No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Der Sanktionsbedarf von Facebook-Inhalten aus Sicht von NutzerInnen und seine Determinanten
Abstract
In den sozialen Medien können NutzerInnen, die keine institutionalisierte Ausbildung über die Bedeutung der Meinungsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen erhalten haben, von anderen NutzerInnen produzierte Medieninhalte sanktionieren. Diese Sanktionen ergänzen die Regulierung durch Plattformanbieter und die rechtsstaatliche Regulierung. Damit eröffnet sich ein neues Forschungsfeld über die Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Sanktionsbedarfs von Medieninhalten aus Sicht von NutzerInnen. In einer standardisierten Befragung von 265 Facebook-Usern wird untersucht, welche Merkmale und Einstellungen beeinflussen, ob NutzerInnen einen Facebook-Inhalt negativ sanktionieren würden oder Sanktionen vom Plattformbetreiber oder vom Staat erwarten. Es zeigen sich teilweise Parallelen zur den Forschungsergebnissen, die in Studien zu traditionellen Medien gewonnen wurden: Die Einschätzung der Medienbotschaft als gefährlich, geringere Facebook-Nutzung und ein niedrigeres Bildungsniveau gehen mit einer hohen Einschätzung des Sanktionsbedarfs aus Sicht der NutzerInnen einher. Andere Faktoren (Alter, Geschlecht, politische Orientierung, Religiosität und vermutete Wirkung des Facebook- Inhalts) haben dagegen keine oder nur indirekte Effekte.
... Public opinion data can stimulate debates about existing intervention strategies of various actors. In line with the idea of evidence-based policymaking (Livingstone, 2013;Puppis & Van den Bulck, 2019), such research can inform policymakers about the public's understanding of media regulation, identify deviations between policy and public opinion, and help them to justify or adjust their decisions (Lambe, 2002;Naab, 2016;Naab et al., 2019;Paek et al., 2008). As Internet governance regimes consider the role that users themselves might play in regulation, it is crucial to provide independent academic assessments of their attitudes. ...
... Previous research did not find any impact of individual support for free speech on user interventions against uncivil comments (Naab, 2016;Naab et al., 2019). This is surprising, because one might expect that supporters of free speech, in particular, would rely on the self-regulatory power of engaging in discussions. ...
... Support for free speech does also not increase assumed self-responsibility of the users. This is in line with previous research that also did not find any impact of individual support for free speech on user interventions against uncivil comments (Naab, 2016;Naab et al., 2019). Those users who appreciate free speech probably object to intervention in general and emphasize a free exchange, even of harmful content. ...
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. Through survey studies in Germany (n = 1155) and the United States (n = 1164), we provide a comparative perspective on responsibility attributions toward different regulatory actors who may intervene against problematic user comments: the state (law enforcement), platform operators (Facebook), news organizations, and users themselves. We explore this against the backdrop of different notions of free speech and cultural differences in the two countries. We find that Germans attribute greater responsibility for intervention to the state, Facebook, and news organizations than Americans. They also assume greater self‐responsibility. While support for free speech did not impact responsibility attribution to Facebook, news organizations, or the users themselves, people with greater general support for free speech saw law enforcement as less responsible for intervention. The results provide empirical evidence for an integrated view of various regulatory actors who complement each other in the governance of online discussions.
... Entsprechend lassen sich unizivile Online-Diskussionen, in denen Gruppen oder Individuen herabgewürdigt, bedroht oder beschimpft werden oder in denen gesellschaftliche Normen verletzt werden, als digitale Notfallsituation konzeptualisieren, bei denen Nutzer*innen vor der Entscheidung stehen, ob sie intervenieren oder nicht (Naab 2016). ...
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, the potential of civic engagement by users themselves is repeatedly discussed as a possible way to improve the discussion climate and reduce the dysfunctional consequences of uncivil online discussions.
The present study examines which factors inhibit or encourage the various forms of engagement of users against incivility in online discussions. In a survey of 575 members of the group #ichbinhier (#iamhere) we examine the influence of various factors – derived from research on bystander behavior – that inhibit or encourage the willingness to intervene in uncivil online discussions with own comments (“typing”) or by evaluating existing comments (“clicking”).
The results show that political Facebook usage, the feeling of personal responsibility, and the expectation of an improved discussion climate are positively related to the willingness to intervene (“click” and “type”) in the studied sample.
The own written language competence as well as the expectation of social recognition only play a role for the intervention by means of own comments; the evaluation of existing comments remains unaffected. Click-speech thus appears as an alternative and less demanding form of intervention compared to the intervention via comments. // Fulltext (Open-Access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41358-020-00212-9
... The present study has focused on characteristics of the comments. However, demographics, personality traits (Downs & Cowan, 2012;Naab, 2016;Kenski, Coe, & Rains, 2017) as well as user experiences, perceived responsibility for the discussion, and commitment to the community (Baumeister, Chesner, Senders, Tice, 1988;Naab et al., 2016) have also been shown to affect deviance perception and intervention behavior. ...
