🗣 Communication Paper Picnic 🧺: Communication

I checked 55 communication journals on Tuesday, September 01, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period August 25 to August 31, I found 88 new paper(s) in 30 journal(s).

Annals of the International Communication Association

Do algorithmic information environments mark the end of media effects research?

Isabelle Freiling, Jakob Ohme, Isabel I Villanueva, Dietram A Scheufele

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Algorithmically curated information environments are beginning to challenge both long-standing notions of what media effects look like and our ability to study them directly. Algorithmic curation and microtargeting of content based on users’ behavioral and digital trace data pose conceptual as well as methodological challenges to our understanding of communication effects. These challenges increasingly introduce significant distortions to our field’s current ability to transparently and systematically iterate between theory and empirical testing. In this article, we provide a blueprint for how a systematic, empirical rethinking, and testing of communication effects theory can look like in an era of what we call preference-based information ecologies (PBIEs). Specifically, we discuss 9 current challenges to theorizing that are conceptual and methodological in nature and discuss necessary field developments to address and overcome these challenges. We identify 4 major agenda items that our field must tackle in order to position itself for a future in which all communication processes occur in some variant of PBIEs.

A systematic review of the deficit model and call for empowerment toward informed publics

Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling, Moniek Buijzen, Marieke L Fransen

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The deficit model, assuming some deficit in the public relevant to science, is one of the most influential and discussed models of science communication. Despite its popularity, the literature appears to lack a unified definition and heavily criticizes the model. The first aim of the current work is to create clarity on the deficit model and as such address the controversy surrounding it. We distill a definition of the deficit model through a systematic review of all works in which the model plays a key role (k = 178). The results demonstrate that there is no such thing as the deficit model. Instead, descriptions take many forms, making the model too broad and imprecise to test empirically or apply in practice. The second aim is to investigate if we can build on the deficit model to create a more specific and testable model for scientific information dissemination. To that end, we introduce a new model that addresses criticism of the deficit model, focuses on informing publics, and is empirically testable. This empowerment model of informed publics identifies publics not as deficient, but as active agents that should be informed and empowered. Finally, we set out areas of research for science communication scholars investigating how to inform publics.

Communication Methods and Measures

Beyond beyond standardization: studying robustness of empirical claims based on topic modeling through multiverse analysis

Paul Balluff, Christina Viehmann, Maximilian Linde, Yannik Peters, Jun Sun, Chung-Hong Chan

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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

Livestreamed intimacies: Parasocial production and labour in the K-Pop industry

Xinyi Wang, Nessa Keddo

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This article investigates how the emerging technology of livestreaming is a productive medium to facilitate parasociality – the one-sided sense of intimacy and relational bonding by audiences to media figures – and how this has been strategically implemented by the South Korean idol industry’s (‘K-Pop’) business model. Anchored to the case study of BTS’s livestream activities, we propose this developing area of scholarship as a new textual medium of ‘livestreamed intimacies’. The paper argues that livestreaming efficiently produces experiences of intimacy and thus facilitates parasocial relationships through its shared temporality, limited cinematographic form, and asymmetrical interactivity. We observe how BTS’s 2020-2023 livestreams trend towards late night, candid broadcasts in private settings, implicating labour boundaries. With continued pursuit for parasocial productions, this paper infers that with increased adoption and expansion of technology, livestreaming is heightening the commodification of relationship cornerstones such as intimacy, authenticity, and the private within the entertainment industries.

Scrolling through tensions: Work-related memes and the discursive construction of tensions in digital work

Camilla Aarnio, Ward van Zoonen, Anu E. Sivunen

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Organizational life is increasingly characterized by tensions and paradoxes, intensified by digitalization and changing conditions of work. This study examines how Internet memes reflect, reproduce, and perform these tensions within contemporary digital work discourse. Drawing on a qualitative multimodal analysis of work-related memes shared on Instagram, we explore how irony, intertextuality, and participatory meaning-making articulate contradictions of working life. Situating memes within broader shifts in digital labor—such as algorithmic mediation, precarity, and expectations of constant availability—we apply an integrative framework for analyzing organizational oppositions. Our findings identify recurring tensions, including agency–inertia, expression–inexpression, rationality–irrationality, and hypocrisy–integrity, which converge around an overarching tension of control and resistance. We show how memes function as multimodal, participatory sites of paradoxical category work through which tensions of digital work are simultaneously contested and normalized.

Genre as infrastructure: Power, platforms, and the governance of musical classification

Alfred Patrick Addaquay

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Discussions surrounding musical genres frequently commence with the assertion that these categories undergo evolution and defy rigid definitions. This article posits that the core issue extends beyond evolution to encompass governance: the institutional and platform-driven mechanisms through which musical diversity is identified, solidified, disseminated, and monetized. Utilizing genre theory, cultural sociology, infrastructure studies, and platform studies, this work reconceptualises musical genre as a form of regulatory infrastructure rather than merely a neutral descriptor. It critiques the notion of stable origins and demonstrates how the concept of “original genre” is frequently constructed retrospectively through markets, archives, curricula, and canons. It subsequently analyses streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, where genre is defined through metadata, recommendation systems, behavioural clustering, and audio modelling. Expanding upon the concepts of algorithmic culture, listener practices, and hybrid gatekeeping, particularly in relation to the streaming paradox, this argument posits that genre is increasingly defined by metrics: categorized, grouped, ranked, curated into playlists, recommended, and assessed within the frameworks of platform infrastructures. African musical formations, such as highlife, Afrobeats, Ghanaian art music, and Pentecostal worship music, illustrate the tendency of global taxonomies to oversimplify intricate musical ecologies into generalized categories like “world” or “African.” The article presents a Layered Stabilisation Model that includes historical core, institutional codification, and adaptive circulation. It contends that genre scholarship ought to transition from a focus on definition to one of governance.

Political protest seeks corporate sponsor: Rethinking Big Tech, youth agency, and the reordering of power from Nigeria

Jaana Serres

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This article examines how Big Tech became absorbed into local moral and political frameworks in Nigeria, Africa’s largest digital market, where the majority of the population is under 20. It maps Nigeria’s evolving platform regulations and situates recent state interventions within broader socio-economic tensions, culminating in the youth protest movement #EndSARS. The article traces how #EndSARS emerged from the entertainment industry and carried forward the organizational logic and political ethos of the globally connected, youth-led Afrobeats industry. It shows how the digital platforms that recently enabled Afrobeats’ rise not only served as infrastructure for organization and amplification, but were also called upon to actively provide corporate support against government oppression. Corporate sponsorship of the protest was simultaneously an aspirational horizon for protesters, a limited material reality through tech companies’ involvement, and a perceived threat for the political establishment. With this case study, the article intervenes in the academic consensus that conceptualizes Big Tech companies as engines of neocolonialism to draw attention to the ambivalence of emic reinterpretations, especially in contexts of generational and ethno-regional tensions. It underscores the need to understand the local dynamics that shape platforms’ symbolic power, as they can pose obstacles to effective regulation.

Digital Journalism

Folk Theories of Journalistic Authority in the Wake of the 2024 Valencia Floods

Ruth Palmer, Vincent Doyle

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No Easy Fix to Countering AI-Generated Visual Disinformation: The (in)Effectiveness of AI-Labels, Fact-Check Labels and Community Notes

Teresa Weikmann, Marina Tulin, Michael Hameleers, Claes de Vreese

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Environmental Communication

In Sickness and in Heat – A Content Analysis of German Media Coverage of Chronic Diseases and Climate-Related Weather Events

Franca Singh, Julia Metag

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Stereotypes Shape Public Impressions of Unconventional Climate Advocates Across Urban and Regional Communities

Xiongzhi Wang, Rebecca M. Colvin, Kelly S. Fielding, Sarah J. Boddington, Winnifred R. Louis

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European Journal of Communication

Can democracy speak under AI-driven visibility? Toward an affective–algorithmic reworking of the spiral of silence

Lourenço Silva Ferreira

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This article offers a critical theoretical reassessment of the conditions shaping political expression and its boundaries within algorithmically mediated publics, examining how artificial intelligence–driven infrastructures of visibility, intertwined with affective dynamics, alter the conditions under which opinions acquire public presence and come to be perceived as legitimate to express. The argument is illustrated through a case-based analysis of highly visible user interactions surrounding posts by the Portuguese populist leader André Ventura across Facebook, TikTok and X, which serves to explore how different socio-technical environments give rise to distinct climates of opinion. Revisiting the Spiral of Silence theory from the perspective of contemporary platform environments, the article argues that silencing is no longer adequately explained primarily through interpersonal fear of isolation, but must instead be understood as emerging from the interplay between algorithmically structured visibility and affectively charged interaction. On this basis, the article reconceptualises the Spiral of Silence as an affective–algorithmic process and contributes to debates in communication theory and digital political communication, while asking whether, and under what conditions, democracy can still be said to speak when publicness itself is algorithmically organised.

