Showing papers on "Digital media published in 2020"
TL;DR: The “Infodemic Response Checklist” is proposed as a comprehensive tool to overcome the challenges posed by the current and any future infodemics and explore practical ways to leverage health communication strategies to overcome it.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a complementary infodemic, whereby various outlets and digital media portals shared false information and unsourced recommendations on health. In addition, journals and authors published a mass of academic articles at a speed that suggests a non-existent or a non-rigorous peer review process. Such lapses can promote false information and adoption of health policies based on misleading data. Reliable information is vital for designing and implementing preventive measures and promoting health awareness in the fight against COVID-19. In the age of social media, information travels wide and fast, emphasizing a need for accurate data to be corroborated swiftly and for preventing misleading information from wide dissemination. Here, we discuss the implications of the COVID-19 infodemic and explore practical ways to leverage health communication strategies to overcome it. We propose the "Infodemic Response Checklist" as a comprehensive tool to overcome the challenges posed by the current and any future infodemics.
241 citations
TL;DR: Using data from preregistered survey experiments conducted around recent elections in the United States and India, an intervention modeled closely on the world’s largest media literacy campaign is assessed, indicating that relatively short, scalable interventions could be effective in fighting misinformation around the world.
Abstract: Widespread belief in misinformation circulating online is a critical challenge for modern societies While research to date has focused on psychological and political antecedents to this phenomenon, few studies have explored the role of digital media literacy shortfalls Using data from preregistered survey experiments conducted around recent elections in the United States and India, we assess the effectiveness of an intervention modeled closely on the world's largest media literacy campaign, which provided "tips" on how to spot false news to people in 14 countries Our results indicate that exposure to this intervention reduced the perceived accuracy of both mainstream and false news headlines, but effects on the latter were significantly larger As a result, the intervention improved discernment between mainstream and false news headlines among both a nationally representative sample in the United States (by 265%) and a highly educated online sample in India (by 175%) This increase in discernment remained measurable several weeks later in the United States (but not in India) However, we find no effects among a representative sample of respondents in a largely rural area of northern India, where rates of social media use are far lower
230 citations
TL;DR: Mediation pathways linking four types of digital media consumption (social media, mobile social networking apps [MSNs], online news media, and social live steaming services [SLSSs]) to preventive behaviors, mediated by worry found that seeking COVID-19-related information on MSNs, SLSSs, and online newsMedia was directly associated with preventive behaviors.
Abstract: The high prevalence of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and inefficient preventive measures taken to curb the disease are significant public health concerns. Rapid and innovative advances in di...
181 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the use of digital media for social connection during a global public health crisis may be unequally distributed among citizens and may continue to shape inequalities even after the pandemic is over.
Abstract: Governments and public health institutions across the globe have set social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. With reduced opportunities to spend time together in person come new challenges to remain socially connected. This essay addresses how the pandemic has changed people’s use of digital communication methods, and how inequalities in the use of these methods may arise. We draw on data collected from 1,374 American adults between 4 and 8 April 2020, about two weeks after lockdown measures were introduced in various parts of the United States. We first address whether people changed their digital media use to reach out to friends and family, looking into voice calls, video calls, text messaging, social media, and online games. Then, we show how age, gender, living alone, concerns about Internet access, and Internet skills relate to changes in social contact during the pandemic. We discuss how the use of digital media for social connection during a global public health crisis may be unequally distributed among citizens and may continue to shape inequalities even after the pandemic is over. Such insights are important considering the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s social wellbeing. We also discuss how changes in digital media use might outlast the pandemic, and what this means for future communication and media research.
167 citations
TL;DR: In terms of digital media use and youth, the advice has been to monitor and limit access to minimize the negative impacts as discussed by the authors, however, this advice woud not work well in the case of social media.
Abstract: New technologies raise fears in public discourse. In terms of digital media use and youth, the advice has been to monitor and limit access to minimize the negative impacts. However, this advice wou...
