Philipp K. Masur

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Communication Science

Research on parasocial phenomena is thriving, and parasocial processing emerged as a key concept in the wake of this trend. The PSI-Process Scales (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008) initially provided a comprehensive tool for assessing parasocial processing, quickly becoming a widely used measure in the field. However, the scale’s extensive length has pose...

Research on parasocial phenomena is thriving, and parasocial processing emerged as a key concept in the wake of this trend. The PSI-Process Scales (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008) initially provided a comprehensive tool for assessing parasocial processing, quickly becoming a widely used measure in the field. However, the scale’s extensive length has pose...

Most researchers studying the relation between social media use and well-being find small to no associations, yet policymakers and public stakeholders keep asking for more evidence. One way the field is reacting is by inspecting the variation around average relations—with the goal of describing individual social media users. Here, we argue that thi...

span>Replication is generally considered a keystone of the scientific enterprise. Unfortunately in communication science, there is a lack of clarity on what a replication actually entails, and to what extent replicators can deviate from original studies. In order to facilitate researchers to conduct, evaluate, and justify the set-up of replications...

Building on research on nudging as well as democratic news recommender design, this preregistered study employed a mixed-methods design to explore how interface nudges and article positioning affect news selection. Specifically, we tested whether a position nudge as well as three different types of interface nudges(e.g., popularity cues and social...

Since the advent of social network sites (SNS), researchers have investigated how and why users share personal information online. Yet, the replicability of individual findings remains unclear. We addressed this gap by closely replicating three seminal studies: Krasnova et al.’s (2010) study on the privacy calculus, Vitak’s (2012) analysis of the i...

There are many factors that account for disclosure of private information on social network sites, but a potentially powerful determinant that remains understudied is social norms, which refer to perceptions of what other people do, approve of, and expect us to do on social media. To address this gap, we conducted an in-depth analysis of descriptiv...

Social media has changed how youth communicate, with whom, and with what consequences. Potential risks include exposure to harmful content, engagement with strangers, or unwanted consequences from irresponsible or naive use. Social media literacy has been proposed as a way to mitigate such risks. This paper aimed to develop a comprehensive Youth So...

Growing concern about the democratic impact of automatically curated news platforms urges us to reconsider how such platforms should be designed. We propose a theoretical framework for personalised diversity nudges that can stimulate diverse news consumption on the individual level. To examine potential benefits and limitations of existing diversit...

Investigating social media use effects on children’s and adolescents’ well-being is one of the most contested research fields today. With a fast-growing literature, yet increasingly inconsistent and heterogeneous findings, it becomes difficult to draw reasonable conclusions. This chapter first introduces and summarizes the discussion around social...

The ways in which privacy is defined, perceived, and enacted are contingent on cultural, social, political, economic, and technological structures. Privacy research, however, is often conducted in settings that do not account for variations in how privacy is perceived and enacted. A comparative perspective explicitly addresses this shortcoming by r...

The study of the relation between social media use and well-being is at a critical junction. Many researchers find small to no associations, yet policymakers and public stakeholders keep asking for more evidence. One way the field is reacting is by inspecting the variation around average relations – with the goal of describing individual social med...

In light of the widespread use of big data analytics, internet users are increasingly confronted with algorithmic decision-making. Developing algorithm literacy is thus crucial to empower users to successfully navigate digital environments. In this paper, we present the development and validation of an algorithm literacy scale that consists of two...

The privacy paradox suggests that privacy concerns do not relate to privacy-related behavior. Although it has inspired numerous studies, findings remain inconclusive. Some of the inconsistencies in published findings may be explained by a strong heterogeneity in the conceptual and analytical choices that researchers implement when investigating the...

Social norms are powerful determinants of human behaviors in offline and online social worlds. While previous research established a correlational link between norm perceptions and self-reported disclosure on social network sites (SNS), questions remain about downstream effects of prevalent behaviors on perceived norms and actual disclosure on SNS....