The full text is available online:
http://www.scm.nomos.de/fileadmin/scm/doc/SCM_17_04_03.pdf
Uncivil and impolite user comments diminish the quality of deliberative discussions in the comment sections of news sites. This study investigates how users engage against such comments. Replying, disliking, and flagging are distinguished as different options of user engagement that vary in their functionality for discussion sections. To investigate the effects of incivility and impoliteness on user engagement, we conducted a 2 (civil vs. uncivil user comment) x 2 (polite vs. impolite user comment) online experiment. Results
show that users engaged against impolite comments that attacked Muslims by flagging or by writing a reply against the language style or a reply against the expressed opinion. Incivility did not influence user engagement. The effects are moderated by Islamophobic attitudes. The results give detailed insights into readers’ behavior in discussion threads and have consequences for professional moderation.
User intervention against incivility as social enforcement of democratic norms on social media platforms is considered an act of “good citizenship” by citizens and scholars alike. However, between ideals and behavior, multiple social norms are at play in shaping individuals’ sense of personal responsibility for intervening. This study explores the role of conflicting norms in situations requiring user intervention against online incivility. By combining the perspectives of norms as expectations and norms as cultural vocabularies, we investigate users’ salient norms, and how these norms influence users’ justifications for (non-)intervention. Based on qualitative interview data from Germany ( N = 20), we identified three distinct reasoning patterns employed to justify (non-)intervention: the pragmatic, the dismissive, and the aspirational. By identifying fault lines, our typology points to normative origins of ambivalence related to user intervention. The findings offer insights into strategies to motivate intervention against online incivility.
Die Kommentarfunktion könnte ein idealer Weg sein, mehr (Meinungs-)Vielfalt im digitalen Journalismus abzubilden. Jedoch wird das Feature in Wissenschaft und Medienpraxis äußerst kontrovers diskutiert. Insbesondere geht es darum, wie die Möglichkeit, sich öffentlich zu äußern, missbraucht wird und problematische Meinungen in Kommentarspalten ein Podium finden. In diesem Beitrag werfen wir einen Blick hinter die Kulissen: Wie gehen Nachrichtenorganisationen mit Kommentaren von Nutzer*innen um und was weiß die Forschung bisher über verschiedene Moderationsstrategien? Wir gehen auch darauf ein, wie Nutzer*innen in Moderationsprozesse integriert werden und zivilgesellschaftliche Akteur*innen Nachrichtenorganisationen unterstützen können, gegen problematische Kommentare vorzugehen. Dabei arbeiten wir heraus, dass mehrere Faktoren berücksichtigt werden müssen, um eine passgenaue Moderationsstrategie zu finden, und zeigen auf, was die Forschung zukünftig genauer unter die Lupe nehmen sollte. Denn Kommentarmoderation ist eine wesentliche Größe, von der abhängen kann, ob eine „Audience Engagement“-Strategie schließlich aufgeht oder Hass in Kommentarspalten überhandnimmt.
In an effort to counter hate speech, media platforms have increasingly come to rely on ordinary users to fight abusive content. However, little is known about the predictors of this type of user engagement, which we refer to as online civic intervention (OCI). This article presents an experimental inquiry (N = 337) into whether solidarity citizenship norms promote OCI. The results show that users who support solidarity citizenship norms tend to have a greater propensity to flag hate comments and to engage in counterspeech. Overall, this indicates that “good citizens” are more inclined to stand up against hate speech online.
In den vorherigen Kapiteln wurde immer wieder darauf hingewiesen, dass es für die Auswahl der Fragenformulierung, der Fragenpräsentation, der Fragenbogenlänge, aber auch für die Auswahl der zu befragenden Personen eine wichtige Rolle spielt, in welchem Modus die Befragung durchgeführt wird. Diesen Befragungsmodi widmen sich die folgenden Abschnitte.
The study investigates the flagging behavior as specific type of bystander intervention against uncivil user comments in comments sections on news sites. Two experimental studies examine the effects of intervention information, characteristics of response comments, and the type of victim attacked in a comment on flagging behavior, that is on reporting a comment to professional moderators. Our results indicate that intervention information is a promising strategy to motivate flagging. Flagging is based on responsibility attribution to professional moderators but not on self-responsibility perception. Type of victim and characteristics of other users’ posted responses to preceding comments (public disagreement and politeness) shape deviance perceptions of the situation and influence flagging behavior.
