S. Shyam Sundar

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Department of Film-Video and Media Studies

The popularity of automated features, such as autocorrect, reflects an interesting paradox in digital media use: while users appreciate the interactivity afforded by these media, they also seem to enjoy passively observing the system perform the interaction on their behalf. We aim to understand this paradox by using the concept of interpassivity an...

Active listening is a well-known skill applied in human communication to build intimacy and elicit self-disclosure to support a wide variety of cooperative tasks. When applied to conversational UIs, active listening from machines can also elicit greater self-disclosure by signaling to the users that they are being heard, which can have positive out...

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced schools to swiftly transition from in-person classes to online or remote offerings, making educators and learners alike rely on online videoconferencing platforms. Platforms like Zoom offer audio-visual channels of communication and include features that are designed to approximate the classroom experience. However,...

By performing actions such as “liking” a post, commenting on it, or sharing it with others, we are constantly expressing our opinions about ongoing news and public affairs on online media platforms. How do these acts of expression affect our feelings and opinions? We address this question from an “affordance” perspective, focusing on the effects of...

Media systems that personalize their offerings keep track of users’ tastes by constantly learning from their activities. Some systems use this characteristic of machine learning to encourage users with statements like “the more you use the system, the better it can serve you in the future.” However, it is not clear whether users indeed feel encoura...

Given the scale of user-generated content online, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to flag problematic posts is inevitable, but users do not trust such automated moderation of content. We explore if (a) involving human moderators in the curation process and (b) affording “interactive transparency,” wherein users participate in curation, can...

This article introduces the special issue of Human Communication Research (HCR) exploring the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in communication. It situates the six articles in this issue along conceptual dimensions drawn from human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. It also underscores the importance...

The popularity of Instagram among young adults has raised concerns about the excessive use of Instagram. Is it the kind of problematic media use that takes over one’s life or just habitual ritualized use characterized by mindless scrolling? How can we differentiate between the two based on the use of Instagram features and perceived gratifications...

When evaluating automated systems, some users apply the "positive machine heuristic" (i.e. machines are more accurate and precise than humans), whereas others apply the "negative machine heuristic" (i.e. machines lack the ability to make nuanced subjective judgments), but we do not know much about the characteristics that predict whether a user wou...

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced schools to swiftly transition from in-person classes to online or remote offerings, making educators and learners alike rely on online videoconferencing platforms. Platforms like Zoom offer audio-visual channels of communication and include features that are designed to approximate the classroom experience. However,...

Smartphone users often feel disturbed by the constant rings and buzzes coming from their phones. As a solution, many try to silence notifications to avoid distractions. But, will silencing notifications help users feel less distracted or more preoccupied with what they will be missing out? To answer this question, we drew upon the Uses & Gratificat...

Current literature and public discourse on "trust in AI" are often focused on the principles underlying trustworthy AI, with insufficient attention paid to how people develop trust. Given that AI systems differ in their level of trustworthiness, two open questions come to the fore: how should AI trustworthiness be responsibly communicated to ensure...

Active listening is a well-known skill applied in human communication to build intimacy and elicit self-disclosure to support a wide variety of cooperative tasks. When applied to conversational UIs, active listening from machines can also elicit greater self-disclosure by signaling to the users that they are being heard, which can have positive out...

Do social media users read, comment, and share false news more than real news? Does it matter if the story is written by a bot and whether it is endorsed by many others? We conducted a selective-exposure experiment (N=171) to answer these questions. Results showed that real articles were more likely to receive “likes” whereas false articles were mo...

Descriptions of moment-by-moment changes in attention contribute critical elements to theory and practice about how people process media. We introduce a new concept called screenertia and use new screen-capture methodology to empirically evaluate its occurrence. We unobtrusively obtained 400,000+ screenshots of 30 participants’ laptop screens every...

Online dating apps offer two different options for filtering potential partners. One option is to allow users to directly specify their partner preferences (i.e., customization). Another is to allow the system to suggest potential dates based on their profile (i.e., personalization). This study examined if this difference in user vs. system tailori...

False rumors on WhatsApp, the world’s largest messaging app, have led to mob lynching in India and other countries. Doctored videos sent over the platform have elicited visceral responses among users, resulting in the wrongful death of innocent people. Would the responses have been so strong if the false news were circulated in text or audio? Is vi...

Websites, social media, mobile apps and indeed most internet platforms offer two distinct kinds of interactivity: one that involves interacting with the system, or what is commonly known as human-computer interaction (HCI), and another that involves interacting with other users, or computer-mediated communication (CMC). Are some people more drawn t...

Are users more likely to employ heuristic (vs. systematic) processing on mobile phones compared to PCs?

