bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Proteus Effect
Authors: Peña Jorge
Published: September 2020

The Proteus effect describes how avatars or digital representations of the self wield a significant influence over people's cognition and behavior in computer‐mediated environments and subsequent real‐world contexts. This entry discusses the origin of the concept, its underlying psychological mechanisms, and supporting empirical evidence. This entry also offers a critical review of Proteus effect research along with a discussion of new developments in this area.
Ego and Cognitive Biases in Perceptions of Media Influence
Authors: Wei Ran
Published: September 2020

Who you think you are shapes what you think of the media. In the framework of media psychology, that means the “self” seems to bridge the gap between ego and media. As the conscious manifestation of a self‐centered worldview, self actively selects media outlets, processes media content, and forms perceptions of how media influence others. Understanding this phenomenon requires us to define terms and relationships between these two interlocking concepts of ego and self, as well as various egocentric tendencies related to the fundamental cognitive bias. These range from egocentrism, to optimistic bias, naive realism, self‐serving bias, to attribution bias. Moreover, these cognitive biases are present in third‐person and hostile media perceptions. State‐of‐the‐art research examines how biased perceptions of media exert ingroup and outgroup influences; and empirical evidence of traditional media and new media illuminates types of ingroup protective actions.
Media Literacy and Advertising
Authors: Kaiser C. Kit , Austin Erica Weintraub
Published: September 2020

Overall, media literacy cannot entirely compensate for the persuasive power of advertising and marketing messages. Research indicates that even if children recognize the selling intent of ads, their skepticism may not be spontaneously activated while interpreting the message, and they need adult support to navigate the complexities of the media and marketing environment. Even well‐developed interpretation process skills need to be activated, requiring motivation in addition to knowledge. Nevertheless, studies testing approaches such as the double‐edged desirability hypothesis suggest that to the extent desirable messages can be made less persuasive through increased understanding of marketing and production techniques, media literacy education can aid youths' practice and motivating strategies. There remains much to be discovered about the extent to which media literacy education can help youths learn how to use media effectively as consumers, but an accumulating body of knowledge suggests that a developmental approach that harnesses children's real‐world experiences shaped by adult advocates can help them become effective decision‐makers.
Accessibility‐Applicability Model
Authors: Tewksbury David
Published: September 2020

The accessibility‐applicability model (AAM) provides a framework for considering the processes that underlie memory‐based effects of exposure to messages in the media. Founded on research in psychology, the model identifies the major paths by which exposure to messages influences audience members' long‐term memories and subsequent interpretations of, and reaction to, social stimuli. The AAM suggests that constructs in memory are activated via their accessibility and applicability to focal stimuli. Accessibility refers to a construct's likelihood of being activated on the basis of recent or frequent use. Applicability refers to the match between constructs in memory and the salient features of objects in the stimulus environment. The accessibility and applicability of a construct are independent attributes, and they combine to influence the likelihood that a construct will be activated. Activated constructs are likely to be used in social interaction and judgments when they meet active goals and needs. Once used, constructs are accessible for use in subsequent mediated and social interactions. The accessibility and applicability of constructs can be moderated by a range of external and individual‐level factors. The AAM was developed to explain the operation of framing, agenda‐setting, and issue priming in political communication but can be generalized to other settings.
Developmental Changes in Children's Narrative Comprehension
Authors: Lorch Elizabeth P. , Hayden Angela
Published: September 2020

A narrative is an account of connected events to form a story, in which characters experience events, form goals, pursue actions to achieve goals, and deal with the outcomes of their actions. To comprehend narratives, individuals must be able to process written, aural, audiovisual, or visual representations of narratives, understand meaning expressed via these media, and generate inferences to integrate information in the narrative with background knowledge. Effective comprehension of a narrative leads to the construction of a coherent representation that enables other processes, such as retelling or summarization of the narrative, identification of themes, and learning and application of knowledge derived from narratives. Many of these processes are automatic for adults and skilled comprehenders but are effortful for children and need to develop from the most rudimentary of symbolic representations to the mature forms typically observed in adults. Developmental trends in symbolic representation, schemas and scripts, and knowledge of story structures are summarized. These serve as foundations for developmental change in making causal connections to explain narrative events, understanding how characters' goals drive attempts and outcomes in narratives, generating inferences that build coherence, and engaging in comprehension monitoring and repair of comprehension. The ways in which children learn from everyday exposure to narratives and from formal instruction are described and characteristics of effective interventions for developmental problems in narrative comprehension are examined. Future directions for research on the development of narrative comprehension are identified.
Developmental Changes in the Perception of Media Reality
Authors: Richert Rebekah A. , Baugh Courtney C.
Published: September 2020