The flag is now a common mechanism for reporting offensive content to an online platform, and is used widely across most popular social media sites. It serves both as a solution to the problem of curating massive collections of user-generated content and as a rhetorical justification for platform owners when they decide to remove content. Flags are becoming a ubiquitous mechanism of governance—yet their meaning is anything but straightforward. In practice, the interactions between users, flags, algorithms, content moderators, and platforms are complex and highly strategic. Significantly, flags are asked to bear a great deal of weight, arbitrating both the relationship between users and platforms, and the negotiation around contentious public issues. In this essay, we unpack the working of the flag, consider alternatives that give greater emphasis to public deliberation, and consider the implications for online public discourse of this now commonplace yet rarely studied sociotechnical mechanism.
It is a common assumption that in many countries mass media censorship is imposed by an authoritarian government on an unwilling
public. This study examines public opinion about television censorship in the island nation of Singapore. More specifically,
we tested the third-person effect hypothesis, which suggests that people expect media content to have more negative influence
on others than on themselves, and that some support for censorship is based on that perceptual bias.
Data for the study came from face-to-face interviews with 506 randomly selected Singaporeans who evaluated ten categories
of ‘sensitive’ television content. Results revealed (1) a substantial perceptual bias in all content categories; (2) generally
strong opinion favoring censorship of television content; and (3) a significant relationship between these two factors, suggesting
that people may support censorship of media in part because of a tendency to overestimate its negative influence.
The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) is a measure of the centrality, importance or salience of religious meanings in personality that has been applied yet in more than 100 studies in sociology of religion, psychology of religion and religious studies in 25 countries with in total more than 100,000 participants. It measures the general intensities of five theoretical defined core dimensions of religiosity. The dimensions of public practice, private practice, religious experience, ideology and the intellectual dimensions can together be considered as representative for the total of religious live. From a psychological perspective, the five core-dimensions can be seen as channels or modes in which personal religious constructs are shaped and activated. The activation of religious constructs in personality can be regarded as a valid measure of the degree of religiosity of an individual. The CRS thus derives from the five dimensional measures a combined measure of the centrality of religiosity which is suitable also for interreligious studies. The paper presents the theoretical basis and rationale of its construction with different versions of the CRS in 20 languages with norm values for 21 countries. Furthermore, the paper presents versions of different extension and describes specific modifications that were developed for studies with Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims.
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 general relevance to later users to respond to them. Qualitative interviews with users who comment on news stories online and a quantitative content analysis of 1,580 user comments showed that the discussion factors uncertainty, controversy, comprehensibility, negativity, and personalization can explain interactivity in news discussions. Further, different technological implementations of the comment function seem to have a limited influence on the effects of these discussion factors.
In this article, we present data showing that national legislators are more tolerant than the public in Britain, Israel, New Zealand and the United States. Two explanations for this phenomenon are presented and assessed. The first is the selective recruitment of Members of Parliament, Knesset and Congress from among those in the electorate whose demographic, ideological and personality characteristics predispose them to be tolerant. Although this process does operate in all four countries, it is insufficient to explain all of the differences in tolerance between elites and the public in at least three countries. The second explanation relies on a process of explicitly political socialization, leading to differences in tolerance between elites and their public that transcend individual-level, personal characteristics. Relying on our analysis of political tolerance among legislators in the four countries, we suggest how this process of political socialization may be operating.
The article outlines arguments for the relevance of people’s attitudes towards freedom of expression: It is a fundamental principle of democracy that if a virtue does not receive support from the population, it will not be anchored in law and its foundation is endangered in the medium term. People’s support for free speech is becoming even more influential because authoritative control of internet communication is faced with difficulties. Furthermore, with the development of social media users gain new opportunities to publicly express their opinions attaching even more importance to normative self-regulation. As a matter of fact, these increased opportunities of self-regulation may either enhance or decrease the exercise of expression rights. Thus, citizen’s endorsement of free expression is a valuable indicator of the status of freedom of expression in a country. To approach to the subject empirically, the paper systematizes findings on people’s attitudes towards free speech: Most people believe in freedom of expression in the abstract. Willingness to apply the right to opposing groups, however, is lower. Perceived threats, confidence in democratic principles, mode of communication, and personality variables influence tolerance of expressions. Finally, a research agenda is put forward to examine appreciation of free expression, its antecedence, and implications.
Along with the rapid growth experienced by the gaming industry in the United States has come increasing calls to restrict or ban gambling advertising. To date, little is known about what motivates people to support such restrictions on advertising. However, one recent theory, the third-person effect, offers a possible explanation. The third-person effect states that when confronted with negative messages, people will overestimate the messages' effect on others relative to themselves. Additionally, it suggests that it is this misperception that motivates them to take action against such messages. This study investigates whether a third-person effect occurs for gambling advertising and if this effect is related to pro- censorship attitudes for lotteries and casinos. The results suggest there is a sizable gap between perceptions of the effect of gambling advertising on one's self versus others, and that the perceived effect on others is related to a willingness to restrict such advertising. 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
This study investigates the roles of multiple factors, including audience factors, content factors, and third-person perceptions, in predicting support for content restrictions on mass-mediated information, entertainment, and propaganda. Survey data collected from student and non-student adult groups show that both groups support more extreme forms of content restrictions for propaganda than for information or entertainment content. However, closer examination reveals that students and adults differ on factors predicting their support for content restrictions.
