Sebastián Valenzuela

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Political activities on social media are subject both to the constraints and potentials of the functionalities, structures and operating systems of such platforms. Increasingly, these constraints and potentials are studied with the concept of affordances. Often, affordances are confused with features of technologies and with the effects of using th...

This study investigates the concept of frames in the realm of online polarization, with a focus on social media platforms. The research extends the understanding of how frames—emerging, complex, and often subtle concepts—become prominent in online conversations that are polarized. The study proposes a comprehensive methodology for identifying and c...

Studies on misinformation often overlook people’s assessment of true information, focusing instead on beliefs in and sharing of false content. This is problematic, as it limits scholars’ ability to produce an accurate assessment of citizens’ capacity to distinguish between true and false content. To shed light on this matter, this study relies on a...

Esta es una versión editada de la charla magistral del autor en la inauguración de la Conferencia Académica por el Día Mundial de la Libertad de Prensa de UNESCO 2024 y que organizaron la Universidad de Chile y la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile el 4 de mayo de 2024 en Santiago.

To explain the participatory effects of news exposure, communication scholars have long relied upon the “virtuous circle” framework of media use and civic participation. That is, news consumption makes people more knowledgeable, and trustful toward institutions and political processes, making them active and responsible citizens, which then leads t...

Prior misinformation research often lacks comparisons with the processing of true information and specifically focuses on the dangers of right-wing or conservative misinformation. By employing a signal detection framework, this research addresses the ability to discern between true and false (discrimination sensitivity) as well as the tendency to p...

The rise of bots that mimic human behavior represents one of the most pressing threats to healthy information environments on social media. Many bots are designed to increase the visibility of low-quality content, spread misinformation, and artificially boost the reach of brands and politicians. These bots can also disrupt civic action coordination...

This study analyzes the discourse of reporters, editors and audiences in focus groups and in-depth interviews, examining the expectations on journalists when facing misinformation. While both groups agree that journalistic information is critical, how this expectation is met varies. On the one hand, the audience’s way of knowing involves diverse as...

Public policies across the world are tackling Internet access inequality through mobile connections, which has led to an increase in mobile-only use. However, digital skills remain as a stumbling block to achieve digital inclusion. Using a two-wave panel survey on a representative sample conducted in Chile between 2018 and 2020, this study investig...

Contrary to popular narratives, it is not clear whether using social media for news increases belief in political misinformation. Several of the most methodologically sound studies find small to nonexistent effects. However, extant research is limited by focusing on few platforms (usually Facebook, Twitter or YouTube) and is heavily U.S. centered....

Studies exploring the association between social media use and belief in conspiracy theories have yielded mixed evidence. To address this inconsistency, we focus on conspiracy thinking – a predisposition to interpret events as products of secret, malevolent plots – for which contextual confounds can be better isolated. We posit that social media us...

Based on computerized and manual content analyses, we examined the theories, methods, topics, and authors’ backgrounds of the empirical articles revolving around politics and media published by Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) in its 100 years ( N = 424). The most common theories are agenda-setting, framing, and selective exposure,...

Most research on governments’ use of social media focuses on the national or federal level. We therefore know little about the way local authorities harness social media platforms to communicate with their constituencies. This paper studies the role structural and political variables played in Chilean mayors’ political communication strategies duri...

When do users share fact-checks on social media? We describe a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 election in Argentina measuring the propensity of voters to share corrections to political misinformation that randomly confirm or challenge their initial beliefs. We find evidence of selective sharing—the notion that individuals prefer to sha...

Information disorders on social media can have a significant impact on citizens' participation in democratic processes. To better understand the spread of false and inaccurate information online, this research analyzed data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The data was collected and verified by professional fact-checkers in Chile between Octo...

Repeated exposure to misinformation not only reduces the accuracy of people’s beliefs, but it also decreases confidence in institutions such as the news media. Can fact-checking—journalism’s main weapon against misinformation—worsen or ameliorate distrust in journalists and the media? To answer this question, we conducted two pre-registered experim...