Growing concern about the democratic impact of automatically curated news platforms urges us to reconsider how such platforms should be designed. We propose a theoretical framework for personalised diversity nudges that can stimulate diverse news consumption on the individual level. To examine potential benefits and limitations of existing diversit...

The question of whether and how digital media use and digital communication affects people's and particularly adolescents' well-being has been investigated for several decades. Many studies have analyzed how different forms of digital communication influence loneliness and life satisfaction, two comparatively stable cognitive indicators of subjecti...

The privacy paradox states that people’s concerns about online privacy are unrelated to their online sharing of personal information. On the basis of a representative sample of the German population, which includes 1,403 respondents interviewed at three waves separated by 6 months, we investigate the privacy paradox from a longitudinal perspective....

Die Nutzung von und die Kommunikation mit sozialen Medien basiert auf dem Austausch persönlicher Daten. Dabei können Privatheitsrisiken entstehen, vor denen man sich oft nur schwer schützen kann. Damit Menschen Online-Angebote selbstbestimmt nutzen können, ist ein gewisser Schutz ihrer Daten erforderlich. Immer häufiger wird die Online-Privatheitsk...

Social norms are powerful determinants of human behaviors in offline and online social worlds. While previous research established a correlational link between norm perceptions and self-reported disclosure on social network sites (SNS), questions remain about downstream effects of prevalent behaviors on perceived norms and actual disclosure on SNS....

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...

The present research examines the longitudinal average impact of frequency of use of Internet and social networking sites (SNS) on subjective well-being of adolescents in Germany. Based on five-wave panel data that cover a period of nine years, we disentangle between-person and within-person effects of media use on depressive symptomatology and lif...

Previous research has shown that people seldom experience privacy violations while using the Internet, such as unwanted and unknown sharing of personal information, credit card fraud, or identity theft. With this study, we ask whether individuals’ online privacy concerns increase and online information disclosure decreases if they experience such a...

Forschungsdaten sind das primäre Produkt empirischer Studien und die zentrale Grundlage wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Ihre langfristige Sicherung und Bereitstellung zur intersubjektiven Nachvollziehbarkeit und damit zur Qualitätssicherung sollte daher in allen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen unterstützt werden. Entsprechend hat die Deutsche Forschu...

In this paper, we review three different approaches to disclosure and privacy: a) an individualistic approach, which emphasizes an individual’s control over information access and flow, b) a networked approach focused on information flow in horizontal relations between people, and c) an institutional approach concerned with public and societal priv...

Current debates on online privacy are rooted in liberal theory. Accordingly, privacy is often regarded as a form of freedom from social, economic, and institutional influences. Such a negative perspective on privacy, however, focuses too much on how individuals can be protected or can protect themselves, instead of challenging the necessity of prot...

Concerns about the association of screen time with myriad developmental, health, and productivity outcomes in children and adolescents date back to the advent of screens themselves. The earliest of these studies was conducted in 1949 as a collaboration between the Columbia Broadcasting System (now known as CBS Corporation) and researchers from Rutg...

The privacy paradox states that people’s concerns about online privacy are unrelated to their online sharing of personal information. Using a representative sample of the German population, which includes 1403 respondents who were interviewed at three waves separated by 6 months, we investigate the privacy paradox from a longitudinal perspective, d...

Communication research has often either used self-report questionnaires or experimental designs to study communication phenomena. Scholars thereby either draw inferences about these phenomena through people’s retrospection in surveys or by isolating particular factors and behaviors to identify causal mechanisms. Although both approaches have streng...

Die Weitergabe von privaten und personenbezogenen Informationen ist heutzutage ein großer Bestandteil der Online-Kommunikation. Durch die technische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Infrastruktur digitaler Kommunikationsräume entstehen dabei neuartige Herausforderungen für den Schutz der individuellen Privatheit. Neue soziale Dynamiken sowie Datensamml...

This chapter advances the theory of situational privacy and self-disclosure that aims at solving the identified gaps in the existing literature: First, it synthesizes independently developed theories of privacy and self-disclosure in one comprehensive theoretical rationale. Second, it provides an abstract framework that allows for classifying antec...

