An Integrative Terror Management Theory Perspective on Media Effects: A Model and 12 Hypotheses for Research

This paper is designed to stimulate theory-driven research on the implications of Terror Management Theory (TMT) for a host of intriguing media phenomena. The paper synthesizes previous research, presents a model of TMT influences, and suggests 12 hypotheses for study in diverse areas, notably, media entertainment, news, advertising, fear appeals, and social media. A terror management perspective, with its emphasis on the novel, counterintuitive ways individuals keep death at bay, can extend knowledge in different areas of the field, illuminate understanding of media influences, and generate a host of studies that chart new pathways for comprehension of contemporary communication

Social Media Influencers: Who They Are and How They Influence

This paper extends research on persuasion and social media communication by reporting the results of a content analysis of 10 leading social media influencers, an untapped empirical issue in the field. Findings, offering insights into the particular communicator attributes influencers emphasize, were based on coding 121 videos of female beauty and lifestyle influencers. Influencers deploy a variety of communication strategies to engage followers, harnessing everyday behaviors, using colloquial terms, expressing emotions, showing vulnerabilities (in socially skilled ways), and strategically promoting products. Interestingly, when influencers mentioned the coronavirus, they did so as to emphasize its relevance to their personal life, rather than suggesting broader implications, such as to public health or its racial disparities. Followers’ many comments demonstrated their positive regard for, and parasocial relationships with, influencers. An appendix offers qualitative insights into influencers’ appeal

Probing the Communication World of Social Media Influencers and Their Avid Followers: A Two-Paper Panel

Paper presented to the Ohio Communication Association, October 202

Exploring Young Women\u27s Construction of Social and Political Communicative Realities

The time-honored role that communication plays in the symbolic construction of young adults’ reality is always changing, perhaps no more so than in the age of ubiquitous global media. Yet research on how young people construct contemporary social media and political experiences is lacking. This panel, designed to extend research, reports the results of a qualitative examination of young women’s experiences with two salient aspects of contemporary life: the social, focusing on their parasocial involvement with social media influencers, but also the more politically consequential arena, with a look at the development of political attitudes as a function of political events and mediated politics

A Panel of Papers Examining COVID-19 Masking and Vaccination Advertisements

This panel of papers harnesses persuasion theories to examine the content of masking and vaccination advertisements and public service announcements concerning COVID-19. The first paper describes major persuasion approaches, the rationale for the studies, and the methodology. The second and third papers describe the results of the content analyses, along with their implications for media messages on COVID and future research on these topics

Social welfare analysis of investment public-private partnership approaches for tansportation projects

This paper has two objectives: (1) to introduce a new approach to gaining widespread support for comprehensive road pricing; and (2) to develop a detailed social welfare analysis for road pricing schemes. We first describe a new approach to garnering support for system-wide road pricing, which we refer to as an investment public-private partnership, or IP3. This approach returns a significant portion of the economic value created by road pricing back to its citizen-owners. Next, we present a social welfare framework that estimates the benefits and costs of using the IP3 approach on an urban transportation network. Policy makers typically evaluate public-private partnership (P3) projects using Value for Money (VfM) analysis. However, a P3 project's impact on overall social welfare provides a more comprehensive evaluation criterion. Apart from several theoretical studies, a detailed social welfare analysis that includes all major P3 project stakeholders is lacking. Using Fresno City's transportation system as our case study, we show that system-optimal tolling scenarios favor average users, but that government¿and consequently taxpayers¿would pay for costly tolling systems. In contrast, unlimited profit-maximizing tolls raise substantial profits for government, for the infrastructure's citizen-owners, and for the private sector, but the average user is worse off. From a social welfare perspective, one should search for a Pareto-improvement under which all major stakeholders are better off. Our estimates indicate that a mixed private and public tolling scheme offers such an improvement. A mixed scheme results in the highest social welfare among all scenarios unless the weight placed on motorists' (i.e., transportation users') welfare is very low or the weight placed on residents' welfare is very high relative to the weight of other stakeholders

Why organizational and community diversity matter:Representativeness and the Emergence of Incivility and Organizational Performance

Integrating sociological and psychological perspectives, this research considers the value of organizational ethnic diversity as a function of community diversity. Employee and patient surveys, census data, and performance indexes relevant to 142 hospitals in the United Kingdom suggest that intraorganizational ethnic diversity is associated with reduced civility toward patients. However, the degree to which organizational demography was representative of community demography was positively related to civility experienced by patients and ultimately enhanced organizational performance. These findings underscore the understudied effects of community context and imply that intergroup biases manifested in incivility toward out-group members hinder organizational performance

Developing Behavior Change Interventions

Peer reviewe

Changing Behavior : A Theory- and Evidence-Based Approach

Social problems in many domains, including health, education, social relationships, and the workplace, have their origins in human behavior. The documented links between behavior and social problems have sparked interest in governments and organizations to develop effective interventions to promote behavior change. The Handbook of Behavior Change provides comprehensive coverage of contemporary theory, research, and practice on behavior change. The handbook incorporates theory- and evidence-based approaches to behavior change with chapters from leading theorists, researchers, and practitioners from multiple disciplines, including psychology, sociology, behavioral science, economics, and implementation science. Chapters are organized into three parts: (1) Theory and Behavior Change; (2) Methods and Processes of Behavior Change: Intervention Development, Application, and Translation; and (3) Behavior Change Interventions: Practical Guides to Behavior Change. This chapter provides an overview of the theory- and evidence-based approaches of the handbook, introduces the content of the handbook, and provides suggestions on how the handbook may be used by different readers. The handbook aims to provide all interested in behavior change, including researchers and students, practitioners, and policy makers, with up-to-date knowledge on behavior change and guidance on how to develop effective interventions to change behavior in different populations and contexts.Peer reviewe