Shirley S. Ho

Political Consumerism: How Communication and Consumption Orientations Drive “Lifestyle Politics”

Historians and cultural theorists have long asserted that a desire to express political concerns often guides consumer behavior, yet such political consumerism has received limited attention from social scientists. Here, the authors explore the relationship of political consumerism with dispositional factors, communication variables, and consumption orientations using data collected from a panel survey conducted in the United States between February 2002 and July 2005. The authors test a theorized model using both cross-sectional and auto-regressive panel analyses. The static and change models reveal that conventional and online news use encourage political consumerism indirectly through their influence on political talk and environmental concerns. However, media use may also have some suppressive effects by reducing the desire to protect others from harmful messages. Results demonstrate how communication practices and consumption orientations work together to influence political consumerism beyond previously delineated factors. Implications for declines in political and civic participation and youth socialization are discussed.

Value Predispositions, Mass Media, and Attitudes Toward Nanotechnology: The Interplay of Public and Experts:

This study examines the factors influencing public and experts’ attitudes toward nanotechnology. Compared with the experts, the public judged nanotechnology as having greater risks and lesser benefits, and indicated less support for federal funding of nanotechnology. Experts used trust in scientists while public used religious beliefs as heuristic cues to make risk judgments. Although deference to scientific authority, science media use, and trust in scientists shaped perceived benefits in both groups, these heuristic cues influenced public perceptions to a larger extent than experts’ perceptions. Experts used relatively less cues to form decision about funding support for nanotechnology as compared with the public.

Making sense of policy choices: understanding the roles of value predispositions, mass media, and cognitive processing in public attitudes toward nanotechnology

Using a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,015 adults in the United States, this study examines how value predispositions, communication variables, and perceptions of risks and benefits are associated with public support for federal funding of nanotechnology. Our findings show that highly religious individuals were less supportive of funding of nanotech than less religious individuals, whereas individuals who held a high deference for scientific authority were more supportive of funding of the emerging technology than those low in deference. Mass media use and elaborative processing of scientific news were positively associated with public support for funding, whereas factual scientific knowledge had no significant association with policy choices. The findings suggest that thinking about and reflecting upon scientific news promote better understanding of the scientific world and may provide a more sophisticated cognitive structure for the public to form opinions about nanotech than factual scientific knowledge. Finally, heuristic cues including trust in scientists and perceived risks and benefits of nanotech were found to be associated with public support for nanotech funding. We conclude with policy implications that will be useful for policymakers and science communication practitioners.

Muslim surfers on the internet: using the theory of planned behaviour to examine the factors influencing engagement in online religious activities

This study seeks to describe the types of religious activities Muslim surfers in Singapore engage in on the internet, and uses the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework to examine how internet perception, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, internet self-efficacy, religiosity and other key demographic variables affect the use of the internet for religious purposes among Muslim surfers in Singapore. A total of 578 Muslim internet users aged 18 and above participated in a computer-assisted telephone interviewing survey in May 2004. We found that Muslim surfers tend to engage in online activities that were more related to personal religious concerns than those activities that were related to traditional institutional religion. Findings also indicate that perceived social pressure from the Muslim community, internet self-efficacy, and religiosity were positively related to engagement in online religious activities, while age was negatively related to engagement.

Factors influencing public risk–benefit considerations of nanotechnology: Assessing the effects of mass media, interpersonal communication, and elaborative processing:

This study examines the influence of mass media, interpersonal communication, and elaborative processing on public perception of benefits and risks of nanotechnology, based on a large-scale nationally representative telephone survey of U.S. adult citizens. Results indicate that cognitive processes in the form of news elaboration had a significant positive main effect on benefits outweigh risks perception. The influences of attention to science in newspapers, attention to science news on television, and interpersonal communication about science on public perception of benefits outweigh risks were moderated by elaborative processing, after controlling for socio-demographic variables, religious beliefs, trust in scientists, and scientific knowledge. The findings highlight the importance of elaborative processing when it comes to understanding how the mass media differentially influence public benefits outweigh risks perception of emerging technologies. Specifically, high elaborative processing emphasizes higher levels of perceived benefits outweigh risks than low elaborative processing. This study explores explanations for this phenomenon and offers implications for future research and policy.