Information disorders on social media can have a significant impact on citizens’ participation in democratic processes. To better understand the spread of false and inaccurate information online, this research analyzed data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The data were collected and verified by professional fact-checkers in Chile between Oct...

¿Cuál es la asociación entre exposición a noticias y confianza política en Latinoamérica? ¿Hay diferencias según la libertad del sistema de medios y los niveles de polarización política? Para responder estas preguntas, este estudio analiza 10 países latinoamericanos incluidos en la última Encuesta Mundial de Valores (2017-2020) (N = 11.769), así co...

Previous research has shown that corruption diminishes citizens’ level of political support and engagement. We extend this line of reasoning and evaluate whether previous levels of perceived corruption can influence subsequent levels of political knowledge. We test this proposition with data from a two-wave panel probability survey applied in Chile...

In response to Perloff's (this issue) essay examining the development and future of agenda setting, a series of scholars offer their own reactions to the essay and the broader issues it raises. © 2022 Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

This chapter discusses how a constantly changing media landscape affects political participation. After pointing out the affordances brought forward by digital media and communication technologies, six game changers are identified in the realms of media consumption, production and circulation: information overload, changing audiences’ media use hab...

How do political candidates combine social media campaign tools with on-the-ground political campaigns to pursue segmented electoral strategies? We argue that online campaigns can reproduce and reinforce segmented electoral appeals. Furthermore, our study suggests that electoral segmentation remains a broader phenomenon that includes social media a...

While much research exists on the role of digital media use in protest movements, few studies compare the long-term impact of protests on online use of alternative and mainstream digital media. This holds particularly true in countries of the global south. Our study addresses this knowledge gap by examining the massive demonstrations that occurred...

Marked by both deep interconnectedness and polarization, the contemporary media system in the United States features news outlets and social media that are bound together, yet deeply divided along partisan lines. This article formally analyzes communication flows surrounding mass shootings in the hybrid and polarized U.S. media system. We begin by...

Between 2009 and 2019, Chile experienced the rise and fall of a powerful and influential environmental movement. This movement spurred massive protests against large-scale energy and mining projects, successfully blocking many of them. Although these demonstrations brought together people of all ages and backgrounds, youth were particularly active...

The tension between health and economic considerations regarding COVID-19 has resulted in a framing contest, in which proponents and adversaries of strong containment measures hold oppositional frames about the pandemic. This study examines the effects of competing news frames on social media users' policy preferences and the moderation of framing...

Despite early promise, scholarship has shown little empirical evidence of learning from the news on social media. At the same time, scholars have documented the problem of information ‘snacking’ and information quality on these platforms. These parallel trends in the literature challenge long-held assumptions about the pro-social effects of news co...

Once regarded as the poster child for democratic stability and sound policymaking in Latin America, in the last two decades Chile has experienced increasing levels of mistrust in political institutions and media elites, as well as disenfranchisement. In the wake of the mass protests of October 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic found the Chilean governmen...

This chapter discusses how a constantly changing media landscape affects political participation. After pointing out the affordances brought forward by digital communication technologies, six game changers are identified: information overload, changing habits of media use, crisis of media business, the shift from audiences to content creators, the...

Despite widespread concern, research on the consequences of misinformation on people's attitudes is surprisingly scant. To fill in this gap, the current study examines the long-term relationship between misinformation and trust in the news media. Based on the reinforcing spirals model, we analyzed data from a three-wave panel survey collected in Ch...

A trend study in the stratification of social media use among urban youth: Chile This trend study describes changes and continuities in the stratification of usage of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp in Chile between 2009-2019-the decade that witnessed the rise of social media. Using the Youth, Media and Participation Study-a probabilisti...

The current study examines how specific content characteristics determine social media users' proclivity to share public affairs news. Using six different issues, we conducted a national survey experiment (N = 993) to test whether the use of specific news frames influences individuals' disposition to disseminate stories on Facebook and Twitter. We...