Games and Culture

Trudging as Environmental Mourning in the Sixth Great Extinction of Death Stranding

Lauren Woolbright

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In Hideo Kojima's game Death Stranding, the unavoidable, literal entanglement of human beings and the nonhuman natural world situates players in the shared trauma of environmental loss. The game's core mechanic of difficult land traversal facilitates an opportunity for extended meditation on this loss, but positions the environment as an antagonistic force, in tension with its status as victim. Further complicating this is the game's uncritical engagement with the postapocalyptic resource of chiralium—an analog for fossil fuels. The player's chief goal of connecting isolated cites to the Chiral Network seems counterproductive to the grief embedded in the nation's bereft landscapes, but players are powerless to refuse—other than to cease playing altogether. Using lenses of eco-trauma and environmental grief, this paper interprets Death Stranding as an unheeded environmental wake-up call that potentially enacts a collective ecological mourning as the very real Sixth Great Extinction looms.

Howard Journal of Communications

A Royal Funeral at Manhyia, a Networked Pedagogy: Digital Mediation and Cultural Learning in Ghana

Emmanuel Dankwah, Benjamin Prempeh, Martin Owusu Adi-Dako, William Francises

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Information, Communication & Society

The accuracy of survey measures on political activity on Facebook. Evidence from a data donation study

Zoltán Kmetty, Ádám Stefkovics

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Blindness and epistemic injustice: a critical autoethnography of digital disablement in Thailand

Quanchai Kerddaen

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Electoral targeting strategies during the 2022 election in Sweden: exploring the paid affordances of Facebook and Instagram

Andreas Widholm, Mattias Ekman, Anders Olof Larsson

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Internet Research

Sentiment distribution bias in AI-generated review summaries

Fei Wang, Zhecheng Liu, Fang Wang, Zhen Zhu, Shan Wang

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Purpose E-commerce platforms increasingly deploy generative AI (GAI) to summarize large volumes of customer reviews. This study examines sentiment distribution bias in platform-provided GAI review summaries, defined as distortion in the relative representation of positive, neutral and negative sentiment compared with their proportional presence in the associated review corpus. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in information theory, we characterize four sentiment distribution bias patterns and develop an input-output framework linking source review characteristics and summary design features to sentiment bias. We analyzed data from an online travel platform covering 847 Tokyo hotels with GAI review summaries linked to 111,115 customer reviews to assess sentiment bias and conducted a complementary experiment to examine downstream consumer responses. Findings The platform's GAI review summaries exhibited predominant positive bias: positive sentiment was overrepresented, whereas neutral and negative sentiments were underrepresented relative to the review corpora. Lower source review volume, higher rating entropy and lower positive imbalance were associated with greater sentiment bias, whereas longer summaries, greater attribute granularity and lower attribute sentiment diversity were associated with lower bias. An experimental study showed that, relative to a low-bias summary, a GAI review summary with greater positive bias improved consumers' attitude toward the hotel and increased booking intention, despite being perceived as less helpful. Originality/value This research documents sentiment distribution bias in platform-provided GAI review summaries, identifies input and output conditions under which such bias varies and examines its consequences for consumer responses. The findings extend the online review and GAI literatures while informing platform governance and responsible GAI deployment.

When are imperfections beneficial? The impact of aesthetic imperfections in virtual and human influencers on consumer engagement

Min Tian, Zhenyu Li, Sigen Song

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Purpose This study aims to resolve a key paradox in influencer marketing: why brands are increasingly designing virtual influencers with aesthetic imperfections (e.g. freckles), despite conventional wisdom suggesting that perfection is key. It investigates when and why these imperfections enhance consumer engagement, specifically by comparing their effects on virtual versus human influencers. Design/methodology/approach The research employs two main experiments and a supplementary robustness study. Participants were exposed to images of either a virtual or a human influencer, both manipulated to have aesthetic imperfections. The data were analyzed using ANOVA and a moderated mediation model to test the proposed theoretical framework. Findings The two main studies show that aesthetically imperfect virtual influencers elicit higher consumer engagement than aesthetically imperfect human influencers, partly through perceived scarcity. A supplementary study further rules out perceived authenticity and anthropomorphism as alternative mediators and shows that the effect extends to purchase intention, especially under symbolic product appeal framing. Practical implications Brands can enhance virtual influencer engagement by using minor aesthetic imperfections as scarcity cues, especially for consumers seeking uniqueness and symbolic products. Originality/value This study compares consumer responses to aesthetic imperfections in virtual and human influencers. It helps reconcile mixed findings in the literature and advances theory by identifying perceived scarcity as a psychological mechanism that enhances virtual influencer appeal. The study also extends scarcity theory to the digital context and offers practical guidance for designing “perfectly imperfect” virtual personas that engage targeted consumer segments.

Journal of Advertising

From Advertisements to Ad Agents: A Relational Inference Framework for Agentic Advertising

Guohua Wu

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The Influence of Brand–Game Congruity in the Promotional Phase of Advergames: The Role of Perceived Legitimacy

Amélie Joassard, Sonia Capelli

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Journal of Applied Communication Research

Surviving the eye of the hurricane: ecological resilience and renewal in higher education

Patrice M. Buzzanell, Matthew W. Seeger

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Improving patient-centered communication through forum theatre in pregnancy after perinatal loss

Kelsey E. Binion, Maria Brann, Jennifer J. Bute

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Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media

From Victim to Mutual Helper: Identity Work in University Students’ Telecommunications Fraud Narratives on Xiaohongshu

Weishan Miao, Hongjun Zhu, Jiankun Gong, Yarong Chen, Yuqi Feng, Langqi Hu, Hanxin Shen

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Editor’s Note: Automating Verification, Negotiating Trust: Artificial Intelligence and the Study of Electronic Media

Shuhua Zhou

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Relationship Between News Media Trust and News Consumption of Mainstream and Non-Mainstream Sources

Azade Asadi Damavandi, Louisa Ha

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Journal of Communication

Do good chat groups make good neighbors? Continuity and change of norms in neighbor relations under digital co-presence

Emilija Gagrčin, Olga Pasitselska

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Based on interviews with urban residents in Germany and Israel, this study examines how residential instant messaging groups (e.g., WhatsApp, Telegram) reshape the norms of “good neighboring”: reciprocity, distance, and speaking out. Drawing on Blokland’s public familiarity framework and Rosenblum’s theorizing of neighborly norms, we ask how digital co-presence transforms the relational conditions of neighboring and how these norms are negotiated within residential chat groups. We show that messenger groups lower the threshold for mutual support but introduce tensions through persistent mutual awareness, which are thenresolved through norm negotiation. Extending the public familiarity framework, we identify a complementary axis of performativity–discretion that manifests through norm negotiation. Residents calibrate between engagement and restraint, enacting “good enough” neighboring within the double-bounded constraints of a building and a chat group. We contribute to research on digitally mediated neighborhood communication by showing how urban dwellers achieve pragmatic coexistence through calibrated visibility.