The influence of parental practices on child promotive and preventive food consumption behaviors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundThe family is an important social context where children learn and adopt eating behaviors. Specifically, parents play the role of health promoters, role models, and educators in the lives of children, influencing their food cognitions and choices. This study attempts to systematically review empirical studies examining the influence of parents on child food consumption behavior in two contexts: one promotive in nature (e.g., healthy food), and the other preventive in nature (e.g., unhealthy food).MethodsFrom a total of 6,448 titles extracted from Web of Science, ERIC, PsycINFO and PubMED, seventy eight studies met the inclusion criteria for a systematic review, while thirty seven articles contained requisite statistical information for meta-analysis. The parental variables extracted include active guidance/education, restrictive guidance/rule-making, availability, accessibility, modeling, pressure to eat, rewarding food consumption, rewarding with verbal praise, and using food as reward. The food consumption behaviors examined include fruits and vegetables consumption, sugar-sweetened beverages, and snack consumption.ResultsResults indicate that availability (Healthy: r = .24, p < .001; Unhealthy: r = .34, p < .001) and parental modeling effects (Healthy: r = .32, p < .001; Unhealthy: r = .35, p < .001) show the strongest associations with both healthy and unhealthy food consumption. In addition, the efficacy of some parenting practices might be dependent on the food consumption context and the age of the child. For healthy foods, active guidance/education might be more effective (r = .15, p < .001). For unhealthy foods, restrictive guidance/rule-making might be more effective (r = −.11, p < .01). For children 7 and older, restrictive guidance/rule-making could be more effective in preventing unhealthy eating (r = − .20, p < .05). For children 6 and younger, rewarding with verbal praise can be more effective in promoting healthy eating (r = .26, p < .001) and in preventing unhealthy eating (r = − .08, p < .01).ConclusionsThis study illustrates that a number of parental behaviors are strong correlates of child food consumption behavior. More importantly, this study highlights 3 main areas in parental influence of child food consumption that are understudied: (1) active guidance/education, (2) psychosocial mediators, and (3) moderating influence of general parenting styles.

Ethical Considerations of Using Narrative to Communicate Science

This article discusses three ethical considerations science communicators face when considering narrative as a communication technique for science policy contexts: (a) What is the underlying purpose of using narrative: comprehension or persuasion? (b) What are the appropriate levels of accuracy to maintain? (c) Should narrative be used at all? These considerations intersect with perceptions of the appropriate roles of communication and of scientists within democracy. By providing a clearer articulation of these ethical considerations, the authors hope that narrative can become a more useful communication technique toward informed science policy decisions.

A meta-analysis of factors predicting cyberbullying perpetration and victimization: From the social cognitive and media effects approach

Cyberbullying has become a critical social issue, which severely threatens children and adolescents’ physical and psychological health. The current research systematically examined the predictors of cyberbullying from the social cognitive and media effects approach. Specifically, this study identified 16 predictors of cyberbullying perpetration and victimization and examined the magnitude of the effects of these predictors by meta-analyzing 81 empirical studies, which represented a total sample of 99,741 participants and yielded 259 independent correlations. The results revealed that risky information and communications technology (ICT) use, moral disengagement, depression, social norms, and traditional bullying perpetration were the main predictors of cyberbullying perpetration, while risky ICT use and traditional bullying victimization were the major contributors of cyberbullying victimization. According to the moderator analyses, country of the sample, sampling method, age, and media platform were significant moderators of the relationships between some specific predictors and cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. Implications for future cyberbullying research were discussed.

The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis in Singapore: The Roles of Socioeconomic Status, Mass Media, and Interpersonal Discussion on Public Knowledge of the H1N1 Flu Pandemic

This study applies the knowledge gap hypothesis to examine the direct and interactive influence of socioeconomic status, mass media, and interpersonal discussion on public knowledge of the H1N1 flu pandemic in Singapore. Using a nationally representative random digit-dialing telephone survey of 1,055 adult Singaporeans, results show that attention to newspapers was not associated with a widened knowledge gap about the H1N1 pandemic between the high and low socioeconomic status individuals. Conversely, attention to television news and interpersonal discussion were associated with a narrowed knowledge disparity between the high and low socioeconomic status individuals. Findings suggest that the knowledge gap hypothesis was not supported in this study. Instead, results suggest that attention to television news and interpersonal discussions were associated with a reduced knowledge gap. Household income and risk perceptions were also found to be positively associated with public knowledge about the H1N1 flu pandemic. Both theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Value predispositions as perceptual filters: Comparing of public attitudes toward nanotechnology in the United States and Singapore.

This study compares public attitudes toward nanotechnology in the United States and Singapore, using large-scale survey data in both countries. Results indicate that Singaporeans tend to be more knowledgeable about and familiar with nanotechnology than the U.S. public. Singaporeans tend to perceive greater benefits and fewer potential risks of nanotechnology, and to indicate greater support for government funding for nanotechnology than the U.S. public. Between the two countries, perceived familiarity with nanotechnology and the benefits and risks of the emerging technology tend to be interpreted differently through the lens of value predispositions (religiosity and deference to scientific authority) and therefore they indirectly affect public support. Specifically, the U.S. public tends to use religiosity to interpret benefits and Singaporeans are inclined to use religiosity to think about risks. Deference to scientific authority also moderates the impact of perceived familiarity with nanotechnology on funding support for the technology among the U.S. public.