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March 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (88)
While the social, political, and journalistic relevance of user comments on online news items has been discussed intensively, no study has tried to examine why some online news discussions are more interactive than others. Based on the rationale of news value theory, this study argues that so-called discussion factors in user comments indicate gene...
Previous research suggests that distinct characteristics of news articles, such as their news factors, account for the different participation rates in comment sections as well as the degree of interactivity among the discussants. In this study, this assumption is tested in the Facebook environment and extended to the analysis of how news factors (...
This study investigated the effects of negative-civil and hateful online user comments against refugees on the amount of money readers donate to a refugee aid organization or an organization that supports homeless people. The results of an online experiment reveal an indirect negative effect of hateful comments on the amount of money donated to ref...
Journalists, scholars, and citizens have raised concerns regarding the high share of incivility in comment sections of news outlets. The current study surveyed members of the social movement #ichbinhier, which aims at collectively countering uncivil comments to cultivate a civil discussion atmosphere in comment sections. We root the activities of #...
Der Beitrag untersucht medienbezogene Einstellungen und das Ausmaß des Verschwörungsglaubens von Menschen mit AfD-Wahlpräferenz. Er greift die Debatte über Kampfbegriffe wie „Lügenpresse“ und „Systemmedien“ auf und erweitert die Radikalisierungsforschung um einen kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Zugang. Dafür verwendet er das Konzept des „Medienzyn...
The diversity of social media platforms has expanded the possibilities for citizens to encounter political content and express political opinions. However, the patterns of users' contact with political information and political expression across different platforms are largely unclear. Based on survey data from Germany (n = 1054), this study invest...
Deliberation theory posits that users’ willingness to participate in online comment sections should increase if the discussions are more evidence-based. However, extant empirical research does not clearly support this assumption. The current study argues that social comparison processes and the metacognitive perception of knowledge mediate the rela...
In Zeiten von Unsicherheit sind verlässliche Informationsquellen besonders wichtig. Der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk nimmt hier eine besondere Stellung ein. Nach wie vor erfreut er sich hoher Vertrauenswerte, Kritik und Skandale bleiben aber nicht folgenlos.
Comment sections below news articles are public fora in which potentially everyone can engage in equal and fair discussions on political and social issues. Yet, empirical studies have reported that many comment sections are spaces of selective participation, discrimination, and verbal abuse. The current study complements these findings by analyzing...
Nachdem die Corona-Pandemie in den vergangenen Jahren weltweite gesellschaftliche Verwerfungen und Unsicherheiten auslöste, hat sich die Lage zumindest in Deutschland im Winter 2022/23 etwas beruhigt. Gesundheitliche Risiken und gesundheitspolitische Herausforderungen bestehen nach wie vor, andere Probleme haben jedoch an Brisanz gewonnen und sind...
Incivility in online discussions has become an important issue in political communication research. Instruments and tools for the automated analysis of uncivil content, however, are rare, especially for non-English user-generated text. In this study, we present a) an extensive dictionary (DIKI - Diktionär für Inziviltät, English: Dictionary for Inc...
The Covid-19 pandemic was accompanied by a massive increase of the supply and demand for pandemic-related information. Similarly, conspiracy theories about the origins and functions of the Covid-19 virus flourished during the early stages of the pandemic. The present study draws on a nationally representative sample of the German population aged 18...
Research on user comments has found that incivility in online discussions affect readers’ attitudes, feelings, and their willingness to participate in discussions. Yet the extent to which users encounter these comments in their daily routine is largely unknown. On social network sites, the number of interactions with comments, particularly the Like...
The global corona crisis has increased people’s information seeking and their use of voice assistants as providers of current information on the pandemic. However, little is known regarding the kind and quality of information that different voice assistants provide on corona-related topics. Adapting previous studies in the domain of medical researc...
Moderation is a key approach to countering incivility in online discussions. Instead of focusing on uncivil comments, our concept of empowerment moderation aims at promoting high-quality comments. We developed three empowerment styles and tested them in a field experiment on the Facebook pages of four news outlets. Preliminary results show that all...
This study examined what type of response to commenters who disagree led to more positive attitudes toward a news organization’s Facebook page. Results of two experiments, one in Germany (n = 764) and one in the United States (n = 763), found that a high-person-centered (HPC) response, which acknowledges people’s emotions, led to more positive atti...
Mit dem Aufkommen des „Lügenpresse“-Vorwurfs ab dem Jahr 2014 traten Erosionen im Verhältnis der Medien zu ihrem Publikum ein. Die Furcht vor einem weitläufig erodieren- den Vertrauen der Menschen in die Medien weckte auch Sorgen um schädliche Folgen für die demokratische Gesellschaft. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde 2015 die Mainzer Langzeitstudie Me...