140 citations
TL;DR: Associations between heavy digital media use and low psychological well-being are larger for adolescent girls than boys, and among both genders, heavy users of digital media were often twice as likely as low users to be low inWell-being or have mental health issues.
130 citations
TL;DR: More than 300 studies have been published on the relationship between digital media and engagement in civic and political life as discussed by the authors, and with such a vast body of research, it is difficult to see the big picture.
Abstract: More than 300 studies have been published on the relationship between digital media and engagement in civic and political life. With such a vast body of research, it is difficult to see the big pic...
113 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically "authentic" in contemporary culture, and how they accentuate the desire for the authentic.
Abstract: A fascination for the authentic is pervasive in contemporary culture. This article discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically ...
111 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the global dynamics of the student strike on March 15, 2019 and found that the primary function of these tweets was to share information, but they highlighted a unique type of information shared in these tweets-documentation of local events across the globe.
Abstract: Beginning in 2018, youth across the globe participated in protest activities aimed at encouraging government action on climate change. This activism was initiated and led by Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg. Like other contemporary movements, the School Strike 4 Climate used social media. For this article, we use Twitter trace data to examine the global dynamics of the student strike on March 15, 2019. We offer a nuanced analysis of 993 tweets, employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Like other movements, the primary function of these tweets was to share information, but we highlight a unique type of information shared in these tweets—documentation of local events across the globe. We also examine opinions shared about youth, the tactic (protest/strike), and climate change, as well as the assignment of blame on government and other institutions for their inaction and compliance in the climate crisis. This global climate strike reflects a trend in international protest events, which are connected through social media and other digital media tools. More broadly, it allows us to rethink how social media platforms are transforming political engagement by offering actors—especially the younger generation—agency through the ability to voice their concerns to a global audience.
111 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that one unique feature of digital emotion contagion is that it is mediated by digital media platforms that are motivated to upregulate user emotions.
105 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the effects of misinformative information on the spread of disinformation in a fragmented and digital media environment, which may create a fertile breeding ground for the uncontrolled spreading of disinformation.
Abstract: Today’s fragmented and digital media environment may create a fertile breeding ground for the uncontrolled spread of disinformation. Although previous research has investigated the effects of misin...
TL;DR: It is argued that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals.
Abstract: Digital media are critical for contemporary activism-even low-effort "clicktivism" is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through "hashtag activism" and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics.
TL;DR: In this article, the Covid-19 infodemic might just be the tipping point of a process that has been long simmering in controversial areas of health and science (e.g., climate-change denial, antivaccination, anti-5G, Flat Earth doctrines).
Abstract: Digital media, while opening a vast array of avenues for lay people to effectively engage with news, information and debates about important science and health issues, have become a fertile land for various stakeholders to spread misinformation and disinformation, stimulate uncivil discussions and engender ill-informed, dangerous public decisions. Recent developments of the Covid-19 infodemic might just be the tipping point of a process that has been long simmering in controversial areas of health and science (e.g., climate-change denial, anti-vaccination, anti-5G, Flat Earth doctrines). We bring together a wide range of fresh data and perspectives from four continents to help media scholars, journalists, science communicators, scientists, health professionals and policy-makers to better undersand these developments and what can be done to mitigate their impacts on public engagement with health and science controversies.
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of COVID-19 emerged in early 2020 and physical movement was restricted as a public health measure, digital media consumption behavior changed dramatically, and the accelerated move to on-line media consumption changed dramatically.
TL;DR: To understand how people use digital media, researchers need to move beyond screen time and capture everything the authors do and see on their screens.
Abstract: To understand how people use digital media, researchers need to move beyond screen time and capture everything we do and see on our screens. To understand how people use digital media, researchers need to move beyond screen time and capture everything we do and see on our screens.
TL;DR: Generalised linear mixed models showed that advertisements for unhealthy food evoked significantly more positive responses, compared to non-food and healthy food, on 5 of 6 measures, and suggested that regulation of unhealthy food advertising should address adolescents and digital media.
