Kjerstin Thorson

Moderation, Response Rate, and Message Interactivity: Features of Online Communities and Their Effects on Intent to Participate

We conducted two experiments to explore how moderation, response rate, and message interactivity affected people’s intent to participate in a web-based online community. In our first experiment, 62 participants observed either a moderated or an unmoderated online community and answered questions about their intent to participate in the community. The participants who viewed the moderated community reported significantly higher intent to participate than participants who viewed the unmoderated community. In our second experiment, 59 participants observed a different online community in which we manipulated both the rate (in time) of posted comments and the interactivity of each comment. We derived our manipulation of interactivity from Rafaeli’s (1988) definition of interactivity as message contingency. Participants reported significantly greater intent to participate in an online community featuring interactive messages, but only when response rate was slow. These results indicate that both structural features of interfaces and content features of interactions affect people’s intent to participate in online communities.

Credibility in Context: How uncivil online commentary affects news credibility

In the new media environment, hard news stories are no longer found solely in the “A” section of the paper or on the front page of a news Web site. They are now distributed widely, appearing in contexts as disparate as a partisan blog or your own e-mail inbox, forwarded by a friend. In this study, we investigate how the credibility of a news story is affected by the context in which it appears. Results of an experiment show a news story embedded in an uncivil partisan blog post appears more credible in contrast. Specifically, a bloggers incivility highlights the relative credibility of the newspaper article. We also find that incivility and partisan disagreement in an adjacent blog post produce stronger correlations between ratings of news and blog credibility. These findings suggest that news story credibility is affected by context and that these context effects can have surprising benefits for news organizations. Findings are consistent with predictions of social judgment theory.

YOUTUBE, TWITTER AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT: Connecting content and circulation practices

Videos stored on YouTube served as a valuable set of communicative resources for publics interested in the Occupy movement. This article explores this loosely bound media ecology, focusing on how and what types of video content are shared and circulated across both YouTube and Twitter. Developing a novel data-collection methodology, a population of videos posted to YouTube with Occupy-related metadata or circulated on Twitter alongside Occupy-related keywords during the month of November 2011 was assembled. In addition to harvesting metadata related to view count and video ratings on YouTube and the number of times a video was tweeted, a probability sample of 1100 videos was hand coded, with an emphasis on classifying video genre and type, borrowed sources of content, and production quality. The novelty of the data set and the techniques adapted for analysing it allow one to take an important step beyond cataloging Occupy-related videos to examine whether and how videos are circulated on Twitter. A variety of practices were uncovered that link YouTube and Twitter together, including sharing cell phone footage as eyewitness accounts of protest (and police) activity, digging up news footage or movie clips posted months and sometimes years before the movement began; and the sharing of music videos and other entertainment content in the interest of promoting solidarity or sociability among publics created through shared hashtags. This study demonstrates both the need for, and challenge of, conducting social media research that accommodates data from multiple platforms.

Facing an uncertain reception: young citizens and political interaction on Facebook

This article explores how the social ambiguities concerning audience and reception of posts on Facebook shape the forms of political interaction among young citizens on the site. Two sets of in-depth interviews are used to illustrate the ways that uncertainties about audience reception on Facebook inspire strategies for ‘inventing’ modes of political interaction on the one hand, and, for others, suppress opinion expression by creating the sense that talking politics on the site is a high risk endeavor.

YOUTUBE AND PROPOSITION 8: A case study in video activism

The present study uses Californias Proposition 8 campaign as a case study for an exploratory investigation of video activism online. We conducted a content analysis of a sample of Proposition 8 videos drawn at random from the results of a keyword search of YouTube. Main findings from the analysis (N = 801) show that a majority of the videos were made up of original content and took a position against Proposition 8. The results also show that video posters on different sides of the debate drew on different mixes of video forms as the election debate progressed. A greater proportion of ‘Yes on 8’ videos were scripted and professionally produced while ‘No on 8’ videos were more often amateur creations and served to witness the widespread protests in the aftermath of the election.

What Does It Mean to Be a Good Citizen? Citizenship Vocabularies as Resources for Action

This article introduces the concept of citizenship vocabularies and argues that these vocabularies serve as resources for civic and political action. Drawing on interviews with young adults, the author presents a conceptual mapping of citizenship vocabularies. Examples show how citizenship vocabularies play a role in constraining or enabling emerging repertoires of participation such as political consumption. The article concludes by briefly outlining an agenda for exploring the connections among political socialization, citizenship vocabularies, and political participation.

Combining Big Data and Survey Techniques to Model Effects of Political Content Flows in Facebook

This article introduces a novel method that combines a “big data” measurement of the content of individuals’ Facebook (FB) news feeds with traditional survey measures to explore the antecedents and effects of exposure to news and politics content on the site. Drawing on recent theoretical and methodological advances, we demonstrate how such a hybrid approach can be used to (a) untangle distinct channels of public affairs content within respondents’ FB news feeds, (b) explore why respondents vary in the extent to which they encounter public affairs content on the site, and (c) examine whether the amount and type of public affairs content flows in one’s FB is associated with political knowledge and participation above and beyond self-report measures of news media use.

The role and status of communication practice in the USA and Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in practitioners’ perceptions of their role within organizations as well as their influence among senior management both in the USA and Europe. It analyses practitioners’ beliefs about the status of their work as well as their understandings of the ways the new media environment is shifting their everyday practice. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on data from two surveys of public relations (PR) practitioners, one in the USA and the other in Europe. These data enable comparisons between communication practice in the two geographic areas. The paper focusses the analysis on senior-level practitioners who reported working within the communication department of an organization. Findings – The findings of this study suggest that practitioners in both regions are optimistic about the influence of communications within their broader organizations. However, European practitioners are more likely to adopt a “central but flexible” organizationa...

Good citizenship as a frame contest: Kony2012, memes, and critiques of the networked citizen

The rise of networked media has brought new opportunities and challenges for individuals’ engagement with politics. Some scholars propose that norms around “good citizenship” are evolving as well. Yet, little attention has been paid to how those debates play out in everyday cultural understandings. Drawing on the case of Kony2012, a highly visible social change campaign, we illustrate how perceptions of good citizenship can be understood as a contest between frames, one conducted not only by elites but also by individuals as they create and spread user-generated content. Using the theoretical lens of the frame contest, we contrast the hopeful image of the “networked citizen,” presented in the Kony2012 campaign, with counter-frames of “slacktivism,” presented in memes circulated in response to the campaign and its supporters. We posit the frame contest as a mechanism through which to understand how conceptions of good citizenship may change over time.

Do parents still model news consumption? Socializing news use among adolescents in a multi-device world:

This study seeks to understand how American youth (aged 12–17 years) learn to consume the news, with specific concern for which devices (television, computer, tablet, and mobile phone) they employ in consuming news. Using a national survey of parent–child dyads, we explore (1) the role of demographics in creating a home environment supportive of news use, (2) the importance of parental modeling of news use via different media devices and whether the effect of modeling is complicated by the shift from shared to individualized media consumption, and (3) the impact of other socialization agents, such as peers and schools, in promoting youth news consumption above and beyond characteristics of the home. Results indicate that parental modeling remains an important factor in socializing news consumption, even when modeling takes place via mobile devices. Additionally, we find consistent evidence for “matched modeling” between the devices parents use for news and those used by youth.