Regardless of entertainment and educational goals, much of the media targeted to children younger than 6 is animated and incorporates fantastical characters and events. Exposed to varying levels of fantasy in their media use, over the course of early childhood, children apply their developing cognition to process the realism of media. In the course of developing this understanding, children evaluate the credibility of fantastical media and their usefulness for their day‐to‐day lives. This evaluation occurs primarily in two domains, utilizing complementary and concurrent cognitive processes. In one domain, children evaluate the realism and credibility of animated and fantastical characters. In a second domain, children evaluate the possibility and usefulness of the contexts and events that occur within fantastical programs. Processing of fantastical content can tax children's working memory. As such, studies have indicated that children are more likely to learn from fantastical characters that they perceive as having some level of realism or similarity to themselves and from fantastical content that they perceive as relevant to the interactions and problems in their daily lives.
Capacity Model and Children's Comprehension and Transfer of Educational Media
Authors: Horgan Elizabeth Skora , Kirkorian Heather L.
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an overview of children's comprehension and transfer of educational lessons from digital media, particularly as detailed in Shalom M. Fisch's capacity model. Fisch theorizes that children's comprehension can be predicted by their allocation of limited working memory resources based on the demands of the media content. According to this model, comprehension is a factor of children's ability to utilize their limited cognitive resources which complete to comprehend both the narrative content of the media and the embedded educational content. The demands of processing these content types are also influenced by viewer (e.g., age, prior knowledge) and program (e.g., formal features) characteristics as well as by guiding principles in the model (e.g., narrative dominance). The capacity model suggests that when educational content and narrative content are closely aligned, children are best able to comprehend an educational lesson. Fisch further posits that lesson comprehension is a necessary but insufficient requirement for transfer to new contexts. In addition to comprehending the lesson presented in educational media, children must also generate a flexible mental representation of the lesson and correctly apply it in the new context in order for transfer to occur.
Media Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence
Authors: Scharrer Erica
Published: September 2020

Media literacy is broadly defined as the degree to which individuals approach media with an analytical, critical thinking orientation, and media literacy education is the process of educating individuals to attempt to achieve this goal. Anyone can participate in media literacy education, but the majority of studies on the topic include children and adolescents as media literacy participants. There are many different approaches to media literacy education that diverge in terms of the degree to which they consider young people to be in need of protection from media influence and there are a number of different styles and components of the educational experience. Research has shown that media literacy education can increase awareness, promote knowledge, and change attitudes about media content, media practices, and media effects. The research evidence is less consistent regarding whether—and under what conditions—media literacy education can intervene in the effects of media on children and adolescents. Just as media effects themselves are likely to be contingent on factors pertaining to individuals, content, and context, effects of media literacy education appear to be similarly complex.
Levels of Processing Theory
Authors: Ewoldsen David R.
Published: September 2020

Levels of processing theory was developed in the early 1970s to explain how different types of judgments influenced people's memory. The theory maintained that if people engaged in deeper processing of information when they acquired that information, they would have better memory for that information. The theory has been used by media psychologists to look at memory for different types of product placements, the influence of age on memory for advertisements, and the impact of surfing the web on information acquisition. However, the theory was largely abandoned by cognitive psychologists because of the circularity in the definition of what constituted deeper processing.
Associative Network Model
Authors: Ewoldsen David R.
Published: September 2020

Network models of memory were developed in the 1970s to explain how information is represented in memory and how information in declarative memory is processed. This entry summarizes the basic assumptions of network models of memory and briefly discusses three domains where network models have been used to study media psychology.
Media Use and the Knowledge Gap
Authors: Lind Fabienne
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an introduction to the knowledge gap hypothesis. Main findings are summarized and empirical measurement approaches are explained. The entry's main focus is then on the explanations for knowledge gaps that are related to media use. The explanations and related findings are presented from the perspective of three media use phases: media selection, media reception, and media effects.
Empathy
Authors: Vossen Helen
Published: September 2020