Journal of Information Technology & Politics

Networked advocacy in sustainability governance: how NGOs adapt communication across stakeholder relationships on Twitter/X

Kemal Gunay

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Journal of Public Relations Research

AI-Led or Human-Led? Disclosure of the CSR Decision-Maker, Motive Attribution, and Perceived CSR Authenticity

Keonyoung Park, Dongqing Xu, Jiamin Xie

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Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Adult Adoptees’ Perceptions of the Impact of Memorable Messages About Religion and Adoption

Emily J. Helder, Kayla DeVries, Haley Kranstuber Horstman, Jade Henness, Zachary Davis, Rachel Grimes, Elizabeth Lam, Grace Arakelian, Chloe Warren, Kendal Lyssy

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This qualitative study explored adult adoptees’ perceptions of the impact of memorable messages about religion and adoption that they received while growing up in Christian adoptive families. Situated within the theory of memorable messages, the research examined the perceived impact of these memorable messages on adoptees’ relationships, identity development, emotional well-being, and religiousness. Forty-one adult adoptees participated in semi-structured interviews regarding religious memorable messages about adoption, such as being chosen , saved/rescued, adoption being part of God’s plan , and described the perceived impact of receiving these messages from adoptive family and church members while growing up. The majority of participants perceived negative or difficult impacts of the messages, such as inauthentic or alienated family relationships, barriers to adoptive or racial identity development, and emotional difficulties. Additionally, in response to these messages, participants reported a need to renegotiate relationships with religion and religious communities, either by holding on to parts of religion while letting go of messages they had been told or by cutting ties with religion entirely. Conversely, a minority described religious memorable messages as emotionally comforting, faith-affirming, celebrating of their identity, and leading to a deepening of relationships. Overall, adoptees’ retrospective sense-making seemed to shape their perceived impact of messages, supporting the theory of memorable messages’ emphasis on interpretive processes over time. The findings contribute to scholarship on adoptee identity formation and emotional well-being. Additionally, findings related to estrangement and factors contributing to religious disaffiliation have implications for the broader literature on these topics across various family forms.

Adult Attachment Predicts Parental Empathy: Evidence Across Four Samples of Parents of Children From Preschool Through Middle Childhood

Jessica A. Stern, Bonnie E. Brett, Jacquelyn T. Gross, Tracy Riggins, Jude Cassidy

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Extensive research points to the importance of adult attachment in predicting empathy, but little research has examined the role of attachment in shaping adults’ empathy specifically for their children. This paper examines how adult attachment avoidance (discomfort with emotional closeness) and attachment anxiety (worry about abandonment by relationship partners) contribute to empathy within parent–child relationships. Across four studies, we test these links using a multi-dimensional, multi-sample approach, drawing on data from parents of children spanning preschool (Studies 1 and 2), school-age (Study 3), and middle childhood (Study 4), with a total of 349 parents of children ages 3–10 years. In each study, parents completed the Experiences in Close Relationships scale and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index—Parent version, adapted to assess parents’ empathy for their child (i.e., parental empathic concern, perspective-taking, and personal distress), alongside a range of other empathy measures. Controlling for child sex and maternal education, analyses consistently showed that attachment avoidance was associated with parents’ lower empathic concern and, for parents of preschool-aged children, lower perspective-taking; in contrast, results for attachment anxiety were mixed and often null. In addition, longitudinal analyses (Study 1) revealed that attachment avoidance at baseline predicted relative decreases in parental perspective-taking over a 4-month period. Both attachment anxiety and avoidance showed nonsignificant associations with parents’ personal distress after accounting for covariates. Findings have implications for attachment theory, relationship science, and parenting interventions.

The Distinct Roles of Rejection Sensitivity and Disconnection/Rejection Schema in Fear of Intimacy: A Longitudinal Study of Young Adults

Cuiping Mou, Tingting Li, Jie Shi, Cancan Jin

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Young adulthood is a critical period for the development of intimate relationships, yet fear of intimacy may interfere with the formation and maintenance of close romantic bonds. Previous studies have linked early interpersonal experiences to fear of intimacy, but many have relied on retrospective measures or cross-sectional designs, limiting conclusions about temporal associations. To address these limitations, the present study examined whether rejection sensitivity was involved in the prospective association between disconnection/rejection schema and fear of intimacy, and whether perceived social support moderated this pathway. Data were collected from 236 young adults (82.6% women; age range = 17–32 years, M age = 21.41) across a four-month interval. After controlling for baseline levels of rejection sensitivity and fear of intimacy, the overall longitudinal moderated mediation model for total fear of intimacy was not supported. Exploratory dimension-specific analyses suggested a more differentiated pattern: rejection sensitivity was associated with fear of losing the other, whereas disconnection/rejection schema was directly associated with fear of losing the self. The conditional indirect effect through rejection sensitivity emerged only at high levels of perceived social support; however, because the interaction effect was not statistically significant, this finding should be interpreted cautiously. These results suggest that different dimensions of fear of intimacy may be associated with distinct psychological processes. The findings also underscore the importance of using autoregressive controls and more rigorous longitudinal designs when examining mechanisms underlying fear of intimacy.

Emotional Clarity of Others but Not Self Relates to Extrinsic Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Jocelyn Lai, Angie M. Gross, Wesley Tucker, Tammy English

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In close relationships, individuals manage each other’s emotions (interpersonal emotion regulation [IER]). Emotional clarity of oneself (EC-self) is a key individual difference in the management of emotions and maintenance of well-being. Recent work has examined the relational benefits of emotional clarity of others (EC-others). However, less is known as to whether EC-self or EC-others have unique associations with relational behaviors, as well as intrapersonal ER (i.e., regulation of one’s own emotions) and extrinsic IER (i.e., regulation of other’s emotions). We leveraged two studies of friendship in emerging adults (Study 1 [S1] N = 674; Study 2 [S2] N = 374). In S1, EC-others was related to more positive and less negative friendship behaviors. Further, EC-others but not EC-self was associated with more emotionally supportive and less dismissive IER strategies (e.g., receptive listening, valuing, distraction, suppression). In S2, EC-self was associated with intrapersonal ER (less difficulty and greater perceived success in regulating one’s own emotions), while EC-others was associated with both intrapersonal ER (greater frequency, effort, and difficulty in regulating one’s own emotions) and IER (less perceived difficulty in helping a friend feel better). Findings suggest EC-self’s relevance for intrapersonal processes and EC-others’ importance for both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes.

“I Can Feel that You Love Me”: Approximating Affectionate Touch in Long-Distance Romantic Relationships

Jason A. Mitala, Sarah E. Dickerson, Brett K. Jakubiak

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Affectionate touch is beneficial for romantic relationships, but some couples (e.g., those who are long-distance) cannot physically touch. In this project, we introduce “touch-adjacent behaviors,” gestures that approximate affectionate touch without physical contact. We demonstrate that “mimed touch” (i.e., acting out touch; e.g., blowing kisses over video chat) and “expressed touch” (i.e., statements that convey touch through language; e.g., texting “I wish I could hug you”) are utilized by long-distance partners and are endorsed as a form of perceived compensation for relationship distance. We also characterize the people most likely (e.g., those who use other forms of affection) and least likely (e.g., avoidantly attached individuals) to use these behaviors. Finally, we establish that mimed and expressed touch co-occur with relationship quality and provide preliminary evidence that these links are stronger for people with higher attachment avoidance. This research suggests touch-adjacent behaviors are common and potentially beneficial in long-distance relationships.

Examining Support Received and Changes to Spousal Caregivers’ Social Convoys Across the Dementia Disease Trajectory

R. Amanda Cooper, Karen Shalev, Lily G. Gorman, Ida Ghaemmaghamfarahani, Chizobam Nweke

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The social convoy model suggests that an individual’s support network includes their closest relational connections and more distal relationships that provide support. These networks, called social convoys, shift across the lifespan but might also change during stressful life events such as providing care for a person with dementia. We conducted retrospective interviews with 18 dementia spousal caregivers to examine changes in their social convoys while caring for their partners. We found that at dementia onset, caregivers’ social convoys included their spouse, family and friends, and broader community members who provided direct support, indirect support, and/or unsupport. Caregivers’ social convoys changed as dementia progressed: some family/friends moved closer while others left the social convoy altogether, formal care moved closer in the convoy, and spouses with dementia moved from supporters to co-recipients of support. Our analysis has implications for social convoy literature and practical implications for spousal caregivers and dementia clinicians.

