
Anna Sophie KümpelLudwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich | LMU
Anna Sophie Kümpel
Dr. rer. soc.
About
60
Publications
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Introduction
My name is Dr. Anna Sophie Kümpel, and I am a Full Professor of Communication at the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich, where I lead a research unit on media uses and effects. Most of my recent projects deal with the use, dissemination, and perception of news and political information in algorithmically curated online environments, especially social media.
Additional affiliations
October 2013 - present
October 2013 - present
April 2010 - September 2013
Education
October 2014 - June 2018
October 2011 - September 2013
October 2008 - July 2011
Publications
Publications (60)
Social media have become a central source for news and current affairs information. This article focuses on the overarching attributes that shape how people come in contact with news, engage with news, and are affected by news on social media. Although all social media are different and change constantly, news experiences on these platforms can con...
This article provides a review of scientific, peer-reviewed articles that examine the relationship between news sharing and social media in the period from 2004 to 2014. A total of 461 articles were obtained following a literature search in two databases (Communication & Mass Media Complete [CMMC] and ACM), out of which 109 were deemed relevant bas...
In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low re...
Building on recent research that challenges the notion that norm violations in online discussions are inherently detrimental, this study relies on a distinction between incivil and intolerant user comments and investigates how online users perceive and react to these distinct forms of antinormative discourse online. Conducting a preregistered facto...
Social network sites (SNS) like Facebook have become an integral part of accessing news. However, as most users come across news on Facebook when using the site for other reasons (incidental news exposure), they will not necessarily engage with the content they encounter. Although there already is some evidence on the role of single factors that ca...
This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the subjects and theories related to reception research. In 37 contributions, the questions and subjects of the discipline are presented, the current state of research is analysed and an outlook on open questions is given. The contributions thus provide a systematic approach to the state of research...
This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the subjects and theories related to reception research. In 37 contributions, the questions and subjects of the discipline are presented, the current state of research is analysed and an outlook on open questions is given. The contributions thus provide a systematic approach to the state of research...
Despite extensive research on what causes social media users to recognize hate speech and what motivates their reactions to it, little is known about a crucial intermediate step that leads to users’ engagement or non-engagement with hate speech online. In our study, drawing on the uses and gratifications approach, we theoretically derived motives r...
For researchers interested in studying users’ perceptions and immediate reactions to digital media content—even from a distance—this article introduces the remote self-confrontation interview method. This adapted version of the self-confrontation interview method uses videoconferencing software and combines four interrelated steps: First, participa...
The use of information has changed in recent years—particularly among young adults, for whom social media are now the most important gateway to engage with news and various other types of information. Focusing on Instagram, this multi-method research project takes an audience-centered approach and investigates how young adults use the platform for...
Das Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über Theorien und Modelle zur Verarbeitung politischer Informationen. Zunächst werden wesentliche Phasen der Informationsverarbeitung skizziert. Es folgt eine Diskussion von Zwei-Prozess-Modellen der Informationsverarbeitung anhand der beiden bedeutsamsten Ansätze, dem Elaboration-Likelihood-Modell und dem Heuristis...
Social media have become essential for crisis communication. While past research has focused on their role in corporate communication, studies largely ignored how public organizations use social media. Among these, the police are a particularly relevant case due to their responsibilities in society. Using a sequential mixed-methods design that comb...
In recent years, much research has—more or less candidly—asked whether the use of social media platforms is “making us dumber” (Cacciatore et al., 2018). Likewise, discussions around constructs such as the news-finds-me perception or illusions of knowledge point to concerns about social media users being inadequately informed. This assessment of in...
Although many social media users have reported encountering hate speech, differences in the perception between different users remain unclear. Using a qualitative multi-method approach, we investigated how personal characteristics, the presentation form, and content-related characteristics influence social media users' perceptions of hate speech, w...
With social media now being ubiquitously used by citizens and political actors, concerns over the incivility of interactions on these platforms have grown. While research has already started to investigate some of the factors that lead users to leave incivil comments on political social media posts, we are lacking a comprehensive understanding of t...
This volume offers a wide range of insights into current media reception and effects research on the topic of ‘sustainability’. The contributions it contains deal with how this topic is communicated and negotiated on (social) media, how various message and context features affect sustainable behaviour, and what role established and ‘new’ actors—suc...
This volume offers a wide range of insights into current media reception and effects research on the topic of ‘sustainability’. The contributions it contains deal with how this topic is communicated and negotiated on (social) media, how various message and context features affect sustainable behaviour, and what role established and ‘new’ actors—suc...