Understanding and sharing the emotions of others are crucial socioemotional skills, especially in adolescence. Therefore, understanding what influences the development of empathy is pivotal. While most often influences from parents and peers are considered, more recently the focus has also turned to media entertainment. Because empathy is strongly related to moral development, research has largely focused on the influence of violent and prosocial media content on empathy. These studies generally report a negative influence of violent media content and a positive influence of prosocial media content on empathy. However, because of a conceptual issue we have to consider that it may be more appropriate to conclude that sympathy rather than empathy is affected by both violent and prosocial media content. More recently, research has also considered new media effects and investigated the influence of social media use on the development of empathy in adolescents. While many concerns have been expressed that communicating online may hinder understanding and sharing emotions of others, only a very few studies have been conducted. These few studies, however, suggest that social media use may foster instead of curtail empathy in adolescents.
Big Five Personality Traits and Media Use
Authors: Hall Alice E.
Published: September 2020

The Big Five personality model is a typology of five broad‐based traits that have been argued to comprehensively represent the most fundamental dimensions of human personality. The traits are extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Theoretical approaches to media selection such as uses and gratifications theory and mood management theory suggest that personality characteristics such as those in the Big Five model affect media use indirectly. They shape the strength of needs or desires that potential media users seek to gratify, and thus affect the kind of media that are selected. Research has found the Big Five personality dimensions to have modest but significant associations with specific types of media use. However, these associations tend to be modest in size and have often been found to vary across studies and within samples of research participants. The overall pattern of research results, therefore, indicates that the broad‐based personality dimensions of the Big Five may help predict differences across individuals in how they use media. However, these relationships are likely to be part of complex and multistep processes that are shaped by the media user's social and cultural context.
Need for Cognition
Authors: Zhou Shuhua , Guo Lei
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an introduction to John T. Cacioppo and Richard E. Petty's need for cognition (NFC), including its definition, development, measurement, and research applications in social psychology and other related fields. In addition, future directions for research on the concept are discussed. According to Cacioppo and Petty, NFC describes people's different preferences to engage in and enjoy thinking. High NFC individuals tend to put more effort into thinking and form their judgment based on careful and systematic consideration, whereas people with low NFC rely more on simple cues, cognitive heuristics, and stereotypes when making judgments and decisions.
Need to Evaluate
Authors: Coenen Lennert
Published: September 2020

The need to evaluate (NTE) is a personality characteristic reflecting a propensity to engage in evaluative thought, form opinions, and maintain attitudes. Research has shown NTE to predict various aspects of evaluative behavior, such as the reliance on evaluative words when describing objects, the speed of expressing attitudes, and the use of online (rather than memory‐based) processing to update opinions. There is some evidence that these characteristics of NTE are relevant for research on media effects: Low NTE individuals appear to be more susceptible to experimental framing effects, while survey‐based cultivation patterns are more pronounced among people with high NTE. Media scholars have also put forward theoretical reasons why NTE may serve as a motive of media use. However, the evidence for such a pattern is only very limited and, if anything, the relationship between NTE and media use is likely to only be indirect.
Need for Affect
Authors: Johnson Benjamin K.
Published: September 2020

The need for affect is a trait characterized by a desire to feel intense emotional states. Individuals high on need for affect will approach, not avoid, strong affective experiences. Compared to its twin, the need for cognition, the depth and breadth of research into need for affect is much smaller. However, the trait has already been shown to be a unique predictor of media psychological processes and outcomes. Higher levels of need for affect are predictive of motivations to seek out both pleasurable and meaningful media experiences, and perhaps to engage with richer media. Robust evidence shows small to moderate links between the trait of need for affect and commonly studied entertainment concepts such as enjoyment, transportation, and suspense. There are also initial indications that need for affect is predictive of persuasive processes and receptivity to more emotional messages, and that it is related to partisan processing of political information. Need for affect has been especially explanatory with regard to narrative persuasion, and it appears to be significant in explaining how media users respond to spoilers about narrative storylines. The present review indicates that need for affect is a relatively efficacious individual difference in media psychology, but that it has been underutilized in research, especially regarding new media, partisan media, and advertising. Future research opportunities also revolve around the two‐dimensional (approach and avoidance) nature of the concept, as well as its potential relationship to existing theoretical frameworks.
Need for Closure
Authors: Qin Yan , Nan Xiaoli
Published: September 2020