Abstract: Media-saturated digital environments seek to influence social media users' behaviour, including through marketing. The World Health Organization has identified food marketing, including advertising for unhealthy items, as detrimental to health, and in many countries, regulation restricts such marketing and advertising to younger children. Yet regulation rarely addresses adolescents and few studies have examined their responses to social media advertising. In two studies, we examined adolescents' attention, memory and social responses to advertising posts, including interactions between product types and source of posts. We hypothesized adolescents would respond more positively to unhealthy food advertising compared to healthy food or non-food advertising, and more positively to ads shared by peers or celebrities than to ads shared by a brand. Outcomes measured were (1a) social responses (likelihood to 'share', attitude to peer); (1b) brand memory (recall, recognition) and (2) attention (eye-tracking fixation duration and count). Participants were 151 adolescent social media users (Study 1: n = 72; 13-14 years; M = 13.56 years, SD = 0.5; Study 2: n = 79, 13-17 years, M = 15.37 years, SD = 1.351). They viewed 36 fictitious Facebook profile feeds created to show age-typical content. In a 3 × 3 factorial design, each contained an advertising post that varied by content (healthy/unhealthy/non-food) and source (peer/celebrity/company). Generalised linear mixed models showed that advertisements for unhealthy food evoked significantly more positive responses, compared to non-food and healthy food, on 5 of 6 measures: adolescents were more likely to wish to 'share' unhealthy posts; rated peers more positively when they had unhealthy posts in their feeds; recalled and recognised a greater number of unhealthy food brands; and viewed unhealthy advertising posts for longer. Interactions with sources (peers, celebrities and companies) were more complex but also favoured unhealthy food advertising. Implications are that regulation of unhealthy food advertising should address adolescents and digital media.
TL;DR: The news media industry has changed as the internet and social media have matured and become integral to modern life as discussed by the authors, and they describe these changes through a theoretical analysis of the economic structu...
Abstract: The news media industry has changed as the internet and social media have matured and become integral to modern life. I describe these changes through a theoretical analysis of the economic structu...
TL;DR: The conclusions show that the crisis of the pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the communication sector, creating new challenges for the communication industry, media professionals, and higher education institutions related to market demands.
Abstract: An increased use of social networks is one of the most far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aside from the traditional media, as the main drivers of social communication in crisis situations, individual profiles have emerged supported by social networks, which have had a similar impact to the more specialized communication media. This is the hypothesis of the research presented, which is focused on health communication and based on a virtual ethnography methodology with the use of social metrics. The aim is to understand the relationship established between the population in general and digital media in particular through the measurement of engagement. In this regard, a comparative study was carried out that describes this phenomenon over a period of six months on three social networks: YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, with a sample composed of specialized health media versus healthcare professionals. The results point to a new communications model that opens up a new space for agents whose content has a degree of engagement comparable to and even exceeding that of digital media specialized in health communication. The conclusions show that the crisis of the pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the communication sector, creating new challenges for the communication industry, media professionals, and higher education institutions related to market demands.
TL;DR: A random-effects within–between model is applied to two large representative datasets of individual web browsing histories to better encapsulate the effects of social media and other intermediaries on news exposure and finds strong evidence that intermediaries foster more varied online news diets.
Abstract: Research has prominently assumed that social media and web portals that aggregate news restrict the diversity of content that users are exposed to by tailoring news diets toward the users’ preferences. In our empirical test of this argument, we apply a random-effects within–between model to two large representative datasets of individual web browsing histories. This approach allows us to better encapsulate the effects of social media and other intermediaries on news exposure. We find strong evidence that intermediaries foster more varied online news diets. The results call into question fears about the vanishing potential for incidental news exposure in digital media environments.
TL;DR: In this digital era, what does the future of advertising look like? How c... as discussed by the authors The Future of Advertising: A Future View of Advertising in the Digital Age, 2019.