Friendship as Method: A Psychobiography of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker

Rashmi Joshi, Rajni Singh

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This paper centers friendship as a meaning-making tool in exploring the entwined subjectivities of two prominent feminist writers, Audre Lorde and Pat Parker. Primarily relying on their letters to each other written between 1974 and 1989 and the poems written for/about the other, the paper attempts to situate friendship as a feminist practice helpful in (re)defining one’s self-concept against societal strictures. Utilizing the psychobiographical method and drawing on Black feminist theories of affection and feminist psychoanalytical theories of women’s friendships, the paper establishes the importance of friendships as sites of self-disclosure, affirmation, validation and recognition, especially for people from marginalized social identities who have been denied visibility and voice. The paper concludes that the letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker are the private spaces where the two reflect on their sense of being, their identity, draw comfort from their connection, and develop survival mechanism by resisting gendered racial discrimination. These friendship letters not only serve as spaces of identity formation but also as spaces of healing.

Loneliness Across Borders: A Cross-Sectional Study of Young Adults in Germany and Japan

Theresa von Pikarski, Yuka Ozaki, Maike Luhmann

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Despite growing evidence that loneliness is a global public health concern, much of the existing research remains concentrated in specific cultural contexts, limiting our understanding of how loneliness manifests across societies. This research explores cross-cultural variations of loneliness and its relations with life satisfaction and health-related behaviors among young adults in Germany and Japan. In a cross-sectional online study with N = 920 participants (340 from Germany, 580 from Japan), aged 18–30 years, significant differences were observed between the two samples, with the Japanese group reporting lower loneliness scores, while the German group showed higher life satisfaction and health behavior scores. Contrary to expectations, results indicated that the negative association between loneliness and both life satisfaction and health-related behaviors was not significantly moderated by culture. Similar trends emerged regarding the sociodemographic groups that were more likely to report higher loneliness scores in both countries, suggesting shared risk factors for loneliness across cultures. These findings highlight the importance of cross-cultural studies in loneliness research, especially for diverse cultural contexts beyond Western populations.

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

The Roles of Source Citations in Identifying Misinformation and Disinformation: Moderating Effects of Digital Literacy and Information Types

KyungWoo Kim, Seungheon Han, Sung-Bou Kim, Ha Hwang

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This study investigates whether source citations enhance detection of false information and whether their effects depend on digital literacy and information processing style. In an experimental survey of 1,013 South Koreans, citations show no overall effect. However, they significantly improve detection of disinformation—but not misinformation—among individuals with higher digital literacy. Intuitive processing lowers detection ability, and citations do not counteract this tendency. The findings challenge assumptions that transparency universally improves evaluation, showing that citation effectiveness depends on user capabilities and the type of falsehood, and highlighting the need to strengthen digital literacy alongside transparency initiatives.

The Trouble With Catching Up: Problematizing the “AI Gap” and its Global Inequities in Journalism

Nadja Schaetz, Anna Schjøtt

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The “artificial intelligence (AI) gap” in journalism describes a divide between newsrooms equipped to innovate and benefit from AI and those left behind. Rather than an objective condition, this study examines this gap as a discursive construction, drawing on articulation theory. Using the JournalismAI Academy for Small Newsrooms as a case study, we combine ethnographic observation with interviews conducted in 2022 to 2023 and 2025. Findings demonstrate how technological lag is articulated as a problem and AI investment as its solution, a linkage stabilized through assumptions of inevitable, linear technological progress—legitimizing particular ways of thinking about and acting on AI.

Contradicting Epistemic Inequalities: The Case of the Journalist Navina Sundaram

Christina Haritos, Margreth Lünenborg

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This contribution asks how social inequalities are perpetuated through colonial silences maintained through practices of knowledge production in journalism. Drawing on postcolonial scholarship, it examines how these silences have historically been challenged between the 1960s and 1980s. Based on documents from the personal files of Navina Sundaram, one of the first non-White journalists on West German television, it traces the practices of contradicting that challenge and uphold journalistic epistemology: contradicting visibility in editorial practices, contradicting through international networks, and denying belonging. Together, these practices show how debates on diversity in German journalism are rooted in historical struggles for epistemic justice.

Authoritative Yet Conditionally Cohesive: The Cohesion Dynamics of Journalistic (Non-) Authority on Chinese TikTok (Douyin)

Peng Xiao, Wen Shi, Yangkun Huang

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The rise of algorithmic curation challenges the traditional authority of journalism. Focusing on Douyin, this study employed agent-based testing and temporal network analysis to examine how recommendation systems generate network cohesion around Chinese state and non-state media. Results revealed that state media’s cohesive power stemmed from news, whereas cohesion around non-state media was sustained by non-news content. However, for both media types, the cohesion generated by news showed a significant decline over time, and this trend varied by topic. These findings suggest that, beyond mere institutional status, strategic content adaptation is fundamental to building network cohesion in algorithmic environments.

“Enthusiasts, Not Professionals”: Journalists’ Experiences of Precarity in Serbia’s Hybrid Regime

Igor Išpanović, Čedomir Markov

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Precarity has become a defining feature of the contemporary journalistic labor market worldwide. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with journalists in Serbia, we explore the tension between precarity and professional journalistic aspirations. Although participants understood precarious working conditions primarily in economic terms (e.g., low wages and limited job opportunities), their accounts suggest that labor (in)security is distributed according to political rather than market logic. Some respond to these pressures by adopting nondemocratic journalistic practices or by adjusting their professional values, while others embrace precarity as a mark of professional integrity and a condition for practicing journalism in a hybrid regime.

Journalism Studies

News is Becoming Similar? A Diachronic Text Mining Exploration of News Convergence in Chinese Media

Junheng Qian, Zhi-Jin Zhong

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Satire in Exile: Exiled Newsfluencer’s use of Satire as a Discursive Strategy

Chun Hong Tse, Tomás Dodds, Rosalynd Southern

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Mass Communication and Society

The Dynamics of News and Social Media Use During a Crisis: The Role of Health and Economic Risk Perceptions and Mental Health

Mirjana Čirjak, Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, Dominika Betakova, K. Pamina Syed Ali, Hajo Boomgaarden

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From Rudeness to Reflection? Elite Political Incivility Increases Attention but Does Not Lead to More Reflective Thought

Emma Turkenburg

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Media and Communication

Multi-Method Analysis of Locally Built Artificial Intelligence Models Designed for Journalists in an African Country

Adeola Abdulateef Elega, Abdullateef Mohammed, Akintunde Babatunde

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Artificial intelligence (AI) models for journalism have been built within the Global North context, hence deepening the concerns of the “AI divide” between the North and South. This has compelled organizations in various areas of the Global South to develop journalism-focused AI models to address the specific challenges peculiar to journalism practice within the region. Nigeria stands out within the Global South context because organizations are developing local AI models to empower local journalists. However, the extent to which these AI products can address real-life journalistic challenges is unknown; hence, this study assesses how well locally developed AI models are positioned to support journalists in Nigeria, using a purposive sample of four homegrown tools: ChatJourno, Dubawa Chatbot, ChatVE, and MyAIFactChecker. Employing a mixed-methods design, we conducted walkthrough usability tests by engaging 15 trained journalists who provided rigorous assessments of the functionalities of each tool. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with the developers of each of the tools to assess each platform’s vision and directly cross-check those claims against the test-users’ evidence. Findings show the tools generally aim to complement Nigerian newsroom needs, such as improving news drafting and accelerating verification, but their realized value is uneven. While some of the platforms offer usable interfaces and services, some common limitations include gaps in up-to-date data and unusable features. We conclude that the tools must reliably achieve their promised functions because usability strongly drives user acceptance, and mass newsroom adoption will follow only when tools demonstrably enhance content standards in news practice.