This entry introduces the concept of need for closure (NFC), proposed by Kruglanski and Webster as a motivated tendency, its influence on human behaviors, and implications for media psychology research. The entry is organized as follows: The first section briefly introduces the NFC and reviews development of this concept and corresponding scales; the second section reviews research on the influence of the NFC on human behaviors at individual, interpersonal, and group levels, and discusses implications of NFC research with regard to media and media information; the final section examines future directions of NFC studies with a focus on its relation to the media environment and information presented in the media.
Self‐Control: Self‐Regulation and Impulse Control
Authors: Johnson Benjamin K.
Published: September 2020

Self‐control refers to trait and state differences in mental resources used to override automatic responses and engage in goal‐driven behavior. Media psychology has drawn from the strength model of self‐regulation and other perspectives on self‐control to examine how media selection, reception, and effects relate to an individual's executive control over their affect, cognition, and behavior. Diminished conditions of self‐control such as ego depletion and impulsiveness are linked to excessive media use, media use as procrastination, and habitual patterns of media use. A lack of self‐control has also been tied to greater engagement with media content, more susceptibility to influence, and a preference for easier‐to‐process content. Unregulated media use, or feelings of guilt accompanying entertainment media binges, are potentially detrimental to recovery of self‐control. However, some facets of media content allow for engagement that revitalizes self‐control.
Sensation Seeking and Violence
Authors: Khurana Atika , Grabow Aleksandria Perez
Published: September 2020

Sensation seeking is a biological drive to seek out novel or exciting behaviors and has been linked to adolescent risk taking, including aggressive and violent behaviors. Prior research has documented direct associations between sensation seeking and aggression among adolescents, as well as mediation and moderation pathways by which sensation seeking can operate in combination with media violence exposure to increase risk for aggression. Nevertheless, studies examining the relation between sensation seeking and aggression in adolescents have often overlooked the confounding influence of impulsivity—a personality characteristic that tends to be positively correlated with sensation seeking but represents a distinct weakness in top‐down control and may play a more critical role in predicting adolescent aggression. Future research should focus on identifying the unique effects of sensation seeking and impulsivity in predicting adolescent aggression in order to inform the design of more targeted preventive interventions.
Mood Management
Authors: Dillman Carpentier Francesca R.
Published: September 2020

Mood management theory lies among the theoretical approaches explaining and predicting selective exposure to media. Mood management proposes that a key motivation driving people's selection of media content is the service of hedonism—as is argued, people innately want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. According to the theory, a person's current mood or feeling state (affect) informs their choice of media, whether the person is expressly aware of this driver or not. If the person is experiencing an unwanted negative mood state, she or he will likely select media content that provides relief from, or rather, repair of this mood state, resulting in a selection that is apt to be positive or uplifting in emotional valence and devoid of any mention of the issues the person believes to have contributed to their negative mood. If, however, the person is experiencing a desirable positive mood state, the person will likely select media that enhances or prolongs the desired state. Similar predictions are made with regard to a person's level of arousal, with the proposition being that people strive to achieve an optimal, or balanced, arousal state and therefore will use media to rid themselves of states that are too low or too high in excitation. Although most often applied to studying the selection of entertainment media, the scope of mood management theory is argued to encompass all forms of media, from entertainment to news presentations to sporting events.
Audience Activity Model
Authors: Edgerly Stephanie
Published: September 2020

Audiences play an active role in media selection and exposure. This statement is at the foundation of much research exploring how audiences navigate and respond to media messages. Yet, there is nothing new about audience activity. The relationship between media and what audiences do with them has been the focus of research dating back to the 1970s and the advent of the uses and gratifications approach. One tenet of uses and gratifications is that audience activity is a more powerful condition of media exposure and effects than media content itself. But what does activity mean? How do audiences demonstrate their activity? Is this modern media environment an ideal setting for models of audience activity? To address these questions, several models of audience activity are reviewed, with a specific eye toward explaining how activity is conceptualized and measured, and discussing how these models are altered to better fit today's media environment.
Play Theory
Authors: Caldwell Marc
Published: September 2020