This study examined predictors of support for censorship of television violence, including third-person effects (the belief that others are more affected by televised violence than oneself) and exposure to specific news stories about the issue. A random sample of 253 residents in a small, Midwestern metropolitan area participated via telephone interviews. The third-person effect for aggression predicted greater support for censorship, but the third-person effect for mean-world perceptions did not. However, when perceived effects on self and others were examined separately, greater support for censorship was associated with respondents' beliefs that violent content increased others' aggressive tendencies but their own mean-world perceptions. More frequent exposure to news stories about imitation was associated with more willingness to censor violent content, but four other types of news stories were unrelated to censorship support. Interpretations and implications of these and other findings are discussed.
Using an experimental design, this study investigated third-person effect and media credibility as a result of media attribution. Specifically, we compared third-person effect across four media sources: personal blogs, media blogs, online news, and print newspaper. Overall, participants exhibited third-person effects equally across the mediums. Third-person effect regressed with credibility.
Research about censorship attitudes across disciplines shares the normative goal of predicting and modifying attitudes perceived as either too permissive or too restrictive. Understanding attitude structure is important to achieving this goal. This study explores the intra-attitudinal structure of public censorship attitudes, specifically the general tendency to endorse particular government actions. For twenty-one scenarios, respondents indicated their agreement with each of five possible government reactions: prior restraint; subsequent punishment; time, place, manner restrictions; allow, and protect. Scale scores were computed for each government response. There are strong correlations between the two punitive restriction options and between the two permissive government responses. The time, place, manner response option related moderately to the other scales. Additional structural information is provided by examining scale relationships with other variables: gender, liberal-conservative self-rank, religiosity, need for cognition, authoritarianism, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.
Attitudes about censorship have been studied across a diverse range of disciplines, including mass communication, political science, social psychology, education, and library science. Despite varied origins, this research has two things in common: (a) seeking to understand how and where the public draws lines in limiting free expression, and (b) a normative desire to be able to predict and modify such opinions when needed. To influence public attitudes about hate speech and pornography (in either direction), one must understand the characteristics of people who do and do not wish to censor such expression. This article examines the relationship of attitudes about pornography and hate speech to a variety of demographic, psychological, and sociopolitical variables (including age, gender, education, political affiliation, religiosity, media use, need for cognition, authoritarianism, neuroticism, openness, extroversion, and commitment to democratic principles). The similarities and differences of the relationships with the two expressive contexts are explored.
First Amendment scholars and advocates have often criticized the American public's inconsistent dedication to free expression. Many studies have attempted to identify variables that predict pro-censorship attitudes, but such relationships remain largely enigmatic. The confusion is due, in part, to the myriad ways in which censorship attitudes have been conceptually and operationally defined. Informed by First Amendment theory and case law, a conceptual and operational approach to measuring these attitudes is proposed and tested. The results show it is important to conceptualize censorship attitudes as multifaceted.
During the past decade, the 3rd-person effect has emerged as an important area of research in the field of mass communication. This study provides one of the first empirical measurements of the influence of religiosity on the 3rd-person effect. This study provides evidence that, on moral issues, religiosity is positively associated with perceived media impact on others. It also provides evidence that, on nonmoral issues, religiosity is not associated with perceived media impact on self or others.
Scholars seeking to understand the causes and consequences of political intolerance are now celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of Stouffer's pathbreaking research on intolerance and repression. Yet despite substantial advances in our understanding of intolerance, several major unanswered questions remain. The purpose of this article is to identify and discuss these tolerance enigmas, while proffering some ideas about how future research on intolerance might proceed. The article begins by documenting the significance of understanding intolerance and concludes with speculation about how resolving these enigmas might contribute to a more peace-ful and democratic world.
While students of political tolerance often view tolerance decisions as a trade-off between opposing values (civil liberties versus other values), there have been few explicit attempts to formulate and test such a multiple-values model. With rare exception, researchers typically examine linkages between tolerance judgments and a single value constellation (civil liberties or general norms of democracy) without examining directly the way people rank competing values. In this essay, we use data from a national telephone survey to test a model of how various value trade-off measures (e.g., value conflict) influence citizens' initial tolerance decisions, as well as their willingness to stick to that judgment in the face of counter-arguments (i.e., the pliability of the initial baseline judgment). We find that while value conflict is often associated with greater political forbearance of disliked groups (e.g., the Klan, flag burners), greater conflict also makes individuals more susceptible to counter-arguments. We also find that when people are presented with roughly equal counterarguments, the tolerant are much more willing to abandon their initial judgment than the intolerant. We conclude with a discussion of the broader implications of our findings for the study of political tolerance and political values.
