Communication Research

A consistently growing body of research focuses on the concept of framing. The present study contributes to framing effects literature in three ways: the study examines frames in competitive environment, investigates the influence of motivated processing, and the effects on behavioral intentions of participants. The data were collected using an experiment embedded in a Web-based survey of participants employing the issue of civil liberties conflict. The study used a 2 (motivated processing) × 3 (framed conditions) between-subjects design. Findings show that in case of both the outcomes of behavioral intent, willingness to seek information and talk, motivated processing intensified framing effects and specifically so in the mixed frame condition.

Esteem support is a form of social support that is provided to others with the intent of enhancing how they feel about themselves. This article outlines and assesses empirically a cognitive-emotional theory of esteem support messages (CETESM), which identifies (a) dimensions along which esteem support messages can be scaled, (b) mechanisms through which sophisticated esteem support messages should have their effects, and (c) outcomes that should be generated by messages that vary in quality. The merits of this theoretical model are evaluated in a study (N = 506) examining esteem support messages for three types of esteem threat: failure, rejection, and transgression. Many of the theory’s tenets are supported by the study’s results.

Hewes’s socioegocentric model is applied to discussion data from an information-sharing task. The primary question is whether discussion data display psychological (individual-level) or interactional (group-level) associations among contributions. Two studies are described. The first used a card sort task to group the 42 items from the choose-the-best-candidate task. The second study used the groupings from the first task to code information-based contributions to discussion. Results indicated that participants reliably group the items into valence-based categories and that there were valence-based associations between items contributed to discussion. However, the associations were at the individual level of analysis—there were no group-level effects for information sharing. However, other features of the discussions did have group-level effects, and we argue for a better understanding of information sharing in terms of the comments that frame information-based contributions to interaction.

This article contributes to understanding whether there is a thematic gap between journalists’ and consumers’ preferences, and whether the media converge or diverge across nations. The concurrent news choices of journalists and consumers in 11 online newspapers from six countries in Western Europe and Latin America were examined. A comparison of the most prominently displayed stories on the homepages of each of these sites and the most frequently clicked stories on these sites shows a pattern of convergence across divergence: A thematic gap in the online news choices of journalists and consumers that is shared by all sites despite different levels of preference for public affairs reportage (news about political, economic, and international topics). The theoretical implications and social relevance of these findings are discussed.

Empirical studies of citizen communication networks and participation go as far back as the 1940s, with a bolder focus in political—not civic—activities. A consistent finding reveals that individuals with larger networks are more engaged than those with smaller networks. This article expands this line of work with a number of novel tests. First, it compares the predictive power of online versus offline network size on civic engagement. It then explores the role of strong-tie versus weak-tie discussion frequency and participatory behaviors. Finally, it examines the extent to which the contribution of network size, both online and offline, on civic engagement is mediated by discussion with weak ties. Using original survey data from a large national sample of U.S. adults, results indicate that (1) the relationships between online and offline network size and civic engagement are positive and fairly similar in strength, (2) weak-tie discussion is the strongest predictor of civic behaviors, (3) weak-tie discussion largely mediates the association between participation and network size online and offline, and (4) online networks entail greater exposure to weak ties than offline networks.

This study investigates the effects of media exposure on individuals’ perception of opinion diversity and the psychological mechanisms underlying such effects. We compare the differential contributions of monopolistic with pluralistic media messages and test two conceptual models: The first delineates a mechanism of direct impact of media exposure on opinion perception; the second specifies a mechanism that relates to social projection effects. Using data from telephone interviews of a random sample of 595 Chinese citizens, we find that perceived opinion diversity is positively related to exposure to pluralistic media messages and negatively related to exposure to monopolistic media messages. Furthermore, opinion extremity is found to mediate such relationships.