This entry introduces William Stephenson's best‐known exposition of his play theory,The Play Theory of Mass Communication, first published in 1967 and reprinted in 1988. The thesis is that audiences derive “communication‐pleasure” from using mass media such as newspapers, radio, and television. In short, audiencesplaywith media products as opposed to having toworkto obtain information from them. Unlike other interpersonal theories of play leaning toward anthropology, Stephenson's is about intrapersonal “subjective play” leaning toward psychology. Newcomers to Stephenson's “play theory” are often put off by the way his discussion is integrated with explanation of Q‐methodology—a form of factor analysis he invented—and his criticism of objectivist paradigms in use in the social sciences. However, without taking into account Stephenson's Q‐method and his criticism of the objectivity bias in the social sciences, one may easily lose sight of what his play theory is all about.
Selective Exposure
Authors: Johnson Benjamin K.
Published: September 2020

Selective exposure refers to any pattern of differential media use, where an individual's motivations lead them to choose media messages that diverge in content from the larger set of available messages. Partisan selective exposure is well documented and remains widely studied in political communication. Proattitudinal messages are selected and consumed at a higher rate than other messages, although avoidance of counterattitudinal messages is not as persistent. Within media psychology, selective exposure is understood as a more comprehensive phenomenon, where attitude‐consistency is not the only way in which media users might exhibit differential choices of messages, channels, or media. Mood management and related perspectives have been used to explain how entertainment audiences engage in selective exposure. More recently, the self‐concept and social identity have been proposed as fundamental to nearly all forms of selective exposure, and dynamic, reciprocal models of media selection and effects have been advanced and tested. Operationalization poses unique challenges in studying selective exposure. Message selection is a discrete act, but exposure is a continuous and ongoing experience that unfolds over time. Behavioral measures are often necessary to get around problems with detail and error that are introduced by self‐reports of media use. Pressing issues in selective exposure research include the role of interactivity, algorithmic recommendations, and constantly moving newsfeeds that facilitate altered forms of browsing. Theoretical and methodological innovation can further improve researchers' ability to explain and predict how individuals choose their own media repertoires.
Ritualistic versus Instrumental Viewing
Authors: Warren Stephen
Published: September 2020

First introduced by Alan M. Rubin, the terms ritualistic and instrumental viewing are used to describe how various audiences consume television within the framework of the uses and gratification paradigm. Ritualistic viewing is associated with more habitual and passive use, like viewing for companionship and out of boredom. Instrumental viewing involves watching television more purposefully and selectively, often for affective motivations or information seeking. Rubin's concepts are still used today to examine emergent media technologies that enhance or alter traditional television viewing.
Information Seeking
Authors: Ruppel Erin K. , Kahlow Jessica A. , Pu Zhixin
Published: September 2020

Information seeking is the intentional or purposive acquisition of stimuli that contribute to one's knowledge or beliefs. People typically seek information to reduce their uncertainty about a situation or another person. However, information seeking can also be used to manage uncertainty in other ways, such as trying to increase one's uncertainty about something. A variety of disciplines study information seeking; these include communication, library and information sciences, and psychology. Across these disciplines, information seeking research aims to understand the types of sources people use to seek information, the factors that predict whether and how people will seek information, and the consequences of information seeking that people experience.

Sources of information include interpersonal sources such as friends, family, or support groups; people with expertise on the topic; books, magazines, pamphlets, and other publications; broadcast media such as television and radio; and the Internet. Sources can vary in their orientation toward entertainment or information, their tailorability, and their credibility. Information seeking is predicted by demographic factors such as age and gender, personal factors such as self‐efficacy, and experiences such as social support. Information searches can have positive results such as increased knowledge, uncertainty management, and positive behavior change, or negative results such as information overload. Theoretical or conceptual frameworks such as the sense‐making methodology, the comprehensive model of information seeking, uncertainty management theory, and the berrypicking model help explain people's information seeking behaviors and experiences. Other, related types of information behaviors include information scanning and information avoidance.
Influence of Social Context on Media Selection and Use
Authors: Cingel Drew P. , Mann Supreet
Published: September 2020