Abstract: New digital technologies have dramatically changed the way firms communicate and interact with consumers via digital media. In this digital era, what does the future of advertising look like? How c...
Georgetown University1, University of Wisconsin-Madison2, University of Michigan3, Brigham Young University4, Purdue University5, University of Pittsburgh6, Linköping University7, Ruhr University Bochum8, Charles University in Prague9, University of New York in Prague10, University of Stavanger11, Sapienza University of Rome12
TL;DR: Four challenges associated with measuring household media exposure in families with young children are described: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage.
Abstract: Digital media availability has surged over the past decade. Because of a lack of comprehensive measurement tools, this rapid growth in access to digital media is accompanied by a scarcity of research examining the family media context and sociocognitive outcomes. There is also little cross-cultural research in families with young children. Modern media are mobile, interactive, and often short in duration, making them difficult to remember when caregivers respond to surveys about media use. The Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure (CAFE) Consortium has developed a novel tool to measure household media use through a web-based questionnaire, time-use diary, and passive-sensing app installed on family mobile devices. The goal of developing a comprehensive assessment of family media exposure was to take into account the contextual factors of media use and improve upon the limitations of existing self-report measures, while creating a consistent, scalable, and cost-effective tool. The CAFE tool captures the content and context of early media exposure and addresses the limitations of prior media measurement approaches. Preliminary data collected using this measure have been integrated into a shared visualization platform. In this perspective article, we take a tools-of-the-trade approach (Oakes, 2010) to describe four challenges associated with measuring household media exposure in families with young children: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage. We illustrate how each of these challenges can be addressed with preliminary data collected with the CAFE tool and visualized on our dashboard. We conclude with future directions including plans to test reliability, validity, and generalizability of these measures.
TL;DR: Although there are numerous prominent examples of social media misuse, these cases should not disproportionately characterize the scope or potential of digital media participation as a whole as mentioned in this paper, which is not the case here.
Abstract: Although there are numerous prominent examples of social media misuse, these cases should not disproportionately characterize the scope or potential of digital media participation as a whole. Using...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the development, deployment and imagined uses of apps in two countries: Singapore, a pioneer in the field, with its TraceTogether app, and Australia, a country that adapted Singapore's app, devising its own COVIDSafe, as key to its national public health strategy early in the crisis.
Abstract: Widely and intensively used digital technologies have been an important feature of international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. One especially interesting class of such technologies are dedicated contact and tracing apps collecting proximity data via the Bluetooth technology. In this article, I consider the development, deployment and imagined uses of apps in two countries: Singapore, a pioneer in the field, with its TraceTogether app, and Australia, a country that adapted Singapore’s app, devising its own COVIDSafe, as key to its national public health strategy early in the crisis. What is especially interesting about these cases is the privacy concerns the apps raised, and how these are dealt with in each country, also the ways in which each nation reimagines its immediate social future and health approach via such an app.
01 Jul 2020
TL;DR: A cascaded method that uses unsupervised learning to ascertain the stance of Twitter users with respect to a polarizing topic by leveraging their retweet behavior; then, it uses supervised learning based on user labels to characterize both the general political leaning of online media and of popular Twitter users.
Abstract: Discovering the stances of media outlets and influential people on current, debatable topics is important for social statisticians and policy makers. Many supervised solutions exist for determining viewpoints, but manually annotating training data is costly. In this paper, we propose a cascaded method that uses unsupervised learning to ascertain the stance of Twitter users with respect to a polarizing topic by leveraging their retweet behavior; then, it uses supervised learning based on user labels to characterize both the general political leaning of online media and of popular Twitter users, as well as their stance with respect to the target polarizing topic. We evaluate the model by comparing its predictions to gold labels from the Media Bias/Fact Check website, achieving 82.6% accuracy.
28 May 2020
TL;DR: What types of literacies are needed today and the important role of variations in citizens' social context and the intersection of dis-/mis-/mal-information and ‘fake-news’ is examined.
