Corinna Oschatz

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR

The use of negative campaigning is often explained by rational considerations; the more perceived benefits exceed perceived costs, the more likely candidates are to attack their political opponents. However, this benefit-cost ratio explains campaign behavior only to some extent. In this study, we test social norms as additional drivers of a candida...

Although aversive (“dark”) personality characteristics of politicians have increasingly become a focus of research, a suitable self-assessment inventory for political elites has only recently been introduced. This article examines the test-retest reliability of the Political Elites Aversive Personality Scale (PEAPS) in a unique natural setting usin...

Journalists increasingly cite and/or embed social media posts in news articles. While social media posts have been found to be of little deliberative quality, we do not know whether this also affects the deliberative quality of the news. Against the background of a hybrid media system and deliberative news media standards, we answer this research q...

Scientists increasingly use Twitter for communication about science. The microblogging service has been heralded for its potential to foster public engagement with science; thus, measuring how engaging, that is dialogue-oriented, tweet content is, has become a relevant research object. Tweet content designed in an engaging, dialogue-oriented way is...

In order to explain the behavior of political elites, research increasingly considers personality traits. Within this line of research, a recent focus is on socially aversive - yet non-pathological - personality traits (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy), with the idea to better understand behavior violating generally accepted ethical...

Automatisierte Inhaltsanalysen sind ein häufig genutztes Instrument zur Beantwortung kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Forschungsfragen. Während Standards für die manuelle Inhaltsanalyse bereits vor Jahrzehnten etabliert wurden, bleibt zu klären, ob diese Standards für den Einsatz manuell generierter Daten im maschinellen Lernen aus- reichen. Wissen...

As it has been argued that “dark” personality is highly correlated with or even equivalent to the low poles of the basic personality traits honesty-humility and agreeableness, the explanatory role of dark personality as a unique driver of socially aversive behavior is called into question. Focusing on negative campaigning among candidates running f...

A growing body of studies is focusing on politicians’ personalities, as the personality of political elites has been shown to affect their behavior. Whereas most research uses the big five framework or HEXACO, only a few studies have been able to capture more “aversive,” “dark”—yet non-pathological—personality traits of politicians. However, these...

This study examines the growing journalistic practice of embedding full tweets in online political news coverage. Against the background of a hybrid media system, we pursue three research goals. First, we evaluate the scope of the Twitter-in-the-news phenomenon relative to news coverage as a whole. Second, we examine the functions of embedded tweet...

This article tests the assumption that candidates’ attack behavior is a result of their rational consideration of potential benefits and likely risks. Based on candidate surveys from three German state elections, we demonstrate that (i) attacks are an important strategy; (ii) on balance, candidates regard attacking opponents as a costly instead of...

This study examined viewers’ reasoning about justice and enjoyment of crime drama in interactive movie events. Based on the integrated model of enjoyment for crime drama, we examined the role of viewers’ judgment of justice for enjoyment and theoretically discussed the role of virtually present co-viewers. We conducted a lab experiment with N= 148...

Narrative messages are assumed to be more effective in changing recipients' attitudes than non-narrative messages. However, empirical evidence to support this assumption is sparse. We incorporated theoretical assumptions about the mechanisms of narrative persuasion into the two-step model of defensive processing to test whether narratives were more...

The relationship between gender and leadership is an understudied aspect related to populism although female leaders of right-wing populist parties do not conform with the philosophy of populist “men’s parties.” This study builds on the stereotype content model that conceptualizes gender stereotypes on a competence and a warmth dimension. We examin...

Soziale Medien haben in den vergangenen Jahren erheblich an Einfluss in der politischen Kommunikation gewonnen. Deshalb wenden sich auch Politiker in Deutschland Plattformen wie Facebook und Twitter zu, um Wähler zu erreichen. Die akademischen Studien zum deutschen Fall beschränken sich allerdings bis auf wenige Ausnahmen auf die Online-Aktivitäten...

In seinen nunmehr 25 Jahren am Mainzer Institut für Publizistik hat sich Erich Lamp nicht nur immer wieder mit der Macht der öffentlichen Meinung beschäftigt, sondern auch in unzähligen Methodenkursen Umfrageforschung gemeinsam mit den Studierenden sogenannte Split-Ballot-Experimente durchgeführt.

This meta-analysis builds on the broad and diverse research on the persuasive effects of narrative communication. Researchers have found that narratives are a particularly effective type of message that often has greater persuasive effects than non-narratives immediately after exposure. The present study meta-analyzes whether this greater persuasiv...

News websites have become a major source of information for citizens in Western countries. Although much research has focused on how Internet use affects knowledge acquisition, little is known about how individual websites are used and how that is connected to knowledge gain. This study focuses on how involvement affects attention and how recipient...

This study aims to deepen our understanding of the persuasive effects of exemplars in the news by addressing the role of character depiction. Exemplification theory and narrative persuasion research are integrated to shed light on the psychological mechanisms mediating the persuasive effect. Two replicative field experiments (N = 389) were conducte...

In this study, we suggest to amending the cognitive mediation model of learning from the news to explain the impact of news coverage on climate change on the recipients' acquisition of knowledge about the consequences of climate change. To test our theoretical assumptions, we combine a content analysis of 29 news media channels with a two-wave pane...

Corinna Oschatz zeigt am Beispiel des Klimawandels, was Rezipienten aus den Medien über Politik lernen. Anhand eines Mehrmethodendesigns aus einer Inhaltsanalyse und einer zweiwelligen Panelbefragung untersucht sie, wie die Medien über zentrale wissenschaftliche und politische Aspekte des Klimawandels berichten, welche Medien Rezipienten nutzen, um...

This study investigated the effectiveness of narrative communication in the applied field of road safety education. A narrative message about the risks of road accidents was compared to a message without elements of storytelling and a focus on road safety statistics. Novice drivers’ evaluation of risk connected to speeding was assessed as target at...

One aspect of the mediatization of politics is the idea that political actors adapt to the communication logic of news media to gain, for example, news media attention. Currently, this process may be influenced by the diffusion of the internet as a political communication channel, especially because online communication provides a new opportunity f...

Junge Erwachsene zwischen 18 und 24 Jahren sind eine Hauptzielgruppe der Verkehrssicherheitskommunikation (vgl. Holte in diesem Band). Während die Zahl der Verkehrstoten in Deutschland 2012 einen historischen Tiefstand erreicht, bleiben junge Fahrerinnen und junge Fahrer in der Verkehrsstatistik überrepräsentiert. Dieses Kapitel diskutiert den Eins...

One aspect of the mediatization of politics is the idea that political actors adapt to the communication logic of news media to gain, for example, news media attention. Currently, this process may be influenced by the diffusion of the internet as a political communication channel, especially because online communication provides a new opportunity f...

Das Internet etabliert sich zunehmend als Quelle politischer Informationen. Während ihm Optimisten ein erhebliches Mobilisierungs- und Partizipationspotenzial zusprechen, befürchten Pessimisten eine zunehmende Fragmentierung der Öffentlichkeit und eine digitale Spaltung der Gesellschaft. Beiden konträren Sichtweisen ist die implizite Annahme gemein...