Bounded Watchdogging: Platform Governance, Risk Structures, and the Reconfiguration of Science Journalism

Liu Yang, Qixin Lin, Zhongxuan Lin

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This article examines six cross-platform biomedical research-integrity controversies in mainland China to analyze how open-source investigation becomes integrated with journalistic verification under platform governance. Drawing on a research design that combines multiple qualitative methods such as digital trace ethnography, process tracing, and semi-structured interviews, the study identifies a four-stage process of science watchdogging: initial disclosure, verification and evidence accumulation, media intervention, and institutional response. This process shows how journalists use open-source information to conduct investigative science reporting. Building on these findings, the article further proposes a model of bounded watchdogging organized around trade-offs among speed, verifiability, and risk, showing how public-facing online leads and digital traces can be transformed into journalistic evidence. In this way, the findings not only offer journalists a practical verification pathway for producing science investigations, but also extend watchdog journalism theory beyond liberal-adversarial assumptions in the Chinese context.

Not Afraid of AI yet: Indonesian TV Journalists on Negotiating Roles in AI-Assisted Newsrooms

Yearry Setianto, Rossalyn Asmarantika, Veronika, Angela Romano

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The introduction of Indonesia’s first AI-generated news presenter by tvOne in 2023 marked a symbolic moment in the country’s experimentation with AI in television journalism. While AI adoption has sparked global debates about automation and the future of journalistic labor, less is known about how journalists themselves interpret these technologies, particularly in Global South media environments. This study examines how Indonesian television journalists make sense of AI in newsroom practices through the lens of journalistic role perceptions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 television journalists from 12 national newsrooms, the findings indicate that journalists largely perceive AI as a supplementary tool to assist routine production tasks rather than replace core journalistic functions. Participants purported that video capture, editorial judgment, contextual interpretation, and verification remain irreplaceably human responsibilities in television news. These interpretations reflect the continued importance of established journalistic roles, particularly information dissemination and accountability, in shaping television journalists’ responses to technological innovation. Simultaneously, journalists’ views are embedded within broader structural conditions, including economic pressures and newsroom restructuring in Indonesia’s television industry. This study demonstrates how journalists negotiate AI adoption by balancing professional values with the changing economic realities of television news production.

AI in Cameroonian Newsrooms: Exploring Daily Use and Challenges Among Journalists in Four Regions

Edwin Nfor

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This study examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by journalists working for legacy media outlets in four of Cameroon’s 10 geopolitical regions. It builds on the premise that journalism practice is continually changing due to the advent of emerging technology. The article analyses semi-structured interviews with 12 Cameroonian mainstream media practitioners working for public and private print- and broadcast-media outlets. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003) serves as the theoretical lens through which the actions of the research participants are analyzed. Findings reveal that some journalists use AI throughout all stages of their work, from conception, planning, collection, writing, and editing. The extent of use depends on the individual reporter’s ability to leverage the tools. The attempt to take full advantage of AI tools is met with significant challenges, such as the absence of appropriate newsroom policies, resource limitations, the absence of context-relevant data, and insufficient knowledge among newsroom managers. The study emphasizes that the adoption of technology in newsrooms cannot be separated from the socio-economic context in which media operate.

AI Adoption in Indonesian and Malaysian Journalism: A Comparative Mixed-Methods Study

Indra Prawira, Mastura Mahamed, Tai Neilson

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping journalistic practice worldwide, automating tasks such as transcription, translation, content generation, data analysis, and personalisation. News organisations across the Global South are also experimenting with public-facing applications of AI, including AI-generated anchors and reporters. These developments challenge assumptions about technological lag in non-Western newsrooms, revealing how competitive pressures, resource constraints, and platform dependency can drive distinctive modes of technological adoption. This article compares Indonesian and Malaysian journalists’ attitudes toward AI and their intentions to integrate these technologies into their professional practice. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods approach grounded in the technology acceptance model, the study analyses how perceived usefulness, ease of use, and social norms influence decisions about the adoption of AI in news production. While both countries demonstrate strong links between usability and perceived value, cross-national differences in how these measures influence adoption intentions highlight how local contexts inflect journalists’ attitudes. Interviews further reveal that acceptance is shaped not only by individual attitudes but by policy, market dynamics, infrastructure, generational dynamics, and anxieties about technological displacement. This article advances the study of individual journalists’ attitudes toward AI within a critical, contextually grounded approach to technological adoption.

New Media & Society

Ambivalent algorithms, fragile connectedness: How algorithm awareness facets shape responsiveness and insensitivity on TikTok

Dragoș M. Obreja

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This study examines how distinct facets of algorithm awareness are associated with perceived algorithm responsiveness (PAR), perceived algorithm insensitivity (PAI), and social connectedness on TikTok. I draw on the algorithm responsiveness process and also treat algorithm awareness as four distinct dimensions (content filtering, automated decision‑making, human–algorithm interplay (HAI), ethical concerns) to examine how each dimension is differentially associated with PAR and PAI and, in turn, with feelings of inclusion and belonging. Using survey data from 305 TikTok users and structural equation modeling, I show that user‑agency‑oriented dimensions, particularly filtering and HAI, are indirectly associated with connectedness via higher responsiveness and lower insensitivity. By contrast, automation operates as an ambivalent structure: it boosts responsiveness yet is negatively associated with connectedness, marking a boundary condition for personalization. Platforms should pair automation disclosures with clearer user recourse, traceable feedback, and human review in high-stakes contexts.

The year is a dropdown menu: Platformed provenance and the viral afterlives of AI-generated retro music

Matilde Catanese

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This article examines how generative AI media becomes believable and shareable when it is packaged as a rediscovered archive and distributed through commercial platforms. Drawing on multi-sited digital ethnography, targeted platform walkthroughs, and cross-platform trace analysis of a viral “lost song” circulating in Italy in 2025, I show how listeners in this case mobilized sonic cues and platform metadata, including release dates and credits, as practical evidence. I use metadata realism to describe everyday reliance on database fields as documentary testimony, and provenance play for situated practices of verification and narration through which people negotiate synthetic pasts. After public debunking, circulation continued through humorous and artistic reframings, while verification itself became part of the artifact’s social life. The analysis foregrounds platformed provenance and considers what the case implies for synthetic media governance and content credentials.

The intended and unintended affordances of post-separation parenting apps

Michelle Irving, Jenny L. Davis

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Little research has examined the role of specific technologies in relationships characterised by unequal power, such as those which underpin post-separation domestic and family violence. Drawing on the mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances and the methods of feature analysis, this study analyses 32 post-separation parenting apps along with in-depth interviews with 18 Australian victim–survivors who used these platforms with a perpetrator. We identify intended outcomes embedded in app design and contrast them with unintended outcomes emerging in practice. Analysis revealed that the design and promotional materials of the apps influence their use as a reinforcer of litigious mindsets and actions. This combination appears to change user behaviours, leading to communication becoming anticipatory and strategic with mixed outcomes.

#BlackExcellence and #BlackGirlMagic are for all of us: Black influencers’ rejection of neoliberal logics and post-feminist discourses of entrepreneurship

Wesley E. Stevens

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Situated within feminist media communication studies, this project uses critical technocultural discourse analysis to examine how #BlackExcellence emerges as a form of “digital Black practice” among Black women influencers and users. This study is framed within the context of the George Floyd protests in 2020 and 2021 as mainstream media outlets appropriated Black Excellence rhetoric in columns, listicles, and videos following this watershed moment. Analyses of popular press articles about Black influencers, discourse about race and labor on #BlackTumblr, influencer content on Instagram and YouTube, and interviews with Black influencers comprise the dataset. By leveraging intersectional platform affordances and racialized erotic capital, Black influencers subvert neoliberal and post-feminist logics undergirding digital labor by virtue of the racialized work they are expected to perform, challenging exceptionalist rhetoric. I argue that Black influencers’ uniquely racialized, gendered work contests the assumption that influencer labor is a natural outgrowth of neoliberal conditions.