Abstract: In this paper we examine what ‘data literacy’ – under various definitions – means at a time of persistent distribution of ‘dis-/mis-/mal-information’ via digital media. The paper first explores the definition of literacies (written, media, information, digital and data literacies) considering the various parameters and considerations they have gone through. We then examine the intersection of dis-/mis-/mal-information and ‘fake-news’ and these literacies. The paper explores what types of literacies are needed today and the important role of variations in citizens' social context. We highlight three main gaps in current data literacy frameworks – 1. going beyond the individual; 2. critical thinking of the online ecosystem; and 3. designing skills for proactive citizens. We discuss these gaps while highlighting how we integrated these into our survey of UK citizens' data literacies as part of our Nuffield Foundation funded project - Me and My Big Data. By discussing our theoretical and methodological challenges we aim to shed light on not only how the definition of data literacy changes but also how we can develop education programmes that take into account information distortions and put proactive citizens at the centre.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a dynamic framework addressing four distinct levels of customer engagement on social media, in addition to identifying appropriate measurements for each level, and propose an empirically grounded framework with appropriate measures to assess customer engagement.
TL;DR: The increased use of digital media is encouraged with a focus on improving trust, building social solidarity, reducing chaos, educating the public on prevention measures, and reducing the medical burden in facility-based sites.
Abstract: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 outbreak has had a significant impact on global health, the economy, and society as a whole. Various measures are being taken to respond to the pandemic, with digital media playing a pivotal role, especially in the use of visual data to disseminate information, mobile health to coordinate medical resources, social media to promote public health campaigns, and digital tools to assist population management and disease tracing. However, digital media also faces some challenges like misinformation, lack of guidance, and information leakage. We encourage the increased use of digital media with a focus on improving trust, building social solidarity, reducing chaos, educating the public on prevention measures, and reducing the medical burden in facility-based sites.
TL;DR: A review of the literature suggests four potentially related components of digital stress, including av ailability stress, approval anxiety, fear of missing out, and communication overload, which are consistent with recent published frameworks for understanding digital media’s influence on peer relationships.
Abstract: Existing literature provides a complicated picture of the relationship between digital media use and psychological outcomes. Both correlational and some experimental studies suggest that social media use specifically can be associated with diminished psychological functioning in adolescents and young adults. However, these effect sizes are not large, and must be considered in light of studies that suggest some positive outcomes associated with some uses of digital media, and a range of moderators of the identified associations. Although a growing body of evidence suggests that digital stress may be an important intervening factor between digital media use and psychosocial outcomes, this literature is complicated by multiple nomenclatures for similar or identical constructs. Our review of the literature suggests four potentially related components of digital stress, including availability stress, approval anxiety, fear of missing out, and communication overload. This conceptualization is consistent with recent published frameworks for understanding digital media's influence on peer relationships. Clinicians working with adolescents and young adults are encouraged to assess digital media use in the context of clients' overall psychological and social functioning, and in consideration of clients' specific uses of media. Future research is needed to examine the associations among components of digital stress and clinical outcomes, and to provide valid measures to assess digital stress in research and clinical settings.
TL;DR: The authors conclude that the association of screen time with wellbeing is negative but “too small to warrant policy change”, and their conclusions are in stark contrast with the practically important differences identified in other analyses of the same datasets, especially for social media use among girls.