Voice assistants (VAs) have proliferated in the last 10 years. They are now used to support a wide range of tasks and activities across different domains. Effective evaluation of VA usability is critical for sustained user adoption and acceptance. Current approaches for assessing VA usability largely make use of traditional technology-agnostic meas...

In the e-commerce context, are we persuaded more by a product recommendation that matches our preferences (content filtering) or by one that is endorsed by others like us (collaborative filtering)? We addressed this question by conceptualizing these two filtering types as cues that trigger cognitive heuristics (mental shortcuts), following the heur...

Health advocacy messages can generate psychological reactance and lead to message rejection. Could we offset this negative outcome by providing more agency and interactivity to message receivers? Are individuals more likely to be receptive if health campaigns provided them an opportunity to comment on the advocacy messages? Will they be more likely...

Online users today are provided with a variety of customization tools to build their own information environment. A growing number of public health messages reach their target audiences via these digital venues. Given the deeply personal and individualized nature of customized environments, do online users show lesser reactance to persuasive health...

This study investigated how older adults’ use of specific features on Facebook is associated with intrinsic motivation and well-being. A content analysis and an online survey were conducted with Facebook users older than 60 years (N = 202). Results showed that profile customization and commenting are positively associated with feelings of autonomy...

For older adults, technology is becoming indispensable. It is increasingly difficult to perform basic functions like hailing a cab, paying a bill, keeping in touch with loved ones, or remaining engaged with one’s social, cultural, and political networks without first navigating the complex material and symbolic world of modern communication technol...

Crowdsourcing websites such as Wikipedia have become go-to places for health information. To what extent do we trust such health content that is generated by other Internet users? Will it make a difference if such entries are curated by medical professionals? Does the affordance of crowdsourcing make users feel like they themselves could be contrib...

Most methods used to make theory-relevant observations of technology use rely on self-report or application logging data where individuals' digital experiences are purposively summarized into aggregates meant to describe how the average individual engages with broadly defined segments of content. This aggregation and averaging masks heterogeneity i...

In this era of social television, we see not only the content of online videos but also how many other viewers are viewing them and how they are reacting to them. Do these metrics about audience size and opinion affect our own reactions? And, does it matter where these viewers are geographically located? We investigated these questions by first pro...

Whom do we trust more, the recommendation of an expert or public opinion from a crowd of other users of the site? Does it matter if the expert belongs to our in-group? And, what, if anything, would change if an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system was the recommender rather than a human expert? In order to answer these research questions, we conduct...

Advances in personalization algorithms and other applications of machine learning have vastly enhanced the ease and convenience of our media and communication experiences, but they have also raised significant concerns about privacy, transparency of technologies and human control over their operations. Going forth, reconciling such tensions between...

This study seeks to unpack the relationship between passive social media use and depression. In contrast to the sweeping conclusion that passive social monitoring behavior predicts declines in one’s mental health, this study argues that monitoring other’s posts on social media may not necessarily be detrimental. Based on survey data from 342 MTurk...

How would human users react to social robots that possess a theory of mind (ToM)? Would robots that can infer their users’ cognitions and emotions threaten their sense of uniqueness and evoke other negative reactions because ToM is a uniquely human trait? If so, can we alleviate these negative user reactions by framing robots as members of our ingr...

Smart-speakers such as Amazon Alexa are becoming increasingly popular among the general population. These devices support a wide range of user-initiated tasks. However, their current interaction capabilities are limited to quick turn-takings and short dialogues, which leads to limited user engagement. In this project, we aim to enhance the user eng...

As the scourge of “fake news” continues to plague our information environment, attention has turned toward devising automated solutions for detecting problematic online content. But, in order to build reliable algorithms for flagging “fake news,” we will need to go beyond broad definitions of the concept and identify distinguishing features that ar...

The nature of news reporting and data gathering has changed with the advent of social media, equipping journalists with new methods of uncovering news stories and providing the necessary background and context for their readers. Even though a presence online is indispensable for journalists, there are risks from these practices. Affordances of medi...

With the arrival and diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in media platforms, it is important to understand user perceptions of AI-driven technologies. Two focus groups identified five gratifications (i.e., efficiency, outsourcing, being served, information accuracy, and communicating without social pressure), two disappointments (i.e., lack o...

This study examined risk factors of problematic Instagram use from a uses and gratifications perspective. Data were collected from 493 Instagram users. Findings showed that 25.1% of the participants had PIU. The level of PIU was positively related to the lurking, broadcasting, and community-building affordances, as well as modality- and interactivi...