This entry reviews the literature on how social context influences media use and effects. It first introduces the differential susceptibility to media effects model (DSMM), which articulates three levels of social susceptibility at the micro‐, meso‐, and macro‐levels. In reviewing the literature, the entry sorts existing research into these levels in order to contextualize the overall body of work. In terms of micro‐level social susceptibility, a number of studies have examined how parents can mediate their children's media use in the moment of exposure, thereby influencing children's learning from media. This entry also reviews a smaller set of studies that consider how children coviewing with other children influence attention and learning from media. For meso‐level social susceptibility, the entry reviews studies pertaining to the effect of family communication patterns on media selections in the home environment. Finally, for macro‐level social susceptibility, it considers studies that examine how media use and effects differ as a function of culture, given differences in social norms as a function of culture and cultural values. Altogether, this review underscores the importance of understanding how social context, at all three levels, can influence individuals' media choices, as well as their responses to media.
Media Use and Children's Fantasy Worlds
Authors: Götz Maya
Published: September 2020

Human beings have the capacity to create inner pictures and imagine stories and relationships. In the beginning of TV research, the question was whether media reduce the capacity to fantasize whereas later research with a more action‐oriented perspective with regard to the media use of children began to focus on the question of how media are integrated into children's fantasy worlds. Already during the media reception, children sometimes adopt the perspective of characters in the story and imagine how they would act in the situation. Based on this identification process they sometimes enter into parasocial interaction with the characters or integrate parts of the media into their role‐plays, daydreams, and interpretations of the world, or even fantasize threats based on the media experience.
Using Mobile Phones for Health Interventions
Authors: Zhang Renwen , Kornfield Rachel
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an introduction to mobile phone‐based health interventions. It delineates the various modalities for these interventions made possible by functionalities of mobile phones, including text messaging, smartphone applications, and automated sensing. The entry also highlights five intervention strategies commonly applied in mobile phone‐based health interventions. Finally, it outlines the opportunities and challenges of integrating mobile‐phone health interventions with health care systems, as well as the pressing issues of privacy and data security.
Positive Media Psychology
Authors: Rutledge Pamela B.
Published: September 2020

Positive media psychology is a specialized area of media psychology based on the theories and constructs of positive psychology. Its purpose is to explore the potential of media technologies to support human flourishing through research and development. Positive media psychology strives to move away from psychology's problem‐centric medical model to a balanced and holistic approach to understanding mediated experiences. Positive media psychology explores questions such as “How do people benefit?” and “How can we make it better?” By using a positive psychology paradigm, researchers and developers will be better able to evaluate and harness the power of media technologies to impact lives and society for the better.
Reactance
Authors: Bigsby Elisabeth , Wilson Samuel R.
Published: September 2020

Reactance describes an individual's resistance to attempts by others to place limits on their thoughts or behaviors. According to its associated theory, psychological reactance theory, people, media, and situations can all try to restrict cognitive and behavioral freedoms. In response to these restrictions, reactance motivates individuals to restore their freedoms directly or indirectly. In communication and media, much of the reactance research has focused on resistance to persuasive communication and message features that increase or decrease reactance responses. Other research in this area has focused on measurement issues, such as how to best measure the psychological state of reactance. Although a lot of progress has been made in the extant reactance literature, both on measurement issues and understanding antecedents of reactance, additional research is needed. Overall, reactance is a useful concept for understanding why individuals sometimes react negatively to both persuasive and nonpersuasive communication and media.
Online Self‐Presentation in Adolescence
Authors: Calvin Angela J.
Published: September 2020

Adolescence is the most prevalent age group that uses communication technologies, such as texting and social media. Adolescents are drawn to online communication because of its usefulness for addressing their developmental dilemmas. With communication technologies being ubiquitous in the lives of teens, self‐presentation has become complex. The features of communication technologies or affordances allow youths more time to construct and continuously alter how others view them, which can change the trajectory of their identity development. Youths have more time to meticulously edit their online self‐presentations but must do so in a way that is not disingenuous; adolescents must walk a fine line between authenticity and enhancing the self to create a good impression and avoid negative judgment. A growing body of research investigates adolescents' self‐presentation on social media with attention to how social media help them confront developmental hurdles, how affordances of social media shape their self‐presentation, the truthfulness of their self‐presentation, and how adolescents choose photos to post to social media to communicate who they are. More empirical work is needed to identify what predicts differences in self‐presentation as well as how different self‐presentation leads to healthy or unhealthy behaviors and psychosocial well‐being.
Source Credibility
Authors: Flanagin Andrew J. , Metzger Miriam J.
Published: September 2020

