Rinaldo Kühne

The Emotional Effects of News Frames on Information Processing and Opinion Formation

Current approaches explain the effects of news frames on judgments in terms of cognitive mechanisms, such as accessibility and applicability effects. We investigated the emotional effects of two news frames—an “anger” frame and a “sadness” frame—on information processing and opinion formation. We found that the two frames produced different levels of anger and sadness. Furthermore, the anger frame increased the accessibility of information about punishment and the preference for punitive measures in comparison with the sadness frame and the control group. In contrast, the sadness frame increased the accessibility of information about help for victims and the preference for remedial measures. More importantly, these effects were mediated by the anger and sadness that were elicited by the news frames.

Testing Measurement Invariance in Media Psychological Research

Media psychology increasingly focuses on comparative research questions by comparing media use and media effects across different populations and across time. Such comparisons require that the constructs of interest be measured in the same way across populations – that is, invariant measures are required. However, this methodological issue has rarely been addressed in media psychology. In this article, we explain the concept of measurement invariance and illustrate how measurement invariance can be established to compare media use and media effects across populations and over time.

How Emotional Media Reports Influence Attitude Formation and Change: The Interplay of Attitude Base, Attitude Certainty, and Persuasion

This study examined the influence of an emotionally arousing writing style on attitude formation and change. It has been proposed that different writing styles induce attitudes based on either affect or cognition and with either high or low certainty. Previous work indicates that the interplay of these attitude characteristics determines the persuasiveness of emotional and rational media appeals. To test the hypotheses, participants in an experimental study read articles from a magazine about a fictitious attitude object. In the first step, 4 different types of attitudes varying in base and level of certainty were induced through a respectively manipulated article. In the second step, these attitudes were challenged by an additional article, which presented either an emotional or rational persuasive appeal. The results supported hypotheses on attitude induction through media stimuli and 3 of 4 hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of emotionally and rationally written articles.

Generation Me in the Spotlight: Linking Reality TV to Materialism, Entitlement, and Narcissism

Today’s youth, the Generation Me, is deemed materialistic, entitled, and narcissistic. Individuality has become an important value in child-rearing and is cultivated in the media—especially within the reality TV genre. The aim of this study was to investigate whether adolescents’ and emerging adults’ preference for MTV reality shows fosters materialism, entitlement, and narcissism. To this end, an online questionnaire on television use, possessions, and happiness was administered to a sample of 527 15- to 21-year-olds. Our findings indicate that the more reality TV adolescents view, the more materialistic, entitled, and narcissistic they are. No such patterns were found for emerging adults. We presume adolescents’ idolization of reality TV celebrities may cause them to mimic their behaviors. Future research should indicate whether teaching adolescents about the scripts in reality TV decreases worship of reality TV celebrities and, subsequently, reality TV’s effect on adolescents’ beliefs and values.

Konzeptspezifikation und Messung

Die quantitative Untersuchung sozialer Phanomene setzt voraus, dass die relevanten theoretischen Konzepte quantifiziert bzw. gemessen werden konnen. Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich diesem Prozess der Verknupfung von Theorie und Empirie. Als Erstes wird der idealtypische Ablauf quantitativer Studien skizziert. Daraufhin wird erortert, wie durch die Konzeptspezifikation und Operationalisierung Indikatoren fur theoretische Konzepte generiert werden. Um zu erklaren, wie Auspragungen von Indikatoren Zahlenwerte zugewiesen werden, werden die Grundzuge der Messtheorie dargelegt und verschiedene Verfahren zur Konstruktion von Messinstrumenten dargestellt. Geschlossen wird mit einer Darstellung der zentralen Gutekriterien von Messungen und einem Ausblick auf aktuelle methodische Entwicklungen.