Chatbots are replacing human agents in a number of domains, from online tutoring to customer-service to even cognitive therapy. But, they are often machine-like in their interactions. What can we do to humanize chatbots? Should they necessarily be driven by human operators for them to be considered human? Or, will an anthropomorphic visual cue on t...

Clickbait is an attractive yet misleading headline that lures readers to commit click-conversion. Development of robust clickbait detection models has been, however, hampered due to the shortage of high-quality labeled training samples. To overcome this challenge, we investigate how to exploit human-written and machine-generated synthetic clickbait...

In this day and age of identity theft, are we likely to trust machines more than humans for handling our personal information? We answer this question by invoking the concept of "machine heuristic," which is a rule of thumb that machines are more secure and trustworthy than humans. In an experiment (N = 160) that involved making airline reservation...

We all hold stereotypes about different locations across the world. Do these stereotypes affect our attitudes toward cloud services when we are told the location of the servers storing our data? And, does it matter if the cloud services are provided by a well-known brand? To answer these questions, a 2 X 11 experiment was conducted to examine the e...

Do we disclose more information online when we access Wi-Fi from home compared to the University, or an Airbnb rental, or a coffee shop? Does it matter if we are shown terms and conditions (T&C) before getting online? Will signing into a virtual private network (VPN) affect our disclosure? We conducted an experiment (N = 276) to find out. Our resul...

Advances in artificial intelligence offer the promise of accessibility, precision, and personalized care in health settings. However, growth in technology has not translated to commensurate growth in automation of healthcare facilities. To gain a better understanding of user psychology behind the acceptance of automation in clinics, a 3 (Role: Rece...

The arrival of self-driving cars and smart technologies is fraught with controversy, as users hesitate to cede control to machines for vital tasks. While advances in engineering have made such autonomous technology a reality, considerable design work is needed to motivate their mass adoption. What are the key predictors of people's acceptance of se...

Online recommender systems have triggered widespread privacy concerns due to their reliance on personal user data for providing personalized services. To address these concerns, some systems have started allowing users to express their preferences before receiving personalized content (i.e., reactive personalization) rather than automatically pushi...

Interactive media provide a physically active experience for users to click, slide, mouseover, and zoom-in/out, but how this increased amount of on-screen interaction is associated with cognitive and attitudinal outcomes has remained unexplored. We tackled this issue by conducting an online study where we recorded the amount of on-screen interactio...

Health forums and support groups depend on participant self-disclosure for their success, but the sensitive nature of personal health concerns raises privacy concerns that may constrain what users are willing to reveal. To address this issue, we explore the impact of visual cues designed to convey (1) two facets of social influence-crowd size and s...

Scholars studying social media have embraced the opportunities afforded by behavioral data captured by online tools to explore the implications of platform use for outcomes such as well-being, relationship maintenance, and perceptions of social capital. However, the prevalence of these methods demands that we consider their potential limitations an...

Can workout apps actually motivate users to sustain an exercise routine? If so, what are the key characteristics of these apps that engage long-term users? We conducted a content analysis to find out. Guided by the Motivational Technology Model and Self-Determination Theory, we explored the relationship between technological affordances of BodySpac...

When we ask a chatbot for advice about a personal problem, should it simply provide informational support and refrain from offering emotional support? Or, should it show sympathy and empathize with our situation? Although expression of caring and understanding is valued in supportive human communications, do we want the same from a chatbot, or do w...

Social science researchers increasingly rely on microworkers to serve as study participants, paying them very little compared to participants recruited from other venues. This has raised ethical concerns and questioned the validity of research based on microworkers. Informed by cognitive dissonance theory, we conducted two between-subjects experime...

Modern mobile apps aim to provide personalized services without appearing intrusive. A common strategy is to let the user initiate the service request (e.g., "click here to receive coupons for your favorite products"), a practice known as ?overt personalization." Another strategy is to assuage users' privacy concerns by being transparent about how...

Guided by the Uses and Gratifications 2.0 approach, this study examines the role played by three classes of affordances (i.e. modality, agency, and interactivity) in explicating the gratifications derived by older adults on Facebook. Data from a content analysis of Facebook profiles and an online survey with older adults (aged 60 years and older) w...

Immersive journalism in the form of virtual reality (VR) headsets and 360°-video is becoming more mainstream and is much touted for inducing greater "presence" than traditional text. But, does this presence influence psychological outcomes of reading news, such as memory for story content, perceptions of credibility, and empathy felt toward story c...

Parallax scrolling is a popular web technique used widely in product presentation websites, but its effect on user experience is unknown. Parallax scrolling allows the object displayed in the foreground to move faster than the object displayed in the background, so as to create a 3D effect. Dimensionality and scrolling (modality interactivity) are...

