Volume 49, Issue 2

Studies of mediation practices typically focus on parental mediation, but during adolescence parents’ impact decreases relative to that of peers. This study compares perceived parental and peer mediation in the context of media portrayals of risk behavior and adolescents’ perceptions thereof. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 278 adolescents aged 12 to 17 (M = 14.18, SD = 1.62, 51.4 % girls) using Hayes’s process macro (model 4) to investigate direct and indirect associations between mediation, media-related cognitions, and social norms. Findings indicate that perceived parental and peer mediation are related to adolescents’ media-related cognitions and perceived social norms in equally important but different ways.

Since 2009, the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK has produced a number of slow TV shows. Some of the programmes have had a surprisingly big success in terms of public engagement and audience share even though the majority of the audience was from the oldest age groups. These programmes are not only slow, lasting a long time and lacking dramatic development and progress, they also engage in a particular, traditional version of national identity. The current article argues that, through slow TV, the Norwegian public service broadcaster has found a new way to reflect a particular version of Norwegian identity and to tap into the central values of Norwegian culture. Taken together, the shows cover all regions of the country—the coastal areas as well the inlands and mountains. In terms of representation, the programmes highlight nature and traditional Norwegian values such as closeness to nature, rural life, and “friluftsliv” (living the outdoor life). Urban areas and the non-white population are conspicuously absent.

This paper focuses on a methodological question regarding a content analysis tool in populism studies, namely the explicit and implicit populism approach. The study argues that scholars adopting this approach need to conduct content analysis simultaneously on different coding unit lengths, because the ratio of explicit and implicit messages varies significantly between units such as single sentences and paragraphs. While an explicit populist message consists of at least one articulated dichotomy between the “good” people and the “harmful” others, implicit populism implies that only one of the core features of the populist style is present: either people-centrism or antagonism. Due to the often fractured and occasionally dichotomous nature of populist styles, this research revolves around the idea that the explicit and implicit populist content analysis method should be performed on coding units of different lengths, as these units can yield significantly different results in the detection of populist styles. Hybrid content and statistical analyses were operationalized to scrutinize to what extent explicit, implicit, or non-populist styles change in three coding unit types with diverging lengths. The outcome supports the following suggestion: Explicit and implicit populism demand scrutiny simultaneously on one narrow and one extended textual unit.

How the media influence the trust that citizens have in institutions such as politics and science seems more important than ever, given the decline of institutional trust in Western societies, and the increasingly diversified media landscape. This paper focuses on the relationship between media repertoires, institutional trust, and two socializing contexts (parents, social networks). Applying Latent Class Analysis, this paper examines (a) how parental socialization and social networks predict membership of media repertoires, and (b) how repertoires are associated with levels of institutional trust. Outcomes reveal five distinct media repertoires, among which the emerging type of cross-media news consumers. Membership of repertoires is associated with both parental socialization and social networks. There are clear differences in the levels of institutional trust among media repertoires: Popular media omnivores and quality news consumers have the most trust; the non-print-oriented the least.

This study investigates young consumers’ reliance on social media influencers (SMIs) in the context of social commerce. With regard to the four streams of influencer endorsement – influencer credibility, influencer attractiveness, match-up, and meaning transfer – we propose that they can either lead to a direct consumer reliance on SMIs’ suggestions for their purchasing decisions, or that attitudes toward SMIs mediate the relationship. By integrating both directions of partial- and no-attitude mediation, the proposed model explores all associations in order to better understand connections and driving forces between endorsement streams, attitudes, and reliance. We introduce the concept of reliance on SMIs, understood here as the degree to which young individuals base their preferences, lifestyles, and purchasing decisions upon SMIs. A research model was validated by examining 809 young individuals. The results reveal that attitude formation is affected by all four endorsement streams, and fully mediates the relationship between these endorsement streams and young people’s reliance on SMIs. The differentiated reliance levels by gender and age confirm that females and teenagers tend to rely more on SMIs. The current study offers the first evidence for a relationship between the four endorsement streams and reliance on SMIs via attitude formation in the context of social media networking, as well as the association of reliance with sociodemographic characteristics.

The last few years have seen the development of a new line of research around the relationship between digital platforms and activism. The influence of the internet and social media on the civic and political engagement of young people in particular has become clear. Digital platforms perform in this regard a set of functions crucial to activism in terms of communication, mobilization, and logistics. These are indispensable tools, especially to young people belonging to informal structures. Digital platforms have also been shown to facilitate emotional and solidarity networks thus fostering a sense of community and a strengthening of collective identities. In this article we aim at examining this aspect based on in-depth interviews with young activists conducted in Portugal during a three-year project (2020–2022). We have concluded that, especially in certain activism contexts involving social groups of neglected or non-normative identities, digital platforms function as a crucial empowerment tool. These are linked to the emotional support for and recognition of the identities of these young people, incentivizing the creation of fields of political and social intervention.

High levels of threat and uncertainty characterize the onset of societal crises. Here, people are exposed to conflicting information in the media, including disinformation. Because individuals often base their news selection on pre-existing attitudes, the present study aims to examine selective exposure effects in the face of a crisis, and identify right-wing ideological, trust-, and science-related beliefs that might influence the selection and sharing of disinformation. A representative survey of German internet users (N = 1101) at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak showed a confirmation bias in crisis-related news selection and sharing. It revealed right-wing authoritarianism and political mistrust as significant predictors of disinformation selection. The influence of social dominance orientation, mistrust in politics, and perceived certainty of knowledge were significant for sharing disinformation. The present results extend previous knowledge about people’s (dis)information behavior in times of crisis, and shed light on groups particularly vulnerable to disinformation.

Recent research explores the high proliferation of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccination, and their potential effects within digital media environments. By means of a 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 945) conducted in Romania, we explore whether exposure to media messages promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination versus media messages debunking such conspiracy narratives could influence people’s intention to either support or argue against vaccination in front of their friends and family (interpersonal influence). We also analyze the moderation effects of education and critical thinking. Main results show that both conspiracy and counter-conspiracy media content about vaccination negatively affect people’s willingness to discuss the topic with others, which offers support for a silencing effect. Education and critical thinking moderate the main effects, but only to some extent and in certain experimental conditions.