Abstract: 1Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA. 2Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY, USA. 3Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA. 4Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. ✉e-mail: jtwenge@sdsu.edu Orben and Przybylski1 use a new and advanced statistical technique to run tens of thousands of analyses across three large datasets. The authors conclude that the association of screen time with wellbeing is negative but “too small to warrant policy change.” However, Orben and Przybylski made six analytical decisions that resulted in lower effect sizes, and their conclusions are in stark contrast with the practically important differences identified in other analyses of the same datasets, especially for social media use among girls. For example, Kelly et al.2 used the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)—the same dataset Orben and Przybylski described as “the highest-quality dataset we examined”. Kelly et al.2 found that twice as many heavy users of social media (versus non-users) had clinically relevant symptoms of depression (see Fig. 1). This difference is large enough to justify concern and perhaps policy changes; it is also consistent with the conclusions of many other studies3. How can these results be reconciled with those of Orben and Przybylski? Kelly et al.2 used the standard, validated measure of depressive symptoms as well as standard demographic controls, minimizing the role of researcher degrees of freedom. This is not a case of cherry picking. The discrepancy may instead lie in six choices made by Orben and Przybylski. The first issue is the consideration of only monotonic effects. Associations between digital media use and well-being are often non-monotonic; in fact, Przybylski himself named this the Goldilocks hypothesis4. Associations often follow a J-shaped curve (see Extended Data Fig. 1). Thus, statistics other than linear r may be necessary to capture the effects. One possibility is relative risk. For internet use and self-harm among boys in the MCS cohort with demographic controls, linear r = 0.06 (or 0.36% of the variance), but those spending ≥2 h on the internet are 48% more likely to selfharm than those spending <2 h on the internet (relative risk = 1.48; 95% confidence interval = 1.15–1.92; 5.9% versus 8.8%). Those spending ≥7 h on the internet are more than twice as likely to selfharm than those spending between 30 min and 1 h on the internet (relative risk = 2.15; 95% confidence interval = 1.31–3.55; 5.1 versus 10.7%). Perhaps because relative risk can account for non-monotonic patterns, it indicates a much stronger relationship. The second issue is the aggregation of data across screen time types and gender. The mental health crisis among adolescents that began after 2012 is hitting girls far harder than boys, in multiple countries5. Thus, it is vital that researchers pay special attention to girls, and to the types of media that became more popular after 2012. Given that television has existed for 70 years and television watching declined among adolescents after 20126, television is not a primary concern. In contrast, social media use became pervasive among teens just before 2012 and is used much more heavily by girls, making it a prime suspect. Most of Orben and Przybylski’s comparisons combine all types of screen time, and none separate by gender. Associations between wellbeing and social media use for girls are considerably stronger than associations with television or for boys (see Fig. 2). In this case, there are theoretical and practical reasons to focus on certain comparisons. The third issue is the use of individual items. Orben and Przybylski’s effect sizes include many individual items, which are lower in internal reliability than multiple-item scales7 and thus produce lower effect sizes. In addition, scales with more items count more heavily in the analysis—not because they are more important, but because of the arbitrary fact of having more items. The fourth issue is missing measures. The Monitoring the Future dataset8 measures digital media use in two ways: (1) on a scale of ‘never’ to ‘almost every day’, which has very low variance, as the vast majority of teens now use digital media every day; and (2) in hours per week, which has sufficient variance. Surprisingly, Orben and Przybylski did not include the Monitoring the Future Underestimating digital media harm
24 Jun 2020
TL;DR: This article investigates the deepfakes via multiangled perspectives that include media and society, media production, media representations, media audiences, gender, law, and regulation, as well as politics, which indicate that as a society, the authors are not ready to deal with the emergence ofdeepfakes at any level.
Abstract: The recent practical advances realized by artificial intelligence, have also given rise to the phenomenon of deepfakes, which can be considered as a form of fake news. Deepfakes is the phenomenon of creation of realistic digital products, and a plethora of videos has emerged over the last two years in social media. Especially, the low technical expertise and equipment required to create deepfakes, means that such content can be easily produced by anyone and distributed online. The societal implications are significant and far-reaching. This article investigates the deepfakes via multiangled perspectives that include media and society, media production, media representations, media audiences, gender, law, and regulation, as well as politics. Some key implications of these viewpoints are identified and critically discussed. The results indicate that as a society, we are not ready to deal with the emergence of deepfakes at any level. That we have not witnessed any severe impacts so far is due to their early stage of development, which shows imperfections to address the issue, a combination of technology, education, training, and governance is urgently needed.