Drawing on theories related to interpersonal and intergroup behavior, this study investigated effects of personality traits (i.e., empathy and identity insecurity) and attitudes (i.e., anti-migration attitudes and social dominance orientation) on the perceived severity of digital hate against immigrants in Austria. Findings of autoregressive path modeling using two-wave panel data revealed that empathic suffering and egalitarianism positively predicted perceived severity, while anti-migrant attitudes exhibited a negative prediction. In terms of interactions between personality and attitudes, we observed that the prediction of (...) empathic suffering becomes less relevant for egalitarian individuals, which indicates an overwriting process that might be a promising way to counteract socially harmful digital hate perceptions. Implications for research on annotation tasks and hate interventions are discussed. (shrink)

In the present study we investigated the role of channel characteristics with regard to gender role portrayals in television advertisements. Drawing on cultivation theory and social cognitive theory, we investigated six key variables in this line of research. We sampled a total of N = 1022 advertisements from four Austrian television channels: a public service channel, a commercial channel, and one commercial special interest channel for men and for women, respectively. Our results replicate well-known stereotypic gender role portrayals prevalent in (...) television advertisements. The public service channel and the private channel did not differentiate from each other with regards to gender stereotyping. We found that a channel with a female target group aired advertisements containing the same or even amplified stereotypes compared to a male channel. The potential negative effects of stereotypic gender role portrayals in television advertisements are discussed. (shrink)

We offer an overview of both the empirical literature on food waste and philosophical work on the concept of waste. We use this background to argue that an overemphasis on the reduction of individual food waste is misleading at best, and pernicious at worst, in combatting the substantial problems that global food waste creates. Rather, we argue that civic engagement and political activism aimed at institutional reform will be essential in addressing these problems.

In certain cases, children can react strongly in favor of product placements inserted in movies. Scholars therefore argue that existing disclosures might be one strategy in protecting children from any negative effects. However, disclosure research indicates that viewers should both notice disclosures and, in cases of textual cues, read them. We conducted an experiment with 139 children (Mage = 8.46; SD = 1.12; girls = 53.2 %) and tested the influence of textual disclosure format on disclosure awareness as well as (...) brand-related effects. When comparing with no disclosure, results showed that exposure to an existing textual disclosure positively affects disclosure awareness while exposure to an expanded version of it (i.e., by using more textual elements) did not. Further analyses revealed that prior movie exposure positively affected brand evaluation. However, disclosure awareness reversed this effect. We conclude that children appear to be socialized with the existing textual disclosure and that disclosure awareness might be of importance in shielding children against persuasive influence. (shrink)

This theoretical article investigates the effects of media frames on individuals' judgments. In contrast to previous theorizing, we suggest that framing scholars should embrace both, on-line and memory-based judgment formation processes. Based on that premise, we propose a model that distinguishes between two phases of framing effects. Along the first phase, the media's framing contributes to the formation of an on-line or a memory-based judgment. The second phase describes six hypothetical routes for the stability or the change of these judgments: (...) maintenance, readjustment, crystallization, inoculation, persuasion, and attenuation. At the heart of our model, we try to extract predictors for each of those routes. Finally, the implications of the proposed model for future framing research are discussed. (shrink)

Mobile social media have become a widespread means to participate in everyday social and professional life. These platforms encourage the disclosure and exchange of personal information, which comes with privacy risks. While past scholarship has listed various predictors and consequences of online privacy concerns, there has been to date no empirical investigation of a conceivable relationship with perceived stress. Using a longitudinal panel study, we examined the reciprocal relationship between mobile social media privacy concerns and perceived stress. Results supported the (...) hypothesis that mobile social media privacy concerns at T1 are associated with higher perceived stress at T2. However, we found no evidence for the reverse association, that is, perceived stress at T1 was not related to mobile social media privacy concerns at T2. The findings are discussed based on two models—the “Antecedents privacy concerns outcomes” model and the “Privacy calculus” model. (shrink)

Based on the Social Media Political Participation Model (SMPPM), this study investigates the relationship between four key motivations behind the use of Social Network Sites (SNS) and political engagement among adolescents. We collected our data in a paper-pencil survey with 15- to 20-year-old adolescents (N=294), a highly underexplored group, which is most active on social media. We theorize that adolescents’ user motivations are related to political engagement via two modes of exposure: The intentional mode, which is related to active information (...) seeking, and the incidental mode, in which adolescents run into politics only by accident. We found that political information and self-expression motivations were positively related to political engagement via the intentional mode. By contrast, entertainment motivations were negatively related to offline, but not to online engagement via the incidental mode. (shrink)

We test the role of like-minded and cross-cutting political discussion as a facilitator of online and offline political participation and examine the role of strong versus weak network ties. Most prior research on the topic has employed cross-sectional designs that may lead to spurious relationships due to the lack of controlled variables. The findings of a two-wave panel survey controlling the autoregressive effects suggest that cross-cutting talk with weak ties significantly dampens online but not offline political participation. However, no such (...) effects were detectable for cross-cutting talk with strong ties. In addition, we found no effect of discussions involving like-minded individuals in either weak or strong network connections on online and offline forms of political engagement. Implications are discussed. (shrink)