Mobilizing youth in the 21st century: How digital media use fosters civic duty, information efficacy, and political participation

Youth turnout at European Parliamentary elections has been dwindling. This study investigates the impact of news media exposure on electoral participation of first time voters. Relying on a data set that combines content analysis of news stories about the EU (N = 769) and a multiple wave panel survey (N = 994), we analyze the impact of exposure to online and offline coverage of relevant topics on turn out across a period of 6 months. We find that exposure to news in offline media had no significant effect on participation, whereas exposure to relevant news in online media positively affected turnout.

The Role of Measurement Invariance in Comparative Communication Research

Many theories in political communication embrace the idea that relation- ships and phenomena need to be studied across contexts, in different coun- tries, or over time. For instance, researchers have investigated phenomena across cultures, such as differences in media effects (Peter, 2004), in media content or in journalistic cultures (Esser, 2008). Other prominent research has focused on the change of phenomena, such as media effects over time (Boomgarden and de Vreese, 2006). Another important line of commu- nication scholarship explores the role of different thematic contexts, for example in election studies (Kriesi, 2011). Inherent in all these avenues of research is the belief that we need to compare across contexts in order to come to valid and meaningful conclusions about our theories on the one hand and about real-world phenomena on the other. However, despite the relevance of comparison for communication research, scholars have largely neglected to consider the methodological issues it raises. This is surprising because there are established methodological tools that allow us to test whether a comparison is valid (Davidov et al., 2011; Harkness et al., 2003; Millsap, 2011; Vandenberg and Lance, 2000). More specifically, comparisons across contexts, cultures, or over time require measurement invariance: that is, the equivalence of measures of constructs in these different contexts.

The Impact of Positive and Negative Affects in Direct-Democratic Campaigns

The previous chapter has convincingly demonstrated that individuals make up their minds in accordance with their issue preferences. These effects were even more pronounced when arguments matched with their ideology. We can consider these preferences to be cognition-based because the judgment is made up of arguments in favour or against a proposal. In the traditional view of political decision making and judgment, emotions are considered erratic and sometimes even dangerous responses to political life (see for an overview Marcus 2002). However, in more than three decades, political scientists (Marcus 2002; Marcus and MacKuen 1993; Marcus et al. 2000), communication scholars (Dillard and Wilson 1993; Nabi, 2002), and psychologists (Abelson et al. 1982; Isbell and Ottati 2002) have revived and rehabilitated the role of emotions for the study of political life. All these approaches state that emotions and affective reactions can have important informational functions for voters.

Exploring User Responses to Entertainment and Political Videos: An Automated Content Analysis of YouTube

On YouTube, videos are always presented together with additional user-generated information about those videos. This social information is presented in the form of number of views, (dis)likes, or comments. However, we know little about the characteristics of social information about entertainment videos. To fill this gap, the present study examined the amount and valence of online entertainment videos’ social information and compared this to the social information of online political videos. An automated content analysis of (dis)likes, views, and 39,602 comments presented alongside 463 videos showed that entertainment videos received more views and comments than political videos. Moreover, entertainment videos’ comments were more neutral than political videos’ comments. We also found that comments with a stronger positive or negative valence received more replies and likes, with the exceptions that the positive valence of political videos had no effect and that, for political videos, a stronger negative valence led to fewer likes. Finally, we found that as political videos received more comments, the positive valence of their comments became more consistent. Overall, these results show that the type of video influences the amount and valence of social information the video receives.

Emotionale Wirkungen von Kommunikatoren- und Journalisten-Frames

Die wirkungsorientierte Framing-Forschung operiert oft mit idealtypischen Medienstimuli. Auch Ansatze zu emotionalen Wirkungen von Medien-Frames fokussieren idealtypische Medien-Frames, die intensive emotionale Reaktionen nach sich ziehen sollten. Die aus dem Austauschprozess von Kommunikatoren und Journalisten hervorgehenden Medien-Frames durften indessen oft keinen idealtypischen Aufbau aufweisen. Im Beitrag wird diskutiert, wie von Kommunikatoren und Journalisten erzeugte Frames aufgebaut sind und welche emotionalen Wirkungen derartige Frames nach sich ziehen.