This study investigates how exposure to different news sources, propensity to vote (PTV) for a party and demographics are related to belief in conspiracy theories drawing on three repeated cross-sectional surveys in Germany 2017–2019. Results show that frequent exposure to alternative news sites and video-sharing platforms increased conspiratorial...
Research on incivility in political communication usually defines uncivil communication as a violation of established norms. Few studies, however, have specified these norms and corroborated them using relevant theoretical concepts. This article aims at strengthening the foundations of incivility research by analytically reconstructing the potentia...
Solidarity among society is considered crucial to tackle the corona pandemic. With the crisis evoking a high need for orientation, the information people obtain from different sources may shape whether they feel a strong sense of cohesion in the pandemic. To test this assumption, an online two-wave panel survey among a quota sample representing the...
Research on trust in media is on the rise. However, communication scholars have addressed related concepts (e.g. media credibility) for decades, and these concepts have often been used interchangeably with that of trust. This practice has resulted in a confusing field of research, with studies using different labels and drawing on various theoretic...
Although there is a growing body of research on trust in the media, it is still unclear whether any kind of critical attitude toward the media is harmful to democratic societies. Building on approaches on cynicism and skepticism, we argue that there is a need to differentiate between two distinct determinants of media trust. One is based on observe...
Zusammenfassung
In den letzten Jahren haben viele Studien untersucht, welche Faktoren das Vertrauen in Medien beeinflussen können. Zu einigen dieser Faktoren gibt es vorläufige wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse, die eine klare Richtung andeuten, zu anderen ist die Forschungslage eher heterogen. Wir überprüfen daher anhand einer Trendstudie mit Befragu...
Online comment sections on news organizations' social media pages provide a unique forum for exploring attitudes toward platform governance and freedom of expression at the crossroads between people, platforms, and news providers. Amid ample political and policy interest, little empirical evidence exists on user perceptions of platform governance....
Anhand einer dreistufigen Panelbefragung wurde untersucht, welche Informationsquellen die Menschen in der Corona-Krise häufig genutzt haben und wie sich die Bedeutung verschiedener Informationsquellen im Krisenverlauf gewandelt hat. Je nachdem, woher die Bürgerinnen und Bürger ihre Informationen hauptsächlich bezogen, prägten die gewählten Informat...
High degrees of incivility and hostility in comment sections potentially threaten a deliberative and inclusive discussion atmosphere. News outlets are struggling with effectively moderating such discussions. This study investigates the novel approach of collective civic moderation (CCM) – a strategic and concerted moderation effort by groups of cit...
Die Aufregung ist groß und relativ unabhängig von der politischen Couleur der Aufgeregten: Am 21.10.2019 verhindern Demonstranten eine Lesung des ehemaligen Bundesinnenministers Thomas de Maizière beim Literaturherbst in Göttingen. Diese wird später unter Polizeischutz nachgeholt. AfD-Gründungsmitglied Bernd Lucke kann seine Vorlesung zur Makroökon...
Incivility in user comments on news websites has been discussed as a significant problem of online participation. Previous research suggests that news outlets should tackle this problem by interactively moderating uncivil postings and asking their authors to discuss more civilized. We argue that this kind of interactive comment moderation as well a...
Comment sections have become an integral part of digital journalism. They enable users to share their viewpoints and discuss news issues with others. From a deliberative perspective, there is controversy regarding the democratic benefits of comment sections. Though previous research analyzed causes and effects of uncivil and low-quality comments, i...
In gesellschaftlichen Krisen wächst der Bedarf an verlässlicher Information. Zugleich steigt die Gefahr, die von Gerüchten, Falschinformationen und Verschwörungstheorien ausgeht. Umso deutlicher wird in solchen Phasen, wie entscheidend seriöse Quellen sind, denen die Bürgerinnen und Bürger vertrauen und an denen sie sich orientieren können.
Die ne...
Click or type? An analysis of different intervention strategies in uncivil online discussions on Facebook // Uncivil online discussions can polarize attitudes to social issues, reduce pro-social behavior towards certain groups, and deter potential participants from active participation. Besides the intervention of professional community managers, t...
Impoliteness and incivility in online discussions have recently been discussed as relevant issues in communication science. However, automatically detecting these concepts with computational methods is challenging. In our study, we build and compare supervised classification models to predict impoliteness and incivility in online discussions on Ger...
Many online user comments criticize the quality of news coverage. We conducted two experimental studies to assess the effects of such critical comments on readers’ perception of the credibility of news articles and to analyze the effectiveness of counter-measures. Findings suggest that critical user comments can reduce readers’ perceived credibilit...
