforce anti-Muslim immigration attitudes, a backfire effect emerges for those who disagree with the negative information, even resulting in more positive attitudes toward Muslim immigration.
Impact of Facebook Networks on Election Outcomes: Case of 2016 Taiwan Legislative Election • Yue Tan • This study examines the use of Facebook groups by candidates to campaign for the 2016 Taiwan legislative elections on the basis of different election features. It focuses on identifying political factors influencing the effectiveness of candidates’ Facebook activities to gain votes (e.g., posting and building social networks). To do this, the present study performs hierarchical multiple regressions and moderation analysis to determine the impact of network structure of candidates’ Facebook groups while controlling for candidates’ personal characteristics, key election features and the amount of news coverage in traditional media. Particularly, the moderation impact of Facebook campaigning efforts that the network structure of candidates’ ego network (in-degree and out-degree centrality) and their position in the peer network (closure and brokerage) on election outcomes through citizens’ reactivity (i.e., likes, shares, and comments) is examined. We found more frequent posting were positively associated with increases in final votes, but only when network resources were low. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Motivations of personal and portable interactive devices and citizen participation: A uses and gratifications and O-S-R-O-R approach • Winston Teo, University of Auckland; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Nuri Kim; Andrew Duffy, Nanyang Technological University; Richard Ling • This study builds upon the prior research investigating the indirect influence of news consumption by including motivations to adopt personal and portable interactive devices. Based on a survey of 2,000 Singaporeans, results showed that information-seeking motivation had a positive effect on offline citizen participation but not on online expressive engagement. Conversely, socialising/convenience motivation had a negative effect on both offline citizen participation and online expressive engagement. Implications and directions for future work are discussed.
Sharing Knowledge and “Micro Bubbles”: Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism • Nikki Usher, University of Illinois; Yee Man Margaret Ng, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • This paper explores the epistemic communities of Washington political journalists to understand the sense-making and knowledge producing contexts for their work. Using an inductive computational analysis that combines social network analysis of journalists’ tweets with qualitative data such as work history and organizational affiliation, we find that previous studies have failed to account for the diversity of specific knowledge-producing communities in political journalism, however, one significant concern is that journalists may be operating in even smaller, more insular microbubbles that previously thought, which could lead to potential blindspots and groupthink.
Could this be YUGE? The impact of heuristic and systematic cues on the 2018 elections • Tom Vizcarrondo; David Painter, David L Painter • This investigation compares the influence of heuristic and systematic cues on Florida and Georgia residents’ voter enthusiasm and affect toward the candidates in the 2018 elections. This experiment used a pretest-posttest factorial design with three conditions featuring both types of cues. Results among high information voters were marginal. However, low information voters exposed to party endorsements reported the greatest changes in voter enthusiasm while those exposed to elite endorsements reported the greatest changes in candidate affect.
Is There a Spiral of Silence in The Age of Trump? Examining the Effect of Political Partisanship on Family Communication • ben wasike, university of texas rio grande valley • Using the spiral of silence (SoS) and family communication patterns as theoretical frameworks, this study examined the likelihood of expressing opinions about Trump and his policies to family and friends. Overall, the likelihood of expressing such opinions was low. However, the SoS is not the reason, but likely the fatigue due to overexposure to related news and events and disassociation. Factors moderating the likelihood of expression were conversation-orientation, face-to-face communication, online anonymity, and opinion congruence.
Cynicism, Insults, and Emotions in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: An Affective Intelligence Framework • Yufeng Tian; Xuewei Zhang; Masahiro Yamamoto, University at Albany; Alyssa Morey, University at Albany • This study examines the role of political cynicism in online campaign information seeking and political expression. Data from a web survey conducted before the 2016 U.S. presidential election show that cynicism is related positively to anger and anxiety and negatively to enthusiasm. The relationships of cynicism with anger and anxiety are moderated by exposure to insult campaigning. Data also indicate that cynicism is negatively associated with online political expression through reduced enthusiasm.
Partisan media or political organizations? Rethinking right-wing media in the disinformation order • Yunkang Yang • In light of a heightened level of disinformation propagated through online channels in the U.S., scholars pointed out that many right-wing media outlets are its principal incubator and distributor. This article is driven by two interrelated questions. First, how should we make sense of the nature of right-wing media that promoted disinformation to advance political agenda? Second, if many right-wing media outlets resemble political organizations that conduct political operations (e.g. disinformation), what kind of political organizations are they? This article offers a modest step towards understanding the behavior of many right-wing media outlets by re- conceptualizing them as a type of hybrid and fluid political organization. Compared with the previous approach that treats right-wing media as partisan news organizations, this conceptual approach captures three important yet undertheorized aspects of right-wing media. First, many right-wing media set out to achieve specific political goals. Second, many right-wing media engaged in a wide range of political operations such as making deals with politicians to “catch and kill” stories. Third, many right-wing media strategically timed their actions for maximum effect and adjusted themselves to address emerging problems in the political environment. These right-wing media outlets take on a hybrid organizational form by blending partisan news with disinformation and employing repertoires traditionally seen in social movements, political parties, and online activism. This type of organization is also characterized by fluidity in the sense that many right-wing media adjust their goals and strategies, and form new political alliances to address emerging problems and opportunities in the political environment.
Emotional Contagion on Facebook: An Experiment Examining Facebook News Comments, Affective Response, and Posting Behavior • Chance York, Kent State University; Newly Paul, University of North Texas; Jason Turcotte; Nicky Bi • We used a survey experiment (n = 350) to test emotional contagion as a potential mechanism driving hostility in Facebook news comments. Results show exposure to positively and negatively valenced comments attached to news posts about three issues—DACA, arming teachers, and net neutrality—produce contagion effects, and these effects are robust to participant issue and political orientations. Moreover, experiencing contagion increases the likelihood of commenting on the news post, implying self-reinforcing spirals of emotion.
From a Dual-Information-Processing Model Perspective: Linking Emerging Facebook User Types to News Verification in the Mobile Media Age • Rebecca Yu, National Chiao Tung University • Because social media have become a primary means by which news is received and disseminated, verification to determine the accuracy and veracity of news has become an increasingly critical practice for individual users. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the dual-information-processing model, we use two-wave panel survey data collected in Taiwan to investigate the antecedents of information-processing modes and their consequences for news verification. Results reveal three user-types based on their motivations for Facebook use—advanced, mixed, and leisure-convenience seekers—and show that advanced users who are high in all motivations are more likely engage in elaborative processing and subsequent verification of news than leisure-convenience seekers who use Facebook mainly for leisure and convenience purposes. Further, the indirect effects are weaker for mixed users with higher levels of mobile Facebook use, compared to leisure-convenience seekers.
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