Recent right-wing extremist terrorists were active in online fringe communities connected to the alt-right movement. Although these are commonly considered as distinctly hateful, racist, and misogynistic, the prevalence of hate speech in these communities has not been comprehensively investigated yet, particularly regarding more implicit and covert...
This article compares the communication strategies of party and candidate accounts on Instagram during the 2017 German federal election. Building upon previous research, we conceptualize how the digital architecture of the platform determines its communication norms and how the actual communication practices implemented by parties and candidates fo...
Research has shown that user comments influence peoples’ perceptions, with recent evidence suggesting that comment presentation order (e.g., whether comments are presented prior to/after the commented item) may alter the strength of comments’ effects. Considering the implications of this finding for content producers, the informed design of experim...
Messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger are an essential part of people’s communication practices, but have thus far received only little attention as a tool for data collection. In this article, it is argued that using established messaging apps in audience research can help to better make sense of everyday information and news use p...
Das Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über Theorien und Modelle zur Verarbeitung politischer Informationen. Zunächst werden wesentliche Phasen der Informationsverarbeitung skizziert. Es folgt eine Diskussion von Zwei-Prozess-Modellen der Informationsverarbeitung anhand der beiden bedeutsamsten Ansätze, dem Elaboration-Likelihood-Modell und dem Heuristis...
We investigated how sharing performance on Facebook and Twitter is influenced both by news articles’ content characteristics and the availability of additional news articles reporting on the same news topic. We conducted a multi-method study, integrating automated data collection and manual/automated content analyses of 1,764 German online news art...
Audiences’ TV series entertainment experiences are increasingly shaped not only by the events on the ‘first screen’ but also by discussions on social media. While an extensive body of research has examined practices of ‘second screening,’ especially on Twitter, online discussions before and after the live broadcast and on other platforms have recei...
Prozesse der Nachrichten- und Informationsnutzung haben sich in den letzten Jahren gewandelt - insbesondere bei jungen Erwachsenen. So suggerieren die Dominanz des Smartphones sowie die Popularität sozialer Medien in dieser Altersgruppe, dass die Nutzung von Nachrichten zunehmend durch den situativen und sozialen Kontext geprägt sowie abhängig(er)...
Social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become a key part of online users’ news diets. On social network sites, even individuals who are not motivated to seek out news are believed to be exposed to news posts due to the sharing activities of friends or inadvertently witnessing discussions about current events. Research on this incide...
Research has repeatedly demonstrated that the use of interactive media is associated with recovery experiences, suggesting that engaging with media can help people to alleviate stress and restore mental and physical resources. Video games, in particular, have been shown to fulfil various aspects of recovery, not least due to their ability to elicit...
Die Untersuchung der Nutzung hochgradig personalisierter und sich dynamisch wandelnder Online-Anwendungen – allen voran soziale Netzwerkseiten (SNS) – stellt die Kommunikationswissenschaft vor methodische Herausforderungen. Während quantitative Analysen digitaler Verhaltens- und Spurendaten Aufschluss über generelle Nutzungstendenzen geben, liefern...
A number of studies show that user comments on news websites can affect news-related judgments and perceptions. However, with news organizations increasingly shifting their comment sections to social network sites (SNS), questions arise about whether this alters previously observed effects. Instead of encountering comments “below the line,” SNS pro...
As online news today is an important source of political information and available in vast quantities, understanding its use and its impact on citizens' political knowledge is vital. The aim of the present study is to identify different usage patterns of online news and their relation to individually perceived (i.e., subjective) and actually measur...
Coming across news on social network sites (SNS) largely depends on news-related activities in one's network. Although there are many different ways to stumble upon news, limited research has been conducted on how distinct news curation practices influence users' intention to consume encountered content. In this mixed-methods investigation, using F...
Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich den negativen Aspekten eines Wandels der Sprach- und Debattenkultur in sozialen Online-Medien. Im Rahmen eines narrativen Literaturüberblicks diskutieren wir sowohl mögliche Ursachen (der Wahrnehmung) einer inzivilen Sprach- und Debattenkultur als auch Wirkungen auf die Nutzer*innen sozialer Online-Medien. Der Fo...
Media psychological research has identified a broad range of gratifications that can result from playing digital games and fuel players’ entertainment experiences. Most of these studies focused on pleasurable, hedonic entertainment experiences (i.e., enjoyment). However, scholarship increasingly acknowledges that digital games can also offer more p...
Anna Sophie Kümpel geht der Frage nach, welche Faktoren die Auseinandersetzung mit Nachrichteninhalten beeinflussen, die während der Facebook-Nutzung beiläufig entdeckt werden (Incidental News Exposure). Hierfür systematisiert die Autorin relevante Rahmenbedingungen sowie Einflussfaktoren und prüft deren Bedeutung mithilfe eines qualitativ-quantita...