Media environments and public communication are becoming increasingly digital, and the coronavirus crisis has accelerated this development. The changes connected to this relate to key ethical values and norms, such as informational autonomy, privacy and transparency. This not only demands an empirically based discourse underpinned by theory, but al...
Impoliteness and incivility in online discussions have recently been discussed as relevant issues in communication science. However, automatically detecting these concepts with computational methods is challenging. In our study, we build and compare supervised classification models to predict impoliteness and incivility in online discussions on Ger...
Incivility and hateful language in user comments are met with growing concern among politicians, the general public, and scholars. There are fears that such comments may decrease social cohesion and ultimately result in less prosocial behavior among citizens. We investigate whether hate, or even civil negativity in user comments alone, inhibit actu...
Pre-training language representations on large text corpora, for example, with BERT, has recently shown to achieve impressive performance at a variety of downstream NLP tasks. So far, applying BERT to offensive language identification for German-language texts failed due to the lack of pre-trained, German-language models. In this paper, we fine-tun...
Die fünfte Erhebungswelle der Mainzer Langzeitstudie Medienvertrauen befasst sich erneut mit der Frage: Schwindet in der Gesellschaft der Rückhalt für die etablierten Informationsmedien, stecken sie in einer schweren Vertrauenskrise? Im Oktober und November 2018 wurden bundesweit 1 200 Bürgerinnen und Bürger ab 18 Jahren in einer repräsentativen Te...
Reader commenting is a widespread form of audience participation in online journalism. It refers to the activities of Internet users to publicly express and discuss their thoughts and emotions on current events directly below news articles on the websites or social media outlets of news media. This entry explains reader commenting (or user comments...
In diesem Beitrag werden Medienskepsis und Medienzynismus als funktionale und dysfunktionale Form der Medienkritik unterschieden. Es wird untersucht, wie verschwörungstheoretische Denkmuster mit Medienskepsis und Medienzynismus zusammenhängen und wie sich diese Einstellungen auf das Medienvertrauen auswirken. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine medien...
Incivility in online user discussions is discussed as a significant challenge for democratic societies. Interactive journalistic moderation is seen as a promising strategy to deal with and prevent online incivility. Such moderation occurs, for example, when journalists publicly respond to uncivil comments and ask their authors to discuss more civil...
User comments on news websites are a controversial element of online communication. Various studies have reported the negative effects of comments criticizing the related news articles on readers’ attitudes toward the issues described in these articles. However, these findings are mostly based on measurements directly after the reception of comment...
Binge-watching—the intensive, consecutive viewing of televised series—has become a prevalent usage pattern of entertainment media, which may influence users’ psychological well-being both positively and negatively: On the one hand, binge-watching could increase viewers’ enjoyment, recovery experiences, and vitality through an increase in perceived...
Die soziologische und psychologische Vertrauensforschung vermutet, dass eine wesentliche Einflussgröße auf die Entstehung und die Ausprägung einer Vielzahl von Vertrauensbezügen – darunter Institutionenvertrauen und Medienvertrauen – das in Kindheit und Jugend erworbene interpersonale Basisvertrauen ist. Die zentrale Annahme des vorliegenden Beitra...
Aus den Ergebnissen der nunmehr vierten Welle der Mainzer Langzeitstudie Medienvertrauen lässt sich für die deutsche Bevölkerung ab 18 Jahren die Erkenntnis ableiten, dass die „Lügenpresse“Hysterie der vergangenen Jahre und der damit einhergehende Eindruck einer dramatischen Vertrauenserosion offensichtlich übertrieben waren. Das Vertrauen und die...
Nicht nur bei der Präsentation groß angelegter Forschungsprojekte stehen Hochschullehrerinnen und -lehrer verstärkt im Fokus der Öffentlichkeit und des interessierten Fachpublikums. Gerade vor dem Hintergrund des zunehmenden Evaluierungsdrucks in der Lehre müssen sie sich auch regelmäßig der kritischen Beurteilung durch die Studierenden stellen. De...
This special issue examines user comments as a specific type of interpersonal public online communication in which people are allowed to post comments below the content from professional communicators, such as journalists, politicians, ompanies, and service providers. Numerous studies have tracked the development f these “below the line” comments (...
Brands, celebrities, or politicians are increasingly facing enormous online outrages in response to moral misconducts. These online firestorms are characterized by high message volume, indignant tonality, and negative opinion climate. Based on the concept of moral panics, this article analyzes why people join online firestorms. We argue that partic...
User comments on news websites are a controversial element of online communication. Apart from their often low quality, their negative effects on recipients are subject of social and scientific concerns. However, most studies reporting such effects are based on measurements directly after the reception, and no research has been conducted regarding...