Can the comments of a few viewers on social media affect viewers’ perceptions of audience sentiment or their own program enjoyment? If so, do the effects of comments vary based on their valence or placement during programming? We conducted a 2 (positive vs. negative tweets) x 2 (beginning vs. end of program) factorial experiment with an additional...

Despite a growing body of research about older adults’ use of social networking sites (SNS), scholars have not fully explored how this technology is meeting this group’s interactional and information-seeking needs. How do these older adults view this technology? What are their communication needs and expectations and why are they drawn to it? To ad...

This chapter illustrates the use of Theory of Interactive Media Effects (Time) by analyzing seven recent trends in digital advertising: Mobile Video, virtual reality/augmented reality Ads, Chatbots, Behavioral Advertising, Location-based Advertising, Search-Engine Advertising, and Native Advertising. It begins with the trend or type of digital adve...

Using a robot designed for senior citizens in a retirement home setting, an experiment (N=51) was conducted to investigate whether variations in the role (companion vs. assistant) and social demeanor (playful vs. serious) of a robot influence senior citizens’ perceptions of the robot's social attractiveness, intelligence, anxiety, and eeriness. Res...

Existing research on the effects of interactivity tends to treat it as a global characteristic of the interface. However, not all content on an interface is endowed with interactive features. Therefore, it is important to explore how interactivity affects the cognitive processing of those particular content that is presented with interactive featur...

The popularity of social media sites for posting pictures has given rise to a new form of mediated communication: online photo sharing. This article explores motivations for sharing photos online, using the 2-step procedure common in Uses and Gratifications research. Focus groups revealed 42 motivations which were rated in importance by survey resp...

Pinterest is now the fourth most popular social network site after Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in the United States, offering its own suite of functions. This study investigated why individuals use specific features of Pinterest such as pinning, creating, liking, following, commenting, inviting, sharing, checking, searching, and browsing differ...

By affording interactive communication and natural, human-like conversations, can media tools affect the way we engage with content in human–machine interactions and influence our attitudes toward that content? A between-subjects experiment (N = 172) examined the effects of two communication variables: (a) message-interactivity and (b) conversation...

This chapter builds on previous work that positions user engagement on the user involvement continuum and suggests that user engagement is comprised of physical interactions with media, cognitive involvement, absorption in media content, and behavioral outcomes in the form of outreach or media participation. The authors explore medium or interface...

Users often react negatively towards applications that track their personal information, even though they have consented to such tracking by hitting the "I Agree" button on the application's end user license agreement (EULA). This is because most users do not read the EULA carefully. The language and presentation of EULAs are often dull, dense and...

Robots are increasingly being deployed in a number of domains typically associated with female workers, e.g., caregiving. Although past robot morphology has favored a machine-like appearance that is often perceived as masculine, monitor-based robots provide designers with enhanced opportunities to include interface cues that convey femininity. Howe...

We conducted a series of in-depth focus groups wherein users provided rationales for their own online privacy behaviors. Our data suggest that individuals often take action with little thought or evaluation, even showing surprise when confronted with their own behaviors. Our analysis yielded a battery of cognitive heuristics, i.e., mental shortcuts...

Customization of media technologies enables users to become active sources in the communication process. But, does this sense of “self-as-source” alter the way users process information received via customized interfaces? A between-subjects experiment (N = 146) was conducted to answer this question. Data indicate that the effect of self-driven cust...

Horizontal swiping has become a common interaction technique on smartphones, yet many mobile websites do not incorporate this functionality, instead requiring users to scroll down or click on buttons, arrow keys and other hotspots. This is perhaps because user studies comparing swiping with other interaction techniques are scarce. We conducted an e...

Guided by the Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability (MAIN) model of technology effects and the heuristic–systematic model (HSM) of information processing, this study explicates underlying mechanisms by which variations in screen size (large vs. small) and presentation mode (video vs. text) contribute to user perceptions of media content...

This study explores the psychological effects of information tailoring, locational congruity, and product involvement on user attitudes toward location-based advertising (LBA) on mobile devices. Results from a 2 (type of information tailoring: personalization vs. customization) × 2 (level of locational congruity: high vs. low) × 2 (level of product...

Despite calls to conceptualize credibility as three separate concepts—source credibility, message credibility, and media credibility—there exists no scale that exclusively measures message credibility. To address this gap, the current study constructs and validates a new scale. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggest that message credib...

In an effort to encourage users to participate rather than lurk, online health forums provide authority badges (e.g., guru) to frequent contributors and popularity indicators (e.g., number of views) to their postings. Studies have shown the latter to be more effective, implying that bulletin-board users are motivated by external validation of their...