The third-person effect hypothesis has generated a vibrant research area. The expansion of this literature poses need for a systematic synthesis of the empirical evidence and assessment of the viability of various theoretical accounts. For this purpose, a meta-analysis is conducted on all published empirical studies of the perceptual component. This analysis covers 60 papers, 106 studies, and 372 effect sizes. Results from a series of multilevel models show that the third-person perception is robust and not influenced by variations in research procedures. Desirability of presumed message influence, vulnerability of referent others, referent others depicted as being similar to self, and others being likely audience of the media content in question are significant moderators. A vote counting analysis is conducted on 124 self-other comparisons in 29 studies from 13 additional papers that do not have the necessary statistical information. Further analyses are conducted to detect and estimate potential publication bias. Based on the empirical synthesis, the paper evaluates several explanatory factors and offers suggestions for future research.
With Malice toward Some: How People Make Civil Liberties Judgments addresses an issue integral to democratic societies: how people faced with a complex variety of considerations decide whether or not to tolerate extremist groups. Relying on several survey-experiments, Marcus, Sullivan, Theiss-Morse, and Wood identify and compare the impact on decision making of contemporary information, long-standing predispositions, and enduring values and beliefs. Citizens react most strongly to information about a group's violations of behavioral norms and information about the implications for democracy of the group's actions. The authors conclude that democratic citizens should have a strong baseline of tolerance yet be attentive to and thoughtful about current information.
Der Aufsatz setzt sich zum Ziel, das mitunter sehr diffus wirkende Phänomen „Zensur“ analytisch zu durchdringen und einen Rahmen zu entwerfen, in den man konkrete Fälle systematisch einordnen kann. Es geht in dem Beitrag nicht um eine Diskussion über das Pro und Kontra von Zensur. Zunächst werden verschiedene Zensurbegriffe aus der Rechtswissenschaft und der Alltagssprache erörtert. Auf der Grundlage eines alltagssprachlichen Zensurverständnisses stehen sodann drei Fragen im Mittelpunkt: Von welchen Interessen lassen sich Zensurbefürworter leiten? Welche Ausprägungen und Formen von Zensur sind denkbar? Von welchen Umständen kann der Erfolg von Zensurversuchen abhängen? Beleuchtet werden also Interessen, Formen und „Erfolgsfaktoren“ als Elemente einer Theorie der Zensur. Die Überlegungen könnten sich in mehrfacher Hinsicht als nützlich erweisen: als Instrument bei der Analyse von Zensur in unterschiedlichen zeitlichen Phasen, Ländern, Medien und Kultursparten oder als Mittel, um die Aussichten von Zensurbestrebungen einzuschätzen. Die theoretischen Einsichten ließen sich auch in der politischen Praxis nutzen: Man könnte versuchen, die Herausbildung von „Erfolgsfaktoren“ zu beeinflussen.
I compare attitudes to Free Speech among adults in Australia, Austria, Britain, Italy, the United States, and West Germany, using 11 items from the ISSP85 data set to test three alternative hypotheses: (1) that the nations do not differ much, (2) they differ consistently so some are more tolerant than others and (3) they differ inconsistently so that nations relatively tolerant on one issue are relatively intolerant on others. The data strongly support Hypothesis (3). On the way, I show that support for the abstract principle of Free Speech predicts tolerance consistently across items and countries.
This study examines the indirect effects of extensive negative political attack ads in the 2004 presidential election from a third-person effects perspective. Results of a survey using a probability sample of 496 college students indicate that these students believe attack ads harm others more than themselves. Moreover, the respondents tended to perceive attack ads in traditional media to have a greater harmful effect on self and others than attack ads on the Internet. Contingent factors that account for the magnitude of third-person effects include social distance and knowledge. Further, exposure to attack ads was found to be the strongest predictor of perceived harms of such ads on self and others, but only perceived harm on others is a significant predictor of support for restrictions on attack ads. The study contributes to research on the third-person effect by testing perceived harms of attack ads on self and others separately on likelihood to support restrictions.
Recent calls for censorship of rap music have demonstrated the need to test the perceptual and especially the behavioral components of Davison's third-person effect hypothesis. The hypothesis states that people perceive media content to have a greater impact on others than on themselves (perceptual component), and that these perceptions lead people to take actions, such as censorship, to prevent the impact (behavioral component). Results of a survey of college students (N = 202) using rap lyrics as the context revealed strong support for both components of the hypothesis. Limited support was found for the social distance corollary of the perceptual component, while the knowledge corollary of the perceptual component was not supported. A new target corollary to the perceptual component was proposed; it predicts that those groups seen as likely targets of a communication will produce larger third-person perceptions than will generalized others.
