Browsing by Subject "Social media"

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How news audiences allocate trust in the digital age: A figuration perspective
(2024) Mangold, Frank; Bachl, Marko; Prochazka, Fabian; Mangold, Frank; GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Köln, Germany; Bachl, Marko; University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Prochazka, Fabian; University of Erfurt, Germany
The article enriches the understanding of trust in news at a time when mass and interpersonal communication have merged in the digital sphere. We propose disentangling individual-level patterns of trust allocation (i.e., trust figurations ) across journalistic media, social media, and peers to reflect the multiplicity among modern news audiences. A latent class analysis of a representative survey among German young adults revealed four figurations: traditionalists, indifferentials, optimists, and cynics. Political characteristics and education corresponded with substantial heterogeneity in individuals’ trust in news sources, their inclination to differentiate between sources, and the ways of integrating trust in journalistic and non-journalistic sources.
The influence of social norms on expressing sympathy in social media
(2024) Graf-Drasch, Valerie; Gimpel, Henner; Bonenberger, Lukas; Blaß, Marlene; Graf-Drasch, Valerie; University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Gimpel, Henner; University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Bonenberger, Lukas; Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT, Augsburg, Germany; Blaß, Marlene; Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT, Augsburg, Germany
Increasingly, people are turning to social media to express grief. By and large, however, the social media community can do little more than improvise reactions, not quite sure how to use the old familiar social scripts as guides to lending effective support. To examine the role of social media in the grieving process, we used a mixed-methods approach: 12 interviews with “social media grievers” reveal the expectations of the bereaved regarding other users’ behavior. By way of two online experiments with 1058 participants, we tested how these expectations are met by the messaging of social media providers in accordance with social norm theory. We found that injunctive social norm messages are particularly effective, whereas descriptive social norm messages vary in their effectiveness, depending on which information is presented and how prominently so. What our study shows, then, is that both are potent socio-technical tools that can guide users towards more empathetic behavior when dealing with the bereaved, so while social media may not be a substitute for therapy, they can offer profound comfort for those of us dealing with bereavement and grief.