Source credibility is an ancient topic that has been the focus of renewed and sustained research in the last three‐quarters of a century. Although originally situated in the context of persuasion and conceived as the believability of a source, research has revealed source credibility to be a multidimensional concept consisting of many factors, the most enduring of which include a source's expertise and trustworthiness. Decades of research have shown that higher credibility perceptions predict greater persuasion and attitude change. Research on source credibility has also shown that in addition to source, characteristics of the message, medium, and information receiver impact information evaluation, as well as attitude and behavior change. The Internet and social media have presented new challenges to identifying sources and evaluating them effectively. Information‐processing theories have been invoked to understand the ways in which people evaluate contemporary information sources and research has shown that people use both analytical and heuristic evaluation strategies.
Priming, Methodology
Authors: Ewoldsen David R.
Published: September 2020

Priming refers to the effect of some proceeding stimulus or event on how we react, broadly defined, to some subsequent stimuli. Priming was originally developed as a methodology in cognitive psychology in the early 1970s to test the theoretical predictions of early network models of memory. There are a substantial number of different types of priming paradigms. This entry will discuss social judgment priming, lexical decision tasks, and affective priming.
Personality Traits and Social Media Use
Authors: Seidman Gwendolyn
Published: September 2020

With the growing popularity of social media sites, personality researchers have conducted a large number of studies investigating how personality relates to social media use. The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism) and narcissism have received the most attention in the research literature. While personality is not linked to overall frequency of social media use, it does predict specific types of social media activity, motivations for social media use, and the type of content shared on social media. Researchers have also been able to successfully predict users' Big Five traits from their social media content and language use. Limitations and future directions for this research complete this entry.
Media Use and Sleep
Authors: Exelmans Liese
Published: September 2020

Statistics show that sleep has become a problematic health issue, with significant proportions of the population coping with insufficient sleep, having trouble falling asleep, or suffering from clinical sleep disturbances. One of the factors contributing to the sleep loss epidemic appears to be electronic media use. Increases in media uses go hand in hand with declines in various sleep outcomes such as later bedtimes, shorter sleep, disturbed sleeping patterns, and increased daytime fatigue. Scholars have become invested in uncovering the underlying mechanisms of this association, and findings have spurred the development of preventative strategies. This entry reviews the most important conclusions in this area of research and highlights next steps for future research.
Measuring Contagion on Social Media
Authors: Scherr Sebastian
Published: September 2020

For more than a decade social media have connected people virtually, thereby creating digital social networks with different purposes and affordances. People typically co‐orient, leading to some content going viral and becoming “contagious” for other network members. Importantly, the complex contagion phenomenon can now be captured more easily using digital tools that became part of the method arsenal in computational social science. Conceptually, social contagion describes a nonpermanent event that, when it occurs, develops over time with specific social network dynamics. It can be assessed using both observational and controlled study designs that, importantly, also come with novel ethical challenges that need to be considered. Identifying social media influencers using centrality measures can be the starting point for measuring social media contagion, thus understanding the social contagion dynamics as “rippling effects” following a “three degrees of influence rule” within social networks of connected members, friends, and friends of friends. Over time, the contagion establishes itself as part of temporal clustering and as a result of a human tendency for assortative mixing and homophilic preferences. In combination with centrality measures and indicators for network homogeneity, the lifetime of social media content is a good measure to further describe not only the dynamics behind the adoption of viral content on social media, but also the emergence of echo chambers.
Fake News
Authors: Tandoc Edson C. , Chew Matthew , Lim Darren
Published: September 2020

The public is now routinely exposed to different types of fake news online, from sites pretending to be news platforms to social media and even messaging apps. Fake news refers to a particular type of falsehood: It is partly or entirely based on false accounts; it is intentionally produced to mislead people, either for profit or to advance a particular ideological stance; and it does so by mimicking the look and feel of real news. Fake news is not a new term, nor the phenomenon of deliberate falsehoods leeching off the authority of real news a novel one. As a term, fake news has been applied to label different types of messages, from political satire and news parodies, to misleading advertising and propaganda. Contemporary definitions, however, refer to a specific type of disinformation. Fake news is a type of disinformation that derives its power to mislead from mimicking the look and feel of real news.
Elevation and Transcendence
Authors: Baldwin Joshua
Published: September 2020