How journalists perceive the influence of different types of media and how this perception affects the journalists' attitude toward supporting censorship was explored by conducting a survey among German journalists (N = 1,688). As predicted, the stronger journalists perceive the political influence of the media to be on the public, the more they approve of, for example, demands for restricting this influence. At the same time, behavioral intentions regarding censorship depend less on the perception of the media influences directly, and more on attitude toward these restrictions.
This research scrutinizes 5 background assumptions frequently overlooked by scholars working within the third-person framework. These include: the kind of media influence (general vs. specific) referenced by respondents, the use of general versus specific "other" groups, neglect of likely second-person effects, distinguishing the problem as portrayed from the problem itself, and the potential range of behavioral effects. The study probed the influence of racial cues contained in a news story on estimates of the story's influence on self and others. Participants (n = 152) were presented with a news article conveying information that prostitutes were operating in a local neighborhood and local residents were upset. The study varied 2 experimental factors: the race of the prostitutes (White vs. African American) and the racial composition of the neighborhood residents (minority vs. White). Several important findings emerged from the study. First, manipulated elements of story content had a direct effect on estimates of the portrayal's influence on others. Second, the range of effects attributed to the media included specific factors such as thinking, feeling, problem importance, and harmful impact of the content. In addition to considering media censorship as a possible corrective measure, the study explored the influence of first-, second-, and third-person effects on a broader range of suggested actions, including increased criminal penalties and interpersonal discussion. Third-person "perceptual" effects were found throughout the data; however, they had little discernable effect on intended behaviors. Second-person effects significantly predicted proposed remedial actions and opinion expression. Discussion centers on the prospect of reorienting the third-person framework toward an expanded view of media effects and closer integration with other approaches to mass communication.
A model of public support for First Amendment rights indicates two distinctive paths: One supporting rights involving postmaterial values, reading of newspaper public affairs, knowledge and reasoning; the other rejecting rights through material values of control, watching of television entertainment and expression of negative affect. Perceptions of normative functions of news media as well as media use have important effects on rights decisions but only indirectly through processes of reasoning and expression of affect. Demographics and ideology also have only indirect effects. This well‐fitting structural equation model accounts for 55 percent of the variance in supportive decision‐making about rights.
However robust the conceptual and operational definitions of the perceptual component of the third-person effect are, evidence for claims on the behavioral dimension of the theory (i.e., support for restrictions of undesirable messages) is mixed. Are variations in research findings real or simply methodological artifacts? Through a meta-analysis of 35 empirical studies, we addressed this and other major issues with a rigorous multilevel modeling approach. We found that the third-person effect size was on the whole rather weak. Analyses showed that country of study plays an important role in moderating the effect. Implications for theory development were discussed.
This study examines third-person effect of news of tainted food product recalls on oneself relative to others. The survey (N = 1,213) found that respondents tended to think the influence of the news on others was greater than on themselves (the study used reactions to a milk powder scandal in China). Message credibility and attention to and elaboration of the recall news were found to reduce the third-person perceptual gap. Furthermore, the perceived effect of news on oneself, not on others, was positively associated with the behavioral intention of information-seeking and taking protective action.
This study investigated the third-person effect of pornography on the Internet. The study was conducted in Singapore, a conservative nation that looks askance at sexuality in media. Congruent with the third-person effect, respondents judged pornographic material on the Internet to have a greater impact on others than on themselves. This “perceptual bias” predicted support for censorship. In addition to general tests of the third-person effects of perceptual and behavioral components, the study also examined factors that may enhance or mitigate the third-person effect. Findings revealed evidence for a perceived social distance corollary with children to be more influenced by pornography. The perceived greater effect on children, however, did not increase the likelihood of support for censorship on children. This finding supports McLeod, Eveland, and Nathanson's assertion that perceived likelihood of exposure to content may affect third-person perception.
This article reports an effort to assess the extent and causes of inconsistency in the political tolerance attitudes of elites, based on the conflict in Skokie, Illinois, over the right of American Nazis to hold demonstrations. Relying on data from a survey of the membership and leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union and of Common Cause, the degree of congruence between abstract civil liberties attitudes and specific opinions on the Skokie dispute is assessed. We conclude that among the members of these elite groups, abstract commitments to democratic norms played a very significant role in structuring responses to the conflict. Thus, this analysis suggests that the attitudes of the democratic elite are vitally important to the protection of the civil liberties of minority political groups.
This study examined the role of gender in the third-person effect in the context of Internet pornography. The results indicate that most respondents believe Internet pornography has a greater negative influence on others than on themselves. Female respondents tend to perceive greater negative effects of Internet pornography on other males than on other females, and they are readier to support restrictions of Internet pornography. Finally, the magnitude of perceptual bias appears an unreliable predictor of support for media restriction, which may help explain the mixed results in previous studies. This novel gender-differential approach strengthens the growing literature on the third-person effect.