Audible, Spotify, YouTube & Co.: The German Digital Audiobook Market in the Context of Platformization

Sven Stollfuß

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This article examines the contemporary digital audiobook through the lens of platformization and develops a conceptual framework for understanding platformized audiobook culture. Drawing on an integrative review of interdisciplinary scholarship, supplemented by market reports, industry statistics, and audience studies, it uses the German audiobook market as an analytically illuminating example through which broader processes of platformization can be explored. The article situates audiobooks within wider transformations of everyday digital media practices, highlighting the shift from physical formats toward downloads and subscription-based streaming services. Conceptually, it distinguishes platformized audiobook culture from digital audiobook culture through two complementary analytical perspectives adapted from book studies, digital publishing, and media and communication studies: an integrative platform model and a data-environment model of streaming services. Building on this synthesis, the article proposes an ecosystem model of platformized audiobook culture to support future theoretical and empirical research.

News for connection, status and belonging: Exploring the social currency of local news

Jee Young Lee, Sora Park, Janet Fulton

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This paper explores the perception of social currency as a distinct value within local news consumption among audiences. Social currency refers to the value individuals derive from engaging with and sharing news content within their social networks, allowing them to connect, express identity and signal awareness. Drawing on a large-scale mixed-methods study of local news audiences in Australia (survey: n = 7919; interviews and focus groups: n = 84), this study operationalised key dimensions of social currency using factor analysis. The findings confirm that social currency is a separate and measurable construct, distinct from traditional news motivations. It is significantly higher among younger people, men, urban residents and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, reflecting how news consumption intersects with social interaction, identity expression and symbolic practices of everyday life.

Personal Relationships

A Preliminary Test of the Comprehensive Model of Post‐Dissolution Distress: Predicting Initial and Over Time Changes in Distress Following Romantic Dissolution

René M. Dailey, Zhengyu Zhang, Lingzi Zhong, Kyle Kearns, Sarah Varga, Sooyong Lee

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This study provided a preliminary test of the Comprehensive Model of Post‐Dissolution Distress with longitudinal data. The model includes distal (static; e.g., breakup controllability, relational anxiety) and proximal (time‐varying; e.g., desiring reconciliation, coping, quality of alternatives) factors in predicting both initial distress and change in distress over time. Adults who had experienced a breakup in the past 30 days completed an initial survey and were invited to complete 5 monthly follow‐up surveys. Analyses ( N = 272) showed that a set of distal and proximal factors significantly contributed to explaining 66% of the variance in initial distress. Relational anxiety, desiring reconciliation, and self‐medicating coping more consistently predicted change in distress over time for those who remained single across the timepoints ( n = 143). This model can be utilized in theory‐building to understand how the factors work collectively to predict post‐dissolution distress and highlight proximal factors that can be altered to alleviate distress. With the limited statistical power, additional research replicating and extending these findings would be beneficial.

Empathy in the Context of Sibling Relationships: A Meta‐Analysis and Systematic Review

Annika L. Klugmann, Tina Kretschmer

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Sibling interactions offer countless opportunities to practice empathic behavior and learn about emotional expression of others. In line, various studies have examined links between sibling relationships and empathy. Aiming to provide a systematic overview of this field of research, this meta‐analysis synthesizes studies and evaluates their quality. It provides overall estimates of the strength of associations between empathy and sibling status, quality of the relationship, and presence of a sibling with a disability or illness, and explores sources of heterogeneity in effect sizes. To this end, 118 effect sizes from 26 samples reporting on n = 6665 participants (aged 10 months to 81 years) were included in the quantitative analysis. Additionally, findings of nine qualitative studies with a total of 101 participants were summarized. Sibling relationship quality was positively linked to greater empathy ( r = 0.25), and higher levels of empathy were observed in individuals who have a sibling with a disability or illness ( r = 0.10). Only children did not differ in empathy, which suggests that siblings are just one of many pathways that benefit empathy development. Overall, the field would benefit from more longitudinal studies and studies that include broader family dynamics to capture the complexity of early social development.

Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale: Development and Validation of the Japanese Version and Its Short Form

Yasumitsu Jikihara, Shunsuke Suzumura, Akiko Hirose, Satoko Ando

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This study developed and provided initial validation evidence for a Japanese version of the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC‐J) and a more efficient short form (CPIC‐JS) for Japanese older adolescents. Two independent samples of Japanese high school students aged 15–18 years ( N = 335; data collected December 2022–January 2023) completed the translated CPIC and measures of emotional security and adjustment. Competing structural models were evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, including higher‐order and bifactor formulations, and the consistency of the measurement model across the two samples was examined. To create the short form, items were selected within each original subscale using graded response modeling and expert review to preserve content coverage while reducing participant burden. The best‐fitting model had a bifactor structure characterized by a relatively strong general IPC appraisal factor and more limited domain‐specific factors. CPIC‐J and CPIC‐JS scores exhibited theoretically consistent associations with emotional security and adolescent adjustment indicators, supporting convergent and criterion‐related validity. Findings indicate that the CPIC‐J provides a culturally appropriate tool for assessing adolescents' perceptions of interparental conflict in Japan, whereas the CPIC‐JS may offer a low‐burden alternative for large‐scale surveys and settings requiring brief assessment; however, domain‐level scores should be interpreted cautiously.

Bridging Hearts: Developing and Validating Experimental Manipulations of Closeness Motivation in Romantic Relationships

T. H. Nensy Le, Felix D. Schönbrodt, Caroline Zygar‐Hoffmann

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This study aimed to validate experimental manipulations to increase state closeness motivation toward the romantic partner which are implemented in everyday life via smartphone. Drawing on motive disposition theory and the Zurich Model of Social Motivation, we derived three motivation‐arousing mechanisms—incentive, disincentive, and deprivation—and implemented 18 manipulation variants across six media formats (videos, audio stories, podcasts, songs, guided memories, and personal photos). In a within‐person experience‐sampling design over 8 days, 269 participants in romantic relationships completed one manipulation or control task per day in their daily life. Sequential Bayesian hypothesis testing with Bayes factors was used to efficiently evaluate each manipulation's effectiveness. Results showed that 10 of the tested manipulation variants reliably increased state closeness motivation; four failed to do so, and four variants yielded inconclusive evidence. Construct validation analyses showed mixed results. While some variants did precisely manipulate closeness motivation, other variants also influenced affective states, agency‐related motivations, or relationship evaluations, partly to a larger extent than closeness motivation itself. Overall, the effective manipulation variants provide a flexible toolbox for future research in naturalistic settings.

No Validity Without Reliability: Measurement in Relationship Science, 1994–2024

Gregory D. Webster, Soo Yeon Park, Zhongchi Li, Amy Pezoldt, Ashley N. Krause, Anaïs Ortiz, Eva A. García Ferrés

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Measurement reliability is necessary for validity and foundational to theory, inference, and cumulative knowledge in relationship science, yet concerns about questionable measurement practices persist. We examined long‐term trends in measurement reliability and reporting practices across 482 empirical articles published in three leading relationship‐focused journals ( JPSP: IRGP , JSPR , and PR ) in 1994, 2004, 2014, and 2024. Using multilevel models to account for measures nested within studies nested within articles, we assessed change over time and journal differences in internal consistency reliability, scale length, citation age of measures, sample size, sample items, and use of ad‐hoc and single‐item measures. Results revealed steady increases in internal consistency reliability (driven by mean inter‐item correlation increases), alongside accelerating growth in sample sizes and a marked decline in ad‐hoc measures after the mid‐2000s. At the same time, authors increasingly relied on older measures, and trends in scale length, single‐item usage, and sample‐item inclusion varied by journal. Despite gains in reliability, validity reporting remained rare. These findings document meaningful progress in some aspects of measurement practice while underscoring the continued neglect of validity reporting. We conclude with recommendations for researchers, reviewers, and editors aimed at strengthening measurement reporting and cumulative progress in relationship science.