Media appreciation moves beyond responses related to one's hedonic pursuit of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain and instead entails personal and meaningful experiences that inspires audiences to ponder about the greater things in life. One subset of media appreciation, self‐transcendent media experiences, involves the feeling of being uplifted and interconnected with others with a deliberation on people, objects, or events related to the grandiose, the morally beautiful, or the spiritual. These experiences may also include different types of other‐praising emotions such as elevation, admiration, and awe. Both positive and media psychologists have attempted to defined self‐transcendent experiences using a phenomenological perspective and have tested its relationship to different outcomes such as prosocial motives and behaviors.
Self‐Categorization Theory
Authors: Yao Shay Xuejing
Published: September 2020

Self‐categorization theory (SCT) explains the situations in which people perceive themselves as either individuals or group entities. Instead of studying individuals as isolated from social experience, SCT proposes that it is important to understand the psychological nature of the self (e.g., mind, memory, cognition, behavior) within the scope of social groups and membership. In this entry, a number of key concepts of SCT are discussed, including levels of self‐categorization, stereotyping and self‐stereotyping, social influence, and salience of social categories. Current media psychology research within the domain of SCT is also reviewed.
Media and Depression
Authors: Parrott Scott
Published: September 2020

Depression represents the most common mental disorder in the world. While depression's etiology is rooted in various psychosocial, environmental, and biological causes, research suggests that its symptoms may be exacerbated or mitigated through exposure to media. Commenters have long questioned the effects of media exposure on users' mental health, especially the well‐being of children and adolescents. Nevertheless, scant empirical research has provided evidence of a causal relationship between media exposure and depressive symptoms. Emerging research is investigating the relationship, spurred by the pervasive presence of digital media in our daily lives. Researchers are seeking to determine whether media exposure nurtures depression through a number of mechanisms, including negative social comparison, the displacement of healthy activities, and problematic interactions via social media. Meanwhile, researchers are also investigating the potential for media exposure to mitigate depressive symptoms through social connections, mood enhancement, and health interventions/modeling. Moving forward, researchers should account for individual differences and motivations when examining the relationship between media exposure and depression.
Media and Humor
Authors: Neuendorf Kimberly A.
Published: September 2020

“Humor and media,” an extremely broad area of study, encompasses multiple humor types and media outlets. Four humor mechanisms—incongruity, superiority, arousal, and social currency—have been identified, and audience members' multidimensional patterns of humor appreciation are related to media habits and social attitudes. In the study of
sources
of humorous mass media, two branches of inquiry are apparent—(i) humor in interpersonal interactions, which may apply to social media uses, and (ii) filmmakers/auteurs as the most studied media professionals creating humorous content. Analyses of comedy
content
have shown no consensus of a typology across media. Systematic content analyses have largely been limited to studies focusing on narrowly defined types of humor and studies examining the simple presence or absence of humorous intent. Assuming an active audience, studies of the
utility
of humor in media for meeting spectator needs have included the impact of personality traits and the role that mood management plays in audience selective exposure. The
effects
of humor have been examined, with particular focus on political humor and humor in advertising. Regarding
political humor
, there is evidence of increased political knowledge, positive attitudes, and political participation interest following exposure to political satire. Concerning
humor in advertising
, experimental studies have found exposure to humor to predict greater attention, more positive attitudes toward the advert and brand, greater general positive affect, and enhanced purchase intent. However, humor has generally not been found to have a positive impact on source credibility, attitude toward the advertiser, comprehension, recall, recognition, nor purchase behavior.
Use of Robots in Education
Authors: Konijn Elly A. , Smakman Matthijs , van den Berghe Rianne
Published: September 2020

Social robots are increasingly used in an educational context. Research thus far shows promising results with regard to the effects of social robots in education in various tasks and various pupils. Social robots in the classroom are perceived as motivating, enjoyable, and engaging by the pupils, mostly in primary school. Variations in robots' communicative behaviors have been examined with inconclusive results, such as comparing a robot's prosocial style to a neutral one. Individual differences, for example, in pupils' educational ability levels have thus far hardly been explored. The educational subject of tutoring might make a difference in combination with individual learning needs. Social robots are increasingly employed in assisting children with attention deficits such as in the autism spectrum. Furthermore, this entry addresses related ethical issues that come with introducing robots in the classroom from the perspective of various stakeholders. This new generation of communication tools opens up new horizons for highly relevant media psychological research.