This study analyzes what "emergency sources" (authorities, emergency managers, and experts) expect from journalists during a disaster, using a mixed-method approach with six focus groups and a survey of 166 official Chilean sources. Based on the first three levels of the hierarchy of influences model, we explore how they perceive journalists' roles...

News media strongly influence how we picture public affairs across the world, playing a significant and sometimes controversial role in determining which topics are at the centre of public attention and action. Setting the Agenda, first published in 2004, has become the go-to textbook on this crucial topic.In this timely third edition, Maxwell McCo...

This study examines the articulation of public opinion about so-called fake news using a national survey (N = 510) of U.S. adults conducted in 2018. We coded respondents' open-ended answers about what is "fake news" and found that while some respondents adopt a politically neutral, descriptive definition, others provided a partisan, accusatory answ...

This study examines the articulation of public opinion about so-called fake news using a national survey (N = 510) of U.S. adults conducted in 2018. We coded respondents’ open-ended answers about what is “fake news” and found that while some respondents adopt a politically neutral, descriptive definition, others provided a partisan, accusatory answ...

Con el fin de contribuir a la discusión sobre el rol de los medios de comunicación, incluyendo las redes sociales, en la coyuntura de Pandemia de COVID-19, un equipo de investigadores de la Facultad de Comunicaciones de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile realizó un estudio de opinión pública mediante una encuesta vía correo electrónico a t...

In light of concerns about decreasing news use, a decline in interest in political news or even active avoidance or resistance of news in general, the idea of ‘incidental news’ has been seen as a possible remedy. Generally, ‘incidental news’ refers to the ways in which people encounter information about current events through media when they were n...

In order to contribute to the discussion about the role that news sources –including broadcast, print, online and social media– are playing in the current wave of social unrest in Chile, a research team from the School of Communications at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC) developed and fielded a survey using an online panel administere...

Con el fin de contribuir a la discusión sobre el rol que están jugando los medios de comunicación, incluyendo las redes sociales, en la actual coyuntura, un equipo de investigadores de la Facultad de Comunicaciones de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile realizó un estudio de opinión pública mediante una encuesta online a través del panel on...

Adolescence is a key period in the development of individuals’ news habits, but little is known about the processes involved in the process of news media socialization. This study proposes an integrated model in which the influence of family communication on motivations and behaviors of adolescents in relation to news consumption occurs through the...

Mobile instant messaging services (MIMs) are important gateways to news exposure and political conversations. Nevertheless, we still know little about the specific uses and consequences of using messaging apps on other aspects of democratic citizenship. This is especially true in Latin American countries, where usage of MIMs is more widespread than...

Interactive technologies are changing the ways we learn facts, develop attitudes and participate in politics, with the ensuing risk of increasing pre-existing inequalities. Addressing this challenge is the duty of researchers, technology companies, governments and news organizations.

Scholars have advanced many theoretical explanations for expecting a negative or positive relationship between individuals’ cross-cutting exposure—either through interpersonal or mediated forms of communication—and their political participation. However, whether cross-cutting exposure is a positive or negative predictor of participation is still an...

The mechanisms by which users of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread misinformation are not well understood. In this study, we argue that the effects of informational uses of social media on political participation are inextricable from its effects on misinformation sharing. That is, political engagement is both a major consequence of usi...

Drawing on social-psychological and political research, we offer a theoretical model that explains how people become exposed to fake news, come to believe in them and then share them with their contacts. Using two waves of a nationally representative sample of Chileans with internet access, we pinpoint the relevant causal factors. Analysis of the p...

This study seeks to deepen our understanding of the factors that explain individuals’ willingness to self-censor (WtSC)—the proclivity to withhold an opinion from an audience perceived to disagree with that opinion. It does so by testing the “impressionable years” hypothesis, which states that the historical context experienced between the age of 1...