Political Communication

From #StayWoke to “Culture Wars”: How Social Justice Discourse is Separately and Synergistically Politicized on Twitter and YouTube

Sara Holland Levin, Rui Wang, Junwan Seo, Yi Yin Leong, Emma Bennett, Dongdong Yang, Zhuohui Yang, Matt Chen, Yini Zhang, Jiyoun Suk

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Social Media Savvy? The Use and Effectiveness of Political Parties’ Issue Strategies Across Platforms in the German Federal Election Campaign 2025

Christoph Ivanusch, Simon M. Luebke, Anna-Katharina Wurst, Jörg Haßler

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Democratic Accountability in East Asia: A Comparative Experimental Study of Voter Responses to Norm Violations

Woo Chang Kang, Sunkyoung Park, Osbern Huang, Koh Iwabuchi, Tetsuro Kobayashi

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Public Relations Review

Managing tensions and paradoxes: Jewish PR professionals’ experiences in the UK since the Hamas attack and the onset of war in Gaza

Lee Edwards

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The DNA of DEI in public relations research: Critically confronting the field’s capitalist constitution and ideological foundations

Scott E. Branton, Sarah A. Aghazadeh, Teresa Tackett, Astrid M. Villamil, Joel Lansing Reed

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Trust, transparency, and epistemic authority in public relations: A critical case study of institutional credibility in controversy

Erin Ortiz

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Between purpose and strategy: How corporations amplify CEO activism on social media

Jiacheng Huang, Yi Grace Ji

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Politics, power, and professional practice: Cultural control in an Indian political public relations department

Mark Rasquinha, Debashish Munshi

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What methods make possible: Reflections on methodological innovation and theory building in public relations

Laura L. Lemon, Jordan Morehouse

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Public Understanding of Science

Apolitical referee or geopolitical actor? How artificial intelligence’s national-origin labels shape credibility in politicized science communication

Junyi Chen, Weixi Zeng, Yi Mou

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Amid the politicization of science and the globalization of technological applications, does the national-origin label of artificial intelligence authors affect their perceived credibility? Drawing on the tension between artificial intelligence as an apolitical referee (machine heuristic) and artificial intelligence as a geopolitical actor like humans (social identity theory and computers-are-social-actors paradigm), two online experiments were conducted in China to examine the role of author type (human, artificial intelligence, and human–artificial intelligence hybrid) and national-origin labels in scientific content with varying degrees of politicization. In a highly politicized context, domestic sources were preferred across all author types, with nationalism amplifying this preference. The effect of artificial intelligence’s national-origin label was significant but weaker than that for human authors. In low-politicized contexts, the national-origin label no longer significantly affected artificial intelligence credibility, while foreign humans were perceived as more credible. These findings highlight the intersecting dynamics of scientific politicization and the public politicized understanding of artificial intelligence technology.

Reimagining public understanding: Toward an institutional model

Gordon Gauchat, Kassandra Thompson

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Public understanding of science is often framed as either factual knowledge or generalized trust in experts. This article advances an alternative: an institutional model, grounded in cultural awareness of the norms, practices, and boundaries through which science produces credible knowledge. Existing approaches struggle to distinguish scientific controversy from broader social conflict, limiting their ability to explain why science’s legitimacy falters in politicized contexts. An institutional perspective instead shifts the focus from individual deficits to science’s role as a social system—embedded in tensions between expertise, politics, industry, and democratic accountability. We outline the implications for science communication and public engagement, arguing that meaningful participation requires not only understanding science’s institutional role in civic life but also the capacity to evaluate scientific actors against cultural expectations and normative commitments. The article concludes by proposing a research agenda centered on the cultural meaning of science and how its credibility depends on public evaluation.

The structural contingency model of trust: When variability in perceived trustworthiness of scientists signals critical support

Tenzin Tamang

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Prevailing approaches to measuring public trust in scientists rely on facet averages that overlook within-person variability, a dimension traditional views equate with ambivalence or attitudinal weakness. This study introduces the Structural Contingency Model of Trust (SCMT), proposing that the functional meaning of this variability is contingent on an individual’s overall trust level. In a Bayesian analysis of survey data from 68 countries ( N = 69,534), higher Trust Level (mean across 12 facets) strongly predicted greater general confidence in scientists. Critically, a credible interaction effect supported the SCMT: among highly trusting individuals, greater Trust Variability (variance across facets) was associated with the highest probability of reporting a great deal of confidence in scientists. This Critical Support profile suggests that variability can signify robust, differentiated engagement rather than evaluative weakness, offering a nuanced framework for understanding the complex, multidimensional nature of public trust in scientists.

Science Communication

Scientific Ideals Versus Action: American Scientists’ Perspectives on Communicating With Policymakers

Erin B. Fitz, Dominik A. Stecuła, Elizabeth Suhay

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Despite increased scholarly attention to scientists’ role in policymaking, little is known about how scientists perceive and enact that role. We examine American scientists’ perspectives on and engagement with policymakers, recruitment into these roles, and possible influences of political ideology on these phenomena. We find that although both technical and advocacy-oriented communication were popular, scientists were more likely to engage in advocacy—possibly due to limited recruitment into technical roles relative to advocacy. Left-leaning scientists also endorsed a broader range of communication activities with policymakers, but political differences were less evident with respect to communication in practice.

Beyond Factual Correction: Integrating Meta-Cognitive Deficits Into the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model to Address HPV Misperception

Yuchen Wang, Yuan Zhong

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Overconfidence, explained by the Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE), hinders engagement with corrective health information. Integrating the DKE with Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model, a 2 (meta-cognitive vs. informational intervention) × 2 (simple rebuttal vs. factual elaboration) experiment examined human papillomavirus misperceptions. Results show that meta-cognitive interventions limited subjective knowledge, effectively boosting information insufficiency. Conversely, informational inoculation increased subjective knowledge, inadvertently suppressing the insufficiency gap essential for motivation. Path modeling confirmed that information insufficiency predicts seeking and preventive intentions. We demonstrate that overcoming overconfidence requires recalibrating knowledge perceptions rather than merely providing facts, establishing meta-cognition as a contingent condition for RISP.

Once Upon a Genome: A Content Analysis of Narratives and Narrativity in News About Genomic Research

Helena Bilandzic, Susanne Kinnebrock, Markus Schug, Theresa Engstler

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This content analysis investigates the functions and types of narratives in German science news about genomic research as well as their degree of narrativity. The results show that nearly half of all articles contained at least one narrative. They were used predominantly to corroborate scientific findings. Narratives about the research process were most common, followed by narratives about researchers and personal fates of affected individuals. Personal-fate narratives displayed the highest levels of narrativity, research-process narratives the lowest. The findings highlight the value of a differentiated approach to studying narratives in science communication.

Social Media + Society

Humilitainment 2.0: Platformed Crime Entertainment and Digital Carcerality on YouTube

Krysten Stein

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Reality-based crime television has long shaped public understandings of policing, crime, and punishment by turning law enforcement encounters into consumable spectacle. As these narratives migrate into engagement-driven platform infrastructures, where recommendation systems and interactive features reshape how policing media is packaged, encountered, and monetized, their cultural impact is reconfigured. This article examines COPSTV, the official YouTube continuation of COPS , as platformed crime entertainment structured for visibility and circulation. Drawing on a thematic analysis of 200 highly viewed COPSTV videos, I identify three interrelated patterns: the packaging of policing encounters for visibility through sensationalized titles, rapid escalation, and spectacle-oriented narrative sequencing; recurring representations that glorify law enforcement, individualize criminality, criminalize mental health crises, and normalize police violence; and the conversion of public humiliation into a platformed strategy of engagement. I argue that YouTube’s recommendation infrastructure may contribute to the amplification of punitive narratives by increasing the visibility of highly engaging policing content, positioning viewers for participatory judgment while crowding out structural critique. Situating COPSTV within scholarship on platform governance, media convergence, and digital carcerality, the article shows how platform dynamics render coercion and degradation highly visible, clickable, and economically self-reinforcing.

Antecedents of Disclosure: What Transparency Measures Social Media Users in the United States Want From Paid Political Influencers

Martin J. Riedl, Benjamin D. Horne, Matthew J. A. Craig, Michael R. Kotowski, Catherine A. Luther

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At the heels of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, public attention turned to the role social media influencers played in Donald J. Trump’s decisive win. In the United States, unlike influencers promoting commercial brands, political influencers – that is, social media influencers who associate themselves with political causes – are not required to disclose whether they got paid in exchange for promoting a political organization, party, or campaign. Through a survey of U.S. social media users ( n = 906), this study explores people’s attitudes toward paid political influencer disclosure. We find that political partisanship impacts support for disclosure: being more conservative is connected to lessened support for disclosure, yet disclosure is of strong bipartisan concern regardless. Our study documents that social media users who care for authenticity – a core currency in influencer ecosystems running on parasocial relationships – also exhibit higher support for disclosure. Yet, at the same time, caveating this empirical relationship between authenticity and disclosure, we also found that those who consumed more political influencer content exhibited lower support for disclosure, pinpointing the normalization of a digital ecology replete with sponsored content. Our study has implications for the broader political communication ecology: As transparency for paid political influencer activities emerges as a topic of public concern, platforms and regulators should advance efforts that provide disclosure about paid political influencer activities to social media users.

