Impulsive facial threat perceptions after exposure to stereotypic crime news

Tests were performed to learn whether exposure to news about crimes committed by dark-skinned criminals increases impulsive facial-threat perceptions of meeting dark-skinned strangers in a subsequent situation (media-priming hypothesis), but only when the facial displays are ambiguous (ambiguity hypothesis). The assumption is that news stereotypes prime the “dark-skinned criminal” stereotype, which, in turn, influences subsequent face processing. An experiment with two groups was used to test this prediction. Participants allocated to the treatment group (n = 53) read about crimes committed by dark-skinned criminals. In contrast, for the control group (n = 52), cues indicating skin color were not mentioned at all. As predicted, the treatment increased the perceived facial threat of dark-skinned strangers, but only when the facial displays were ambiguous. Given the importance of the face in social interaction, I discuss important, real-world implications for recipients as well as for journalists and media organizations

"(Weitergeleitet von Journalistin)": The Gendered Presentation of Professions on Wikipedia

Previous research has shown the existence of gender biases in the depiction of professions and occupations in search engine results. Such an unbalanced presentation might just as likely occur on Wikipedia, one of the most popular knowledge resources on the Web, since the encyclopedia has already been found to exhibit such tendencies in past studies. Under this premise, our work assesses gender bias with respect to the content of German Wikipedia articles about professions and occupations along three dimensions: used male vs. female titles (and redirects), included images of persons, and names of professionals mentioned in the articles. We further use German labor market data to assess the potential misrepresentation of a gender for each specific profession. Our findings in fact provide evidence for systematic over-representation of men on all three dimensions. For instance, for professional fields dominated by females, the respective articles on average still feature almost two times more images of men; and in the mean, 83% of the mentioned names of professionals were male and only 17% female.Comment: In the 9th International ACM Web Science Conference 2017 (WebSci'17), June 25-28, 2017, Troy, NY, USA. Based on the results of the thesis: arXiv:1702.0082

A blessing or a double-edged sword?

This study investigated the interplay of politicians’ perceptions regarding the political influence of leading newspapers and the mass media’s general impact on democracy. The scope of the study was restricted to democratic-corporatist media systems. We used comparative data of political elites (N = 392; countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) and assessed direct and indirect effects of their perceptions about national broadsheets’ political influence on the mass media’s perceived general impact on democracy. As expected, we found a positive direct effect regarding perceptions of the media’s role in democracy that corresponds with theories stressing the ‘guard-dog role’ of the quality press for political elites. However, we also found a negative indirect effect of perceived newspaper influence through perceptions of the media’s agenda-setting and career-controlling power. We argue that this effect can be explained by feelings of disempowerment among politicians. Arguably, perceived disempowerment causes criticism from political actors towards the media inasmuch as they feel constrained in the full exercise of their democratic functions

Corrupt politicians? Media priming effects on overtly expressed stereotypes toward politicians

We investigated the attribute agenda-setting (AAS) effect of political advertising. Individuals (N = 209) participated in an experiment and were exposed to six political print advertisements, which were manipulated to represent either a text-only, visual-only, or visual-plus-text version. As expected, we found that AAS led to association effects in which advertising content strengthened mental links between the party and advertised issues. However, we also present evidence for disassociation effects in which non-advertised issues were mentally delinked from the party. Importantly, AAS was dependent on the modality of presentation with information presented verbally plus visually (dual-modal presentation) eliciting the strongest effects. Furthermore, the strength of the AAS effect predicted voting intentions for that party, but only in those who rated the advertisements favorably. We discuss the present study’s contribution to the AAS literature with regard to association and disassociation effects, modality of presentation, and AAS’s consequences on voting

Attribute agenda setting and political advertising

We investigated the attribute agenda-setting (AAS) effect of political advertising. Individuals (N = 209) participated in an experiment and were exposed to six political print advertisements, which were manipulated to represent either a text-only, visual-only, or visual-plus-text version. As expected, we found that AAS led to association effects in which advertising content strengthened mental links between the party and advertised issues. However, we also present evidence for disassociation effects in which non-advertised issues were mentally delinked from the party. Importantly, AAS was dependent on the modality of presentation with information presented verbally plus visually (dual-modal presentation) eliciting the strongest effects. Furthermore, the strength of the AAS effect predicted voting intentions for that party, but only in those who rated the advertisements favorably. We discuss the present study’s contribution to the AAS literature with regard to association and disassociation effects, modality of presentation, and AAS’s consequences on voting

A blessing or a double-edged sword?

This study investigated the interplay of politicians’ perceptions regarding the political influence of leading newspapers and the mass media’s general impact on democracy. The scope of the study was restricted to democratic-corporatist media systems. We used comparative data of political elites (N = 392; countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) and assessed direct and indirect effects of their perceptions about national broadsheets’ political influence on the mass media’s perceived general impact on democracy. As expected, we found a positive direct effect regarding perceptions of the media’s role in democracy that corresponds with theories stressing the ‘guard-dog role’ of the quality press for political elites. However, we also found a negative indirect effect of perceived newspaper influence through perceptions of the media’s agenda-setting and career-controlling power. We argue that this effect can be explained by feelings of disempowerment among politicians. Arguably, perceived disempowerment causes criticism from political actors towards the media inasmuch as they feel constrained in the full exercise of their democratic functions

Effects of Right-Wing Populist Political Advertising on Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes

We investigated the effects of antiforeigner political advertisements on implicit and explicit stereotypes. While stereotypical associations may become automatically activated (implicit stereotypes), individuals can reject these thoughts and decide not to use them for an overtly expressed judgment (explicit stereotypes). We hypothesized that even if citizens negated stereotypical content, advertisements might still affect implicit stereotypes. This hypothesis was tested using an experiment where participants (N = 186) were exposed to zero, two, four, or six stereotypical advertisements. The results showed that stereotypical advertisements did not influence explicit stereotypes but did influence implicit stereotypes, even in critical recipients who negated the stereotypical content

Predicting Intentions to Read Suicide Awareness Stories: The Role of Depression and Characteristics of the Suicidal Role Model

Background: Research on factors that influence the intention to read suicide awareness material is lacking. Aims: To identify how social and state similarities between the featured protagonist of a suicide awareness story and the audience impact on the intent to read similar stories. Method: Laboratory experiment with n = 104 students. Participants were randomly assigned to study groups. In the first group, the role model provided his personal story of crisis and was a student. In the second group, the content was identical but the model was socially dissimilar. The third group read about a topic unrelated to suicide. Depression, identification, and exposure intent were measured after the experiment. Conditional process analysis was carried out. Results: In the group featuring a once-suicidal role model with high social similarity, depression in the audience increased the intention to read similar material in the future via identification with the role model; 82% of individuals wanted to read similar material in the future, but only 50% wanted to do so in the group featuring a dissimilar person. Conclusion: Exposure intention increases via identification when role model and audience characteristics align regarding social traits and the experience of depression. These factors are relevant when developing campaigns targeting individuals with stories of recovery