This chapter questions whether the theories discussed in the previous chapters hold up to the novel dynamics described in Chap. 2. It reviews the recent literature on online privacy and self-disclosure in order to identify potential modifications or extensions. It is shown that recent work did not explicitly differentiate between horizontal privacy...

This chapter offers an overall discussion of the proposed theory based on the empirical results. It argues that the theory provides a valuable framework that nonetheless can be adapted and modified to future developments and findings. Particularly, its underlying paradigms are discussed: First, the theory assumes that individuals are rational agent...

This chapter discusses new media environments and the ways in which they have caused new threats for individuals’ privacy. Several horizontal and vertical dynamics that may impede or violate people’s privacy when communicating in novel networked environments are identified. On the horizontal level, these include the increased risks of information d...

To conclude this book, this chapter offers some perspectives on future research and some practical implications of this work. Although the proposed theory allows for a more nuanced investigation of privacy and self-disclosure processes in a variety of online environments, several challenges remain. On the one hand, we need to investigate potential...

Theories of privacy and self-disclosure remained largely disconnected. Only recently, approaches such as the Communication Privacy Management Theory or the Privacy Process Model aimed at shedding light upon their seemingly paradoxical connection. Based on these approaches, this chapter highlights that privacy and self-disclosure are linked in two w...

Although definitions of self-disclosure are surprisingly coherent, the concept itself is quite complex. This chapter reviews the extent literature on self-disclosure focusing particularly on existing definitions as well as proposed functions and risks of self-disclosure. It introduces the Disclosure Decision Model and the Disclosure Processes Model...

In the second part of this book, the theory of situational privacy and self-disclosure is used to predict preventive privacy regulation behaviors by non-situational personal factors and self-disclosure by non-situational and situational factors in the context of smartphone-based communication. This chapter closely follows the application guide outl...

Measuring individuals’ situational behavior alongside all identified situational factors over a longer period is challenging. This chapter therefore proposes a novel multi-method research design. Traditional survey methods are combined with a specific experience sampling method that allows triggering situational questionnaires right after actual co...

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of existing approaches toward defining and conceptualizing privacy. After introducing prominent discourses of privacy in different disciplines, it focuses particularly on a socio-psychological perspective on privacy. Among others, the work of Westin, Johnson, Altman, and Burgoon is discussed. The literat...

This chapter presents results from structural equation modeling and multilevel analyses. They revealed that vertical privacy concerns and online privacy literacy are important predictors of preventive privacy regulation behaviors (choosing and manipulating certain online environments). Furthermore, the results confirmed that both the level of priva...

Online-Privatheitskompetenz wird häufig als Voraussetzung für informationelle Selbstbestimmung angesehen. Eine entsprechende Förderung wird damit oftmals als potenzielle Lösung für Datenschutzprobleme im Internet diskutiert. Bisher wurde Online-Privatheitskompetenz dabei vorrangig als Wissenskonstrukt operationalisiert. Es konnte auch gezeigt werde...

Using both a theoretical argumentation and an empirical investigation, this book rationalizes the view that in order to understand people’s privacy perceptions and behaviors, a situational perspective needs to be adopted. To this end, the book is divided into three parts. Part I advances the theory of situational privacy and self-disclosure by dis...

Die Weitergabe von privaten und personenbezogenen Informationen ist heutzutage ein großer Bestandteil der Online-Kommunikation. Durch die technische, soziale und wirt-schaftliche Infrastruktur digitaler Kommunikationsräume entstehen dabei neuartige Her-ausforderungen für den Schutz der individuellen Privatheit. Neue soziale Dynamiken so-wie Datensa...

New communication media such as social networking sites (SNSs) and instant messengers (IMs) challenge users’ privacy perceptions. Technical infrastructures and the flow of digital information lead to novel privacy risks that individuals are often not acquainted with. Users’ subjective perceptions of privacy may thus be flawed and lead to irrational...

In the era of the Internet, political communication becomes increasingly complex due to an abundance of available information. Moreover, many people evaluate politics as complex in a globalized world. The present study examined whether the perceived complexity of political issues would be related to individuals’ political Internet use and political...