This volume offers insights into current research on the reception and effects of the digital revolution in public communication in the field of communication science. The contributions it contains deal with questions about the use of news on Facebook, the articulation of opinions on the public Net and the influencing of opinions on social media (e...
This volume offers insights into current research on the reception and effects of the digital revolution in public communication in the field of communication science. The contributions it contains deal with questions about the use of news on Facebook, the articulation of opinions on the public Net and the influencing of opinions on social media (e...
Internet users are constantly confronted with metric information about the popularity of goods, services, and content. These popularity cues (PCs) - which we define as metric information about users' behavior or their evaluations of entities - serve as social signals for users who are confronted with them. Due to the high relevance that PCs have fo...
Internetnutzer_innen werden fortlaufend mit aggregierten Daten über die Beliebtheit von Gütern, Dienstleistungen oder (Medien-)Inhalten konfrontiert. Diese Popularitätshinweise (PH), die wir als metrische Informationen über das Verhalten von Nutzer_innen oder deren Bewertung von Entitäten definieren, fungieren als (soziale) Signale, an denen sich A...
Social media have become an integral part of online news use, affecting how individuals find, consume, and share news. By applying the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), this study investigates the effects of motives, attitude, and intention on news-sharing behavior among German social media users (n = 333). Findings show that news-sharing attitude a...
Nutzerkommentare machen Publikumsreaktionen auf und Anschlusskommunikation über journalistische Inhalte öffentlich und gelten als eine der am häufigsten genutzten Formen von Leserbeteiligung am Journalismus. Aufgrund ihrer Popularität, ihrer kontroversen Natur und den Herausforderungen, die mit der Implementierung einer Kommentarfunktion auf Nachri...
On social network sites (SNS), people are increasingly confronted with news content—even if they have not actively been looking for it. Although it is widely recognized that SNS have become a main driver for such incidental news exposure, we know little about the factors that influence whether users engage with news encountered on SNS. Thus, this s...
This study extends current research on media entertainment by examining the effects of (perceived) game characteristics on hedonic, eudaimonic and telic entertainment experiences. Furthermore, differentiating between meaningful and non-meaningful games, we investigated whether these game types lead to the experience of different gaming-related emot...
The (participatory) opportunities provided by interactive features on news sites have been widely theorized and investigated in recent years. However, user comments’ effects on the perception of journalistic quality have only begun to be examined. To investigate those effects, the present study deployed two 2 × 2 experiments with a between-subject...
This study investigates the effects of media frames on attitudes toward video games, perceptions of their users, and consequences. Prior research has shown that gaming is a controversial issue, with media coverage focusing on either risks or opportunities. To examine the effects of these portrayals, the present study used a 2 × 2 experimental desig...
Media-related selection (MRS) is an umbrella concept for selection processes such as gatekeeping by journalists, selective exposure by audience members, and news sharing by social network site (SNS) users. Importantly, individual attitudes can influence MRS. Previous research on attitude-based MRS has relied almost exclusively on overtly expressed...
Das Internet und insbesondere soziale Medien stellen die theoretische und methodische Konzeption von Medienkompetenz vor Herausforderungen. Zentral erscheint dabei die Erkenntnis, dass Wissen zwar eine notwendige, aber keine hinreichende Voraussetzung für die Ausbildung von Medienkompetenz ist. Vielmehr geht es um die Frage, inwieweit Individuen be...
Everett M. Rogers (*1930 in Carroll, IA; † 2004 in Albuquerque, NM) gilt mit seinem mittlerweile in fünfter Auflage erschienenem Buch Diffusion of innovations fraglos als Vater der Diffusionsforschung. In seinem Schlüsselwerk setzt er sich mit der Frage auseinander, wie sich Innovationen in einem sozialen System verbreiten und welche in- und extern...
Die Entwicklung der Mediennutzung in Deutschland ist ungebrochen und scheint permanent zuzunehmen (vgl. van Eimeren/Ridder 2011). Betrachtet man die Zunahme differenzierter, dann sind es in erster Linie der audiovisuelle Bereich und Angebote im Internet, deren Nutzung zunimmt. Vor allem Videoplattformen wie YouTube und Social Network Sites (SNS) wi...
This article presents a skill-based media literacy model which can help to explain digital inequalities. The model integrates the everyday life of children and their developmental tasks. Under this concept, users are media literate if they are able to fulfil their developmental tasks successfully by using the media and to reflect upon the consequen...