Sharing the Alternative – The Role of Digital Platforms for Alternative News-Sharing Behavior

Felix Gaisbauer, Jakob Ohme

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In a time of growing concerns over factual accuracy in the public sphere, alternative news media have emerged as a counterpoint to traditional mass media. In Germany, many online-only outlets cater to a rising audience, driven by distinct goals, standards, and funding structures compared to what they term ‘elite media’. Digital platforms are vital to their success, enabling audience growth with minimal financial investment and bypassing legacy media systems’ critique and verification mechanisms. Their reach, however, relies on followers sharing content and leveraging social media’s network effect to amplify niche information. Yet, the sharing habits of alternative news audiences remain understudied. This study uses original survey data from over 2,000 German alternative news users (collected in September 2023), exploring whether these patterns drive alternative media’s rise as a counterweight to established journalism. We investigate users’ sharing activity, their motivations for sharing news or refraining from it, and sociodemographic/ideological predictors for alternative news sharing.

“Turns Out My Paternal Grandmother has 16% Native Blood”: Racialized DNA, Race Destabilization, and Digital Race-(re)making on Social Media

Yukun Yang, Meredith D. Clark

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This study explores an online phenomenon that we conceptualize as “digital race (re)-making.” In the context of genetic ancestry test discourses, we found digital race (re)-making a sequential four-stage race-making process where users (a) authenticate their previously identified racial identity, (b) destabilize the previous race by incorporating DNA test results, (c) negotiate potential conflict between their previous racial identity and the DNA-inferred race, and (d) utilize social media to affirm and contest their negotiation. Employing multi-round discourse analysis on 466 self-disclosing narratives on the subreddit r/23andMe, we explore the semiotics, strategies, and signifiers that users deployed to discursively disrupt their previously identified racial identity and to create and compose their newly constructed racial identity under the premise of genetic race. By surfacing such a new online racial formation process, we argue that digital platforms actively shape the ways race is re-constructed, re-contested, and re-configured. We also discuss how such a process repudiates the classical identity formation model and how it extends racial socialization theory to the digital enclaves, and how such self-discovery comes with emotional cost.

Social Robots and the Dialectics of Presence and Absence

Autumn Edwards, Chad Edwards, Bryan Abendschein

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Social robots function as embodied social media, structuring interaction by simultaneously acting as social agents and mediating technologies. This study examines how 103 young adult participants engaged with zoomorphic social robots in initial encounters, revealing dialectical tensions between presence and absence, connection and disconnection, and realism and artificiality. Drawing from relational dialectics theory (RDT) and semiotics, we frame social robots within a plural communication ontology—operating both as communicative partners and as structuring media that regulate relational expectations. Findings indicate that while social robots facilitate engagement, their enacted affordances also constrain interaction, exposing the limits of artificial presence. Like social media platforms, these robots curate sociality, fostering immersion while highlighting mediation. By conceptualizing social robots as communicative infrastructures, this study advances research on human–machine communication and technological mediation, illustrating how social robots shape social connection through structured engagement and interactive constraints.

“Fairness Labels” in Feeds: Process Disclosures, Provenance, and User Choice Among Short‑Video Creators in Mainland China

Dandan Liu, Guangrui Fan

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Algorithmically ranked feeds allocate attention in ways that can reproduce inequalities in visibility. We test whether a compact, feed-level process disclosure —a banner describing exposure-safeguard governance, paired with provenance cues and in-situ user-choice affordances—improves perceived procedural justice, distributive fairness, and legitimacy among short-video creators in mainland China. In a mobile-first online experiment with 1,154 research-verified PRC creators in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), participants viewed a realistic feed randomized to No label , Personalization notice , or Fairness disclosure ; within the fairness condition, we factorially varied frame (Safeguards/Parity/Quotas/Exposure-fairness), issuer provenance (platform vs. independent audit), and disclosure depth (minimal badge vs. brief rationale). The compound fairness disclosure increased perceived procedural justice, distributive fairness, and legitimacy relative to both controls and was accompanied by lower self-censorship and higher voice intentions. Effects were directionally stronger in civic/news contexts and among creators who self-identified as marginalized or previously down-ranked. Within-arm exploratory diagnostics suggested that quota-like parity framing may yield directionally lower legitimacy than exposure-fairness framing, while audit cues produced directionally positive but imprecise trust gains. Backfire checks found no implied-unfairness spillover for unlabeled items and no interaction with per-item AI-content labels, although AI labels reduced perceived accuracy. Together, these findings suggest that governance-aligned micro-disclosures can function as procedural visibility signals for creators, while underscoring the importance of verifiable claims and careful disclosure design.

Telematics and Informatics

Understanding player's purchase intention in MOBA games: an affordance actualization theory perspective

Yiran Liang, Yang Lu

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From perception to participation: How older adults' digital travel skills shape activity patterns and life satisfaction

Huiqian Sun, Jianghua Zhang, Xuemei Fu, Peng Jing

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Is habitual smartphone use at odds with digital disconnection? Insights from a cross-sectional survey among Belgian adults

Laura Lemahieu, Mariek M.P. Vanden Abeele, Karolien Poels

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The International Journal of Press/Politics

Narratives of Power: AI, Agency and the EU AI Act

Bríd-Áine Parnell

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Public debate around AI has been characterised by hegemonic narratives that delineate the scope of the conversation, suppressing different voices and limiting nuanced discussion of the technology’s harms and benefits. Scholars have identified technological or enchanted determinism, the arms race mentality and the utopia versus dystopia debate as key narratives around AI. These ideas saturate the conversation, driven primarily by the tech industry, which positions itself as the (only) expert voice. The industry’s capacity to drive these narratives is facilitated by its established institutional authority and dominant presence in public discourse, as well as the knowledge asymmetry inherent in the proprietary, ‘black-box’ nature of AI systems. Tech firms leverage the technical opacity of AI and their powerful societal position to define the contours of public debate, assigning agency to AI itself and the tech industry; constructing users and civil society as passive observers or recipients; and establishing a frame for debate that focuses on extreme consequences or hyperbolic benefits. This study, conducted early in 2024, investigates the effects of this interpretive frame on the policy choices and communications of the EU AI Act, through a mixed-methods computational and critical discourse analysis. Within EU governing body texts, the same discursive patterns that map agency and erase the middle ground of debate in AI are found, helping to marginalise alternative perspectives from other stakeholders and prevent nuanced understandings of potential harms. In the context of the Act itself, these patterns reverberate in the assignment of agentic roles and the scope of the regulation.

Incivility Among Politicians: Driven by Rational Minds or Personal Drives?

Željko Poljak, Bart Maes

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There is growing concern about politicians engaging in incivility by mocking and insulting each other. While prior research often explains such discourse through rational choice, emerging work highlights the role of politicians’ individual traits, such as their personality. Yet, a unified theoretical account of how rationality and individual predispositions interact to shape harmful elite discourse is lacking. Drawing on foundational insights from psychology, we argue that politicians’ discourse reflects primarily rational considerations, which are moderated by their individual predispositions, leading to uncivil communication between politicians. We test this notion using elite survey data, unobtrusive measures of their individual traits, and direct observations of politicians’ social media communication in Belgium – a rare integration of psychological and behavioral evidence at the elite level. The results show that politicians’ use of uncivil discourse responds to rational considerations, but that the strength of this response depends on their individual predispositions. These findings demonstrate that individual traits moderate how politicians translate rational incentives into harmful discourse, providing a more nuanced account of the causes of elite incivility.