In the present study, we investigated long-term effects of self-disclosure on social support in face-to-face and instant messenger (IM) communication between mutual friends. Using a representative sample of 583 German IM users, we explored whether self-disclosure and positive experiences with regard to social support would dynamically interact in t...

Kaum greifbare Privatheitseingriffe sowie ein mangelndes Bewusstsein für daraus entstehende gesellschaftliche Konsequenzen lassen nur wenige Internetnutzerinnen und -nutzer Vorkehrungen zum Schutz ihrer Privatheit treffen oder sich politisch für mehr Datenschutz einsetzen. Vielmehr offenbaren Individuen täglich eine große Menge personenbezogener In...

The number of smartphone users surpassed two billion in 2016; the most popular applications are instant messengers. However, research about benefits and risks for users has yielded contradictory findings and indicates that the relation between smartphone use and well-being depends on many conditions. We propose mindfulness as a predictor of well-be...

Online-Privatheitskompetenz gilt in der medienpsychologischen Forschung als wichtiger Einflussfaktor auf das Privatheitsverhalten in Online-Umgebungen. Eine Skala zur Erfassung dieser Kompetenz fehlt jedoch. Ziel dieser Arbeit war entsprechend die Entwicklung und Validierung einer umfassenden Skala zur Messung von Online-Privatheitskompetenz. In Vo...

Does communication on social network sites (SNSs) or instant messengers (IMs) reinforce or displace face-to-face (FtF) communication, and how do the 3 channels affect loneliness and life satisfaction? Using cross-lagged structural equation modeling in a longitudinal and representative sample from Germany, we found that SNS communication increased b...

With this report, we present the results of the Hohenheim study on privacy attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in the German population. The findings in this report stem from the first wave of an ongoing longitudinal panel study in which a representative panel of participants was surveyed five times over the course of three years. The first wave,...

This research report presents comparative results from five nations (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and China) with regard to social media use, self-disclosure, privacy perceptions and attitudes, and privacy behavior in online environments. The data stemmed from an online survey that was conducted from November,...

The social web and specifically social network sites (SNS) have offered new opportunities for interaction and communication, but have also increased the risk of privacy violations. In this study, we investigated how far users imply different disclosure management strategies in status updates and chat conversations. We hypothesized that users percei...

Data protection by individual citizens, here labeled do-it-yourself (DIY) data protection, is often considered as an important part of comprehensive data protection. Particularly in the wake of diagnosing the so called “privacy paradox”, fostering DIY privacy protection and providing the respective tools is seen both as important policy aim and as...

Empirical research has revealed disparities of internet users’ online privacy attitudes and online privacy behaviors. Although users express concerns about disclosing personal data in the internet, they share personal and sometimes intimate details of their and others lives in various online environments. This may possibly be explained by the knowl...

Der Schutz der Privatsphäre im Internet ist nicht erst seit der NSA-Affäre ein vieldiskutiertes Thema. Im Kern drehen sich alle Debatten um die Frage der informationellen Selbstbestimmung – also darum, ob Internetnutzer ihre eigenen Daten selbstbestimmt verwenden können und ob sie wissen und auch damit einverstanden sind, was mit ihren Daten geschi...

Der Schutz der Privatsphäre im Internet ist nicht erst seit der NSA-Affäre ein vieldiskutiertes Thema. Im Kern drehen sich alle Debatten um die Frage der informationellen Selbstbestimmung – also darum, ob Internetnutzer ihre eigenen Daten selbstbestimmt verwenden können und ob sie wissen und auch damit einverstanden sind, was mit ihren Daten geschi...

Im Rahmens des Themenpapiers (White Paper) werden verschiedene Aspekte aufgegriffen: In welchem rechtlichen Rahmen bewegt sich Selbstdatenschutz? Welche Akteure haben Interesse an Selbstdatenschutz und warum? Was denken und was tun Internetnutzer im Hinblick auf den Schutz ihrer Kommunikation? Welche technischen Zusammenhänge müssen bedacht werden,...