In recent years, online video blogs (vlogs) have become a highly popular form of media content, especially among younger audiences. While public interest has invoked a strong commercialization of vlog culture, research suggests that the concurrent loss of performer authenticity might pose a problem for the genre's appeal. Preparing the same vlog content in unedited ("amateur") and heavily produced ("professional") versions for an online experiment, we compare the viewing experience of 154 participants in terms of identification, parasocial responses, immersion, and enjoyment. Regarding most of these variables, we observe that the evaluations for the professionally produced vlog turn out much more favorable. Interestingly, the uncovered effects remain independent of the vlog's thematic focus, which is explored as an additional factor in our experiment. Concluding our statistical analyses, we report the results of an exploratory mediation analysis connecting the measured media psychological constructs.
Based on the general assumption that even problematic behaviours are associated with an inherently health-promoting motivation to cope with unpleasant or unsatisfying life situations, the compensatory model of media use focuses on how psychosocial vulnerabilities moderate links between media behaviours and adverse outcomes. The present paper means to further develop this approach by exploring the moderating role of state-and trait-level factors (state: perceived stress; trait: social interaction anxiety and loneliness) on the relation between video game consumption (i.e. playing duration and habitual gaming), motivations (i.e. achievement, social, immersion), and engagement (harmonious and obsessive engagement) within a largescale sample of mostly heavy gamers. Overall, results provided further evidence for the compensatory approach, with perceived stress emerging as a critical psychosocial factor that intensified positive and negative relations between several gaming behaviours and harmful outcomes. Moreover, our results reiterated the heuristic importance of intra-and interpersonally pressured (i.e. obsessive) engagement to explain adverse gaming outcomes as well as selfdetermined (i.e. harmonious) engagement as a potentially fruitful gateway toward more healthy gaming. These findings constitute solid empirical groundwork that may contribute to effective prevention and intervention methods against problematic gaming.
Considering that insufficient sleep has long been regarded as a significant public health challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic and its co-evolving infodemic have further aggravated many people's sleep health. People's engagement with pandemic-related news, particularly given that many people are now permanently online via smartphones, has been identified as a critical factor for sleep health, such that public health authorities have recommended limited news exposure. This two-wave panel survey, conducted with a representative sample in Austria during its first COVID-19 lockdown, examines (a) how fear of missing out on pandemic-related news (i.e., COVID-19 information FOMO) is reciprocally related to smartphone-based bedtime news engagement, as well as (b) how both bedtime news engagement and COVID-19 information FOMO predict daytime tiredness. Partial metric measurement invariant structural equation modeling revealed that COVID-19 information FOMO and bedtime news engagement are reciprocally associated over time, indicating a potentially harmful reinforcing loop. However, results further suggested that COVID-19 information FOMO may be the primary driver of daytime tiredness, not smartphone-based bedtime news engagement. These findings suggest that a perceived loss of (informational) control over the pandemic outbreak more strongly than poor sleep habits accounts for depleted energy resources during lockdown. However, given the initial evidence for a reinforcing loop, this effect pattern may change in the long term.
Due to ‘stay-at-home’ measures, individuals increasingly relied on smartphones for social connection and for obtaining information about the COVID-19 pandemic. In a two-wave panel survey ( NTime2 = 416), we investigated associations between different types of smartphone use (i.e., communicative and non-communicative), friendship satisfaction, and anxiety during the first lockdown in Austria. Our findings revealed that communicative smartphone use increased friendship satisfaction over time, validating how smartphones can be a positive influence in difficult times. Friendship satisfaction decreased anxiety after one month, signaling the importance of strong friendship networks during the crisis. Contrary to our expectations, non-communicative smartphone use had no effects on friendship satisfaction or anxiety over time. Reciprocal effects showed that anxiety increased both types of smartphone use over time. These findings are discussed in the context of mobile media effects related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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