Path analysis is a statistical technique for examining and testing relationships among a set of observed variables. Path analysis allows the study of multiple direct and indirect relationships between variables simultaneously. It is now regarded as one type of the more general statistical technique known as structural equation modeling. To facilita...

Intermedia agenda setting predicts a high degree of convergence between news media agendas. However, the rise of social media forces a re-examination of this expectation. Using the 8.8-earthquake of February 27, 2010 in Chile as a case study, this article compares which topics were covered by professional journalists on broadcast news and Twitter,...

This study advances a theoretical model centered on collective and internal efficacy to explain the separate pathways through which political sharing on Facebook and Twitter may influence individuals to engage in political activities. We test the model with data from a 2-wave panel survey conducted with an adult population in 2013 in Chile. We foun...

We hypothesize that generic frames influence what news people share on Facebook and Twitter through three different routes: emotions, motivations, and psychological engagement. Using a mixed-methods design, a content analysis of a representative sample of articles published in six Chilean outlets was combined with in-depth interviews with digital j...

Based on the theoretical concepts of social networks and technology affordances, this article argues that different social media platforms influence political participation through unique, yet complementary, routes. More specifically, it proposes that Facebook and Twitter are conducive to protest behavior through two distinct mechanisms: whereas th...

The article analyzes the nature of communication flows during social conflicts via the digital platform Twitter. We gathered over 150,000 tweets from citizen protests for nine environmental social movements in Chile and used a mixed methods approach to show that long-standing paradigms for social mobilization and participation are neither replicate...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social media use and protest participation in Latin America. It advances two questions. First, does social media increase the chances of protest participation at the individual level, as prior research shows for advanced democracies? Second, in a region with glaring economic...

We examine the widely popular social phenomenon of “selfies” (self-portraits uploaded and shared in social media) in terms of the observed positive relationship between this individualistic form of social media usage and narcissism. We conducted a cross-lagged analysis of a two-wave, representative panel survey to understand whether narcissists tak...

Scholarship on informal discussion of politics and current events has mainly focused on its cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects. In comparison, fewer studies have addressed the antecedents of political talk. Using 2-wave U.S. panel survey data, this study sheds light over 2 sets of motivations people may have for engaging in political co...

The values-issues consistency hypothesis posits that when the issues covered in the news resonate with people’s values, the power of the news media in setting the public agenda is stronger. However, we know little about the process by which values influence the agenda-setting process. We argue that the need for orientation (NFO) is a key mediating...

The values-issues consistency hypothesis posits that when the issues covered in the news resonate with people's values, the power of the news media in setting the public agenda is stronger. However, we know little about the process by which values influence the agenda-setting process. We argue that the need for orientation (NFO) is a key mediating...

partir de 2009 un grupo de investigadores de distintas universidades chilenas comenzó a estudiar la participación política de los jóvenes chilenos y su consumo de medios de comunicación tradicionales y de los, en ese minuto, emergentes medios sociales online. Tras el retorno a la democracia en 1990, la participación política de los ciudadanos chi...

Most work deals with the effects, not antecedents, of people’s exposure to disagreement within their social networks. Here, we elaborate on the role played by a major psychological driver of public opinion: emotions. Drawing from cognitive and appraisal theories, we explore the association between pride, anger, and disagreeable political talk. Thre...

In 2011, Chile experienced two massive protest movements – one against the cost and quality of public education and another against the construction of power plants in Patagonia. This represented a unique opportunity to analyse and compare how Facebook and Twitter use were related to street demonstrations. Using a probabilistic face-to-face survey...

This study investigates the docudrama hypothesis—the idea that fiction based on real stories can influence audience members’ perception of political reality—in the context of current debates on partisan selective exposure and reinforcement effects. It does so by analyzing the influence of an Oscar-nominated docudrama on viewers’ attitudes and behav...