This article introduces the theoretical approaches of contact, group conflict, and symbolic prejudice to explain levels of
exclusionary feelings toward a relatively new minority in the West European context, the immigrant. The findings indicate
that even after controls for perceived threat are included in the model, intimate contact with members of minority groups
in the form of friendships can reduce levels of willingness to expel legal immigrants from the country. A contextual variable,
level of immigration to the country, is also introduced into the model because it is likely that this variable affects both
threat perception and exclusionary feelings. While context does not seem to directly affect levels of willingness to expel
or include immigrants in the society, it does have a rather powerful impact on perceived threat. Perhaps even more importantly,
the findings suggest that contact mediates the effect of the environment, helping to produce lower levels of threat perception
in contexts of high immigration.
Notes that past research has shown a large disparity between general support for abstract principles of free speech and willingness to apply those principles in specific situations. Surveys undergraduate students. Shows a smaller tolerance disparity for high "need for cognition" respondents; they are more likely to apply free speech principles in forming opinions in specific issue situations. (SR)
Extending prior research on the third-person effect, which has focused on perceived media effects on adults, the present study examined parents' beliefs about the effects of televised violence on their own and other children, and how these perceptions are related to two different behavioral responses: parental mediation of television and support for censorship. Respondents were parents of children aged 3 to 18 (N = 70), who were contacted as part of a random sample for a larger study. Via telephone interviews, parents rated their perceptions of three effects of televised violence: (1) viewing the world as a dangerous place; (2) approving of aggression; and (3) behaving aggressively. As predicted, third-person perceptions were observed for all three types of influence, but were larger for the more socially undesirable aggression - related effects. Both parental mediation and support for censorship were associated with the perceived effects of televised violence. Evidence suggested that parents' behavioral responses were motivated by concern about both their own and other children, but that the pattern of responses varied for the three different effects of viewed violence.
Using content analysis, this study quantitatively analyzes 13 years (1990–2002) of data about survey research methodology in communication journals. Very little research has examined this important method since Yu and Cooper's 1983 study. Of the 54 journals included in our sample, 565 surveys were published in 46 journals. Public relations, marketing, public opinion, advertising and mass communication journals were among those with the greatest number of surveys. Findings and implications focus on how response rates were affected by methodological choices such as the use of incentives and response facilitators. Although monetary incentives were used in a small percentage of the studies, giving merchandise and using a promised incentive were related to the highest mean response rates. While some facilitators, such as utilizing callbacks for telephone surveys, were also associated with high average response rates, further analysis suggests that these factors are not successful in enticing more participants to complete surveys.
This study examined the relationship between self-enhancement and third-person perception. It also investigated the behavioral consequences of third-person perception within a theory of reasoned action framework. A survey on the issue of Internet pornography was administered to 462 undergraduate students. A positive relationship was found between self-enhancement and third-person perception. Behavioral attitude emerged as a key mediator in the relationship between third-person perception and intention to support Internet censorship. Subjective norm overall was not an important factor in the perception–intention relationship. The lack of impact for subjective norm, however, had causes that varied across gender.
Political intolerance has typically been conceptualized as an unwillingness to extend expressive rights to disliked groups or individuals. One problem with this conceptualization is that, when a given percentage of individuals in a polity is found to be intolerant, it is not known if these respondents are intolerant because of the act or because of the actor. We conceptualize intolerance multidimensionally, making a distinction between generic and discriminatory intolerance; while the former stems from an unwillingness to permit the expressive act (such as holding a rally) regardless of the actor, the latter is reserved for an unwillingness to permit the act only when performed by a noxious group. Using data from the Multi-Investigator II Study (a national telephone survey of adults in the United States), we employed a split ballot technique to decompose the total proportion of intolerant respondents into groups whose intolerance stems from an aversion to the actor (discriminatory) versus those whose intolerance stems from an aversion to the act (generic). We further explored the genesis of intolerance, finding that the two types we identified stem from different antecedents.
This study examined consumer attitudes toward two potential direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising regulatory options—prior approval of DTC ads and a total ban—and how those attitudes are influenced by perceived DTC ad effects and receiver-specific characteristics within the context of the third-person effect framework. Results suggest that (1) consumers support the prevetting of DTC ads, but not the banning of DTC ads, (2) their support for prior approval is unaffected by demographic, predispositional, and ad-effect perceptual differences, but (3) their support for a ban is associated with age, attitude toward DTC advertising, and perceptions of negative effects on self and others.
