In recent years, the development of information communication technologies (ICT) such as social media changed the way people communicate and engage in social movements. While conventional movements were fought in the streets, social media enabled movements to take place online. In this paper, we aim to investigate the role of social media during social movements which evolve online. Specifically, we examined Twitter communication during the #metoo debate. To this end, we applied methods from social network analysis to identify influential users participating during the debate. Conducting a manual content analysis, we classified 200 power users into roles. Likewise, a manual classification of 1,271 tweets found distinct communication categories. The results overall point to different motives: First, the communication was deeply concerned with the issue of sexual harassment, calling for attention and action. Second, we found reason to believe that self-serving and branding intentions drove participation.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, in an unprecedented amount, scientists around the globe engaged in science communication to provide first-hand epidemiological knowledge and information on preventive measures. Based on the extended parallel process model, the present work aimed to empirically investigate (N = 698) the impact of direct exposure to scientists in comparison to a general COVID-19 related media consumption. The results revealed that direct exposure to scientists positively affected recipients´ knowledge and self-efficacy. General media consumption on the other hand, positively affected perceived threat as well as fear and uncertainty. Both sources positively affected the adherence to protective measures.
the German government issued a coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) contact-tracing app whose privacy settings were fiercely debated in advance. Contrary, potential benefits regarding the acceleration of contact tracing were advertised. This study investigated the relative importance of privacy concerns and perceived benefits in relation to the decision to use the app adopting a privacy calculus perspective extended by trust in app privacy and technological knowledge about the app. Results of a representative German sample (N = 952) revealed that privacy concerns were negatively related to app usage, and perceived benefits and knowledge were positively related to actual app adoption. Additionally, perceiving app benefits was the most important factor for (continued) usage intention, while privacy concerns did not play a role anymore. Trust was strongly negatively associated with privacy concerns and strongly positively with perceived benefits. Results are discussed concerning consequences for communication strategies when launching technology whose adoption should help in mitigating dangers of pandemics.
Real-time communication, unlimited distribution of information, and the lack of editorial supervision in social media communication aggravate recipients’ credibility evaluations and information selection by what aspects of the source such as expertise have emerged as important anchors for evaluations. It has long been assumed that credibility judgments in social media are specifically guided by heuristics. However, the existing studies merely give indications, for example, based on individuals’ self-report but do not test whether important attributes and prerequisites of heuristic decision-making, such as effort reduction, are present. Against this background, the current study (N = 185) analyses by applying a reduced two-alternative choice paradigm whether the relation between the expertise cue and credibility judgments and the choice of information sources is guided by a heuristic, namely the expertise heuristic. Findings indicate that the presence of the expertise cue reduced respondents’ task latencies significantly, although participants’ decision behavior was not independent from additional information. This is discussed in detail with recourse to theoretical conceptualizations of cognitive heuristics.
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