Estudos recentes têm demonstrado conexões entre a frequência do uso de redes sociais e a participação política. No entanto, não há uma elucidação clara de como esse uso de redes sociais se traduz em um aumento da atividade política. O presente artigo examina três possíveis explicações para essa relação, no âmbito do comportamento de protesto dos ci...

El siguiente artículo realiza un análisis estadístico a nivel comunal de los principales determinantes de la participación ciudadana en las elecciones municipales de 2012. El análisis considera factores sociales, económicos y demográficos, aunque el énfasis está puesto en la identificación de efectos de variables institucionales, o sujetas a modifi...

This study examines changes in the association between social media use and protest behavior in the context of growing social unrest among the younger population. Using propensity score matching, it analyzes data from a repeated cross-sectional survey taken before, during, and after the 2011 student demonstrations in Chile. The results indicate tha...

Recent studies have shown a positive link between frequency of social media use and political participation. However, there has been no clear elaboration of how using social media translates into increased political activity. The current study examines three explanations for this relationship in the context of citizens’ protest behavior: informatio...

Introducción El año 2011 representó un punto de inflexión en la historia de los movi-mientos sociales en Chile. Por primera vez desde la ola de protestas contra el régimen militar en los años ochenta, miles de ciudadanos se tomaron las calles para manifestarse por diversas causas: los estudiantes marcharon por la calidad de la educación, los ambien...

In the past 2 decades, cable television and the Internet have greatly increased the availability of media content. The phenomenon has reinvigorated a longstanding debate about the effects of this media landscape, as people selectively get exposed to specific content. Based on U.S. national survey data, this article advances research in this area by...

Recently, scholars tested how digital media use for informational purposes similarly contributes to foster democratic processes and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today's socially-networked-society and the rise of social media applications (i.e., Facebook) new perspectives need to be considered. Based on U.S. nation...

Protest activity has become a central means for political change in Chile. We examine the association between social media use and youth protest, as well as mediating and moderating mechanisms of this relationship, using survey data collected in Chile in 2010. We found that Facebook use was associated significantly with protest activity, even after...

This article examines the moderating role of human values on agenda-setting effects, which refer to the influence of news coverage on defining the public agenda. The results of two studies-a content analysis of Canadian newspapers matched with a representative survey panel of Canadian voters, in addition to an experiment with college students-find...

As blogs have become a fixture in today's media environment, growing in number and influence in political communication and (mass) media discourse, research on the subject has proliferated, often emphasizing the high-profile conflicts and controversies at the intersection of blogging and journalism. Less examined, however, is the psychology of ever...

This study tests the generalizability of agenda-setting theory in less developed democracies by analyzing data on public opinion, television news coverage, presidential policy, and real-world indicators from Chile between 2000 and 2005. After tracking attention to five different issues—crime, unemployment, health, poverty, and education—we estimate...

Empirical studies of citizen communication networks and participation go as far back as the 1940s, with a bolder focus in political—not civic—activities. A consistent finding reveals that individuals with larger networks are more engaged than those with smaller networks. This article expands this line of work with a number of novel tests. First, it...

Need for orientation (NFO) is a key contingent condition for agenda-setting effects. Traditionally, this concept has been measured by two lower-order components, but a recent reconceptualization expanded it to three dimensions. The current experimental study tested how comparable the traditional and new NFO scales are, and how strongly they predict...

We examine the relationship between citizen-to-citizen discussions and online political participation considering various attributes of individuals' social networks: Modality, discussants' ties, diversity of opinions, and quality of argumentation. Using a national survey of U.S. residents we find that communication within networks is a significant...

The contribution of professional journalism to democratic citizenship is well-established, but the proliferation of online user-generated news begs the question of whether citizen journalism plays a similar role. Use and trust of both professional and citizen journalism were investigated for their associations with political knowledge and participa...

Existing research on which citizens are most and least likely to exhibit media priming effects is inconclusive. Using data from the 2006 Canadian election, this study examined the moderating role of voters' political knowledge, interest in politics, news attention, and discussion frequency. Results show priming was not constant across political inv...