The purpose of this study is to identify segments of the public in terms of their attitudes about the permissibility of government censorship. Secondary analysis is conducted on 3 existing data sets that included J. L. Lambe's Willingness to Censor (WTC) scale (2002). Cluster analysis identifies 3 groups with different conceptions of the proper role of the government with regard to expressive controversies: Protectors who want the government to proactively ensure expression is permitted, censors who want the government to restrict expression when another social goal is at stake, and allowers who want the government simply to stay out of such controversies.
A modified form of the Attitudes Toward Censorship Questionnaire (Hense & Wright, 1992) was developed to assess the degree to which that scale measures attitudes toward censorship in general as opposed to censorship of material representing particular sociopolitical values. The revised form characterized the potentially censorable materials as racist, sexist, or violent. University student respondents who showed high acceptance of censorship in this context scored high on measures of authoritarianism, political conservatism, and conventional family ideology (as had procensorship respondents on the Hense and Wright scale), but low on a scale of economic conservatism. Women were more favorably inclined toward censorship than men. Supporters of Canada's most left-wing (social democratic) major federal party were most favorable to censorship. Factor analysis showed that most of the variance could be explained by a cluster that we have labeled “Politically Correct Puritanism”: support for censoring racist and sexist materials and depictions of sexual violence. The second major factor was related to commercial availability of such materials. Content-specific items on both the original and our modified scales may establish a context that guides the interpretation of nonspecific items, so that both the original Attitudes Toward Censorship Questionnaire and our modified version may be measuring attitudes toward censorship of materials violating a particular view of morality, rather than toward censorship in principle.
Within the context of Internet pornography, a survey of both U.S. and South Korean college students (N= 232) examined the influence of individualism-collectivism and media self-efficacy on the third-person effect. Two findings emerged: First, this study demonstrates the third-person effect of the Internet for the first time within Western culture. Participants perceived that Internet pornography's negative effect was greater on others than themselves, and this third-person perception predicted support for Internet censorship. Second, although prior research failed to support conjecture that culture shapes third-person perception, these data show culture as an important antecedent; collectivism diminished third-person perception and subsequent support for Internet pornography censorship. The impact of Internet self-efficacy was not substantial. The influence of collectivism on the third-person effect generally and public perceptions of Internet pornography in particular signals its import to scholars interested in social policy and social influence.
Research has produced plentiful evidence of the third-person perception—the tendency for people to think others are more influenced by mass media than they are themselves. But until now there has been scant evidence of the effects of that perceptual bias. Consistent with past third-person effect findings, the data in this study indicate that a substantial majority of U.S. adults see others as more adversely influenced by pornography than themselves. In addition, the results show that peoples' support for pornography restrictions parallels the discrepancy they perceive between effect on self and effect on others.
This article examines the role of message context in third-person perceptions. Results challenge the assumption that context desirability is linearly related to the magnitude of self-other disparities. Rather, the interplay between message context and specific “others” who may be in the audience is an important determinant. Judgments about perceived exposure are one way this interplay manifests itself, but stereotypes about the relative susceptibility of particular groups may also play a role.
We examine the potential of third-person effects to influence editorial behavior. Two studies investigated college students' judgments about a controversial advertisement and its suitability for publication in their college newspaper. The advertisement in question, printed in many college newspapers in the early 1990s, claimed that the Nazi campaign against the Jews in the World War II was an exaggeration. Study 1 confirmed a correlation between students' third-person effect perceptions and opposition to publishing the advertisement. Jewish students produced larger third-person effects and were significantly less willing to print the advertisement. These results suggest that those with interests at stake perceived the message as especially likely to influence others, and thus dangerous. However, a closer inspection of the data, followed up experimentally in study 2, suggests that both third-person effects and publication decisions were primarily a function of variance in subjects' perceived impact of the message on themselves, not on others. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research.
This study investigated factors related to two types of judgments that make up the third-person perception: media effects on others and effects on self. Specifically, separate regression path models revealed that estimates of effects on others are based on a relatively naive schema for media effects that is similar to the “magic bullet” model of media effects (i.e., more exposure leads to greater effects). On the other hand, assessing effects on self involves a more complex, conditional effects model. The different pattern of results for the self and other models reflect the “fundamental attribution error” from attribution theory. The path models also extend results from the perceptual component to the behavioral component of the third-person effect by linking the explanatory variables to support for censorship. Both models showed that paternalistic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for censorship.
This study demonstrates that third-person perceptions regarding the influence of media coverage of peripheral towns indirectly affect the desire to consider moving. It is argued that regardless of whether people's perceptions of where they live are really shaped by media coverage, if people believe others are affected by this coverage more than they are, they are more likely to consider relocation. We investigated whether the perceived stigmatization of peripheral development towns in Israel has an impact on the desire of their residents to stay or leave, over and above the disaffection with actual living conditions in these communities. Using structural equation modeling (N= 472), we show that third-person estimations indeed influence both perceptions and behavioral intentions.