• Eine Repräsentativbefragung von Personen ab 18 Jahren lässt insgesamt keinen umfassenden, dramatischen Vertrauensverlust in die Medien erkennen.
• Vor allem der ö.-r. Rundfunk und die Tageszeitungen genießen weiterhin hohes Vertrauen.
• Andererseits artikulieren größere Teile der Bevölkerung ein erhebliches Misstrauen gegenüber den Medien.
• Befü...
The present study contributes to the investigation of communicative norms and social support in Social Network Sites (SNSs). We suggest that a positivity bias restricts the availability of social support users receive from others via public responses to negative status updates. Moderated mediation analyses of the data of an online experiment (N = 8...
This study investigates when and why news website visitors write civil or uncivil comments in response to news articles or related user comments. In an experiment, we manipulated the news value of news articles and the presence of ‘deliberative’ or ‘detrimental’ elements of comments to compare their impact on participants’ involvement, willingness...
Nutzerkommentare zu Online-Nachrichtenartikeln sind ein weitverbreitetes und kontrovers diskutiertes Element der Online-Kommunikation. Neben ihrer oft niedrigen Qualität sind vor allem ihre negativen Wirkungen auf die Leser Gegenstand solcher Diskussionen. Die meisten Befunde zu den Wirkungen von Nutzerkommentaren basieren jedoch auf punktuellen Me...
The “privacy calculus” approach to studying online privacy implies that willingness to engage in disclosures on social network sites (SNSs) depends on evaluation of the resulting risks and benefits. In this article, we propose that cultural factors influence the perception of privacy risks and social gratifications. Based on survey data collected f...
In den vergangenen Jahren ist sowohl der Anteil der Menschen, die den Medien mit Misstrauen begegnen, als auch der Anteil der Menschen, die den Medien vertrauen, gewachsen (Jackob et al. 2017b). Dagegen ist die insgesamt recht große Gruppe derjenigen, die sich zwischen diesen Polen verorten und mit einer gemischten Einstellung auf die Medien blicke...
User comment sections on the websites of legacy news media have been expected to serve as an area for deliberative discourse (Singer, 2009). Yet, this optimistic view does not seem to prove true. Instead, users often write self-centered, uncivil, and unsubstantial comments (Coe et al., 2014). Another significant threat to the quality of public disc...
Marc Ziegele untersucht, was Nachrichten im Internet nicht nur lesenswert, sondern auch diskussionswert macht. Hierfür entwickelt der Autor auf Grundlage der Nachrichtenwerttheorie ein theoretisches Modell über die Motive von Internetnutzern, Nachrichten zu kommentieren und zeigt auf, warum sich bestimmte Kommentarinhalte bei bestimmten Meldungen h...
Die Bevölkerungen westlicher Industrienationen haben die Verbreitung neuer Medientechniken stets mit einer Mischung aus hoffnungsvoller Euphorie und Ängsten vor missbräuchlicher oder schädlicher Nutzung bedacht. Dies könnte auch für das Internet und seine verschiedenen Anwendungsgebiete – darunter soziale Interaktion, Online-Spiele oder Datenaustau...
Die Studie beschäftigt sich mit den Auslösern von öffentlicher Online-Anschlusskommunikation auf Nachrichtenportalen. Bisherige Untersuchungen haben vernachlässigt, dass die Entscheidung eines Nutzers, einen Kommentar zu schreiben, sowohl von Nachrichteneigenschaften als auch von den Eigenschaften bereits veröffentlichter Nutzerkommentare beeinflus...
Many websites of online retail stores display two forms of electronic word of mouth on a single product site, namely single customer reviews and aggregate review scores. This study compares the effects of simultaneously presented single customer reviews and aggregate review scores on product evaluations of visitors of online retail stores. We hypot...
Diese Studie analysiert unterschiedliche Aktivitätsniveaus von Nutzern, die auf Nachrichtenseiten im Internet kommentieren. Zu diesem Zweck wurden mehr als 4 000 Nutzer einer überregionalen deutschen Nachrichtenseite online befragt. Neben allgemeinen Nutzungsmustern von Nachrichtenseiten und den Motiven des Kommentierens wurden die Big 5-Persönlich...
Abstract Cyberbullying victims' success in coping with bullying largely depends on schoolmates and other bystanders' social support. However, factors influencing the degree of social support have as yet not been investigated. In this article, the concept of victim blaming is applied to cyberbullying incidents. It is assumed that a cyberbullying vic...
This paper aims to provide a multidimensional theoretical micro-framework for analyzing the quantity and quality of online user comments on news items on mass-media websites. The term ‘media-stimulated interpersonal communication’ is introduced to situate online user comments within the larger examination of offline and online interpersonal communi...
