Browsing by Subject "Social Media"

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Cultural differences in social media use, privacy, and self-disclosure : research report on a multicultural study
(2016) Masur, Philipp K.; Trepte, Sabine
This research report presents comparative results from five nations (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and China) with regard to social media use, self-disclosure, privacy perceptions and attitudes, and privacy behavior in online environments. The data stemmed from an online survey that was conducted from November, 2011, to December, 2011. Across all five nations, N = 1,800 participants completed the survey. The findings suggest that a broad differentiation between Western and Eastern cultures only partly accounted for differences in social media use and privacy behavior. Rather, the results of this report suggest that European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands) share similar privacy perceptions and show similar behavioral patterns. Non-European cultures (the USA and China) on the other hand, use social media differently. Participants from European countries had generally smaller audiences on social network sites and microblogging platforms, tended to limit the visibility of their postings and profile information more, and used more privacy settings to safeguard their privacy. In particular, German social media users seemed to be guarded, protective, and rather reluctant to participate in online communication. Users from the US, on the other hand, rated privacy-related behavior as less risky and were hence less likely to imply sophisticated privacy strategies. Apart from these findings, the report also shows that there are more commonalities than differences. People from all five countries think that it is important to protect privacy. Most users consciously decides what to share and what not to share. Accordingly, social media users do not always share intimate and detailed information about their lives.
A gendered perspective on online privacy and self-disclosure
(2024) Frener, Regine; Trepte, Sabine
In research on online privacy and self-disclosure, gender is commonly included as a potentially predictive variable. The results are heterogeneous and sometimes controversial; explanations are often lacking or based on stereotypical assumptions. With this dissertation, I seek to provide a gender-focused perspective on online privacy and self-disclosure by taking a closer look at gender effects in privacy-related outcomes, studying the implementation of gender as a research variable, and investigating how gender is related to people’s inherent need for privacy. To this end, I present a short introduction in the first chapter, followed by four publications: a book chapter on privacy and gender (Study 1), a systematic literature review (Study 2), an empirical investigation of gender effects in privacy behavior (Study 3), and the development of the Need for Privacy Scale (NFP-S; Study 4). In Study 1, the book chapter, I summarize key theoretical advancements in gender and privacy research in line with the feminist movement. Further, empirical findings on gender disparities are presented from a communication science perspective. I discuss the ongoing gender-based digital divide as well as risks associated with automatic gender categorization. Lastly, I address the problems of conceptualizing gender as a binary, static variable, and propose alternative perspectives for more equitable treatment. In Study 2, my co-author Prof. Dr. Sabine Trepte and I examine how scholars in the field of online privacy incorporate gender into their research. For n = 107 articles reporting gender effects (or a lack thereof), we assess whether gender theory is included, to what extent it is referred to, and what function it serves. The results show that in most studies, gender is undertheorized, resulting in reduced explanatory power and the risk of gender essentialism. To meet the need for gender theorization in online privacy research we identified in Study 2, I present an empirical investigation of the social web gendered privacy model (Thelwall, 2011) in Study 3. The model aims to link gender differences in online privacy concerns, data protection behavior and online self-disclosure and explain them via gender differences in offline factors. Using longitudinal data (n = 1,043), I found partial support for the relationships between the privacy-related variables as well as for the transfer from offline to online contexts. The expected gender differences did not arise consistently, which challenges the model’s claim that women constitute an especially vulnerable population regarding social media usage. To offer added value for the broader field of privacy-related research, my co-authors Jana Dombrowski and Prof. Dr. Sabine Trepte and I present the Need for Privacy Scale (NFP-S) in Study 4. The NFP-S is a concise measure of the need for privacy as a personality trait, developed to be applied in any context. Against the theoretical backdrop of Burgoon’s (1982) privacy dimensions, we propose a second-order model with informational, psychological, and physical need for privacy as the first-order factors. In two large-scale surveys (Study 1: n1 = 3,278; n2 = 1,226; Study 2: N = 1,000), the scale was validated with regard to relevant personality traits, privacy-related cognitive criteria and behaviors as well as socio-demographic variables. With the goal of disentangling (biological) sex and gender, we include self-assessed femininity and masculinity. We find that congruity between participants’ perception of their femininity/masculinity and their sex is related to a higher need for privacy. In the overall discussion, I combine insights from the studies, provide ideas for future research, and offer societal and practical implications. Taken together, the four studies contribute to the field of online privacy by emphasizing the psychological perspective of gender as a socially constructed, multifaceted, and dynamic construct. Adopting this view is desirable for privacy researchers, as it helps to better understand privacy-related attitudes and decision-making, hence increasing overall validity. Furthermore, a differentiated understanding of gender is needed to prevent oversimplifications and stereotyping and to promote ethical and fair research.
Issues Management unter veränderten Umweltbedingungen
(2023) Wnuck, Corinna; Schweiger, Wolfgang
The idea of issues management aims to ensure that companies actively exert influence on other environmental developments through early identification and strategically planned participation in publicly and organisationally relevant issues. The goal is to maintain their own room for manoeuvre and secure their corporate reputation. Environmental conditions play a central role in shaping issues management. These have changed noticeably since the first issues manage- ment approaches at the end of the 1970s. Digitalisation, medialisation, globalization, and the transformation of the public sphere through digital structural change are the drivers of these changes. Issues management has not yet been tested for its validity under changed environmen- tal conditions. The overarching research question of this study therefore is: How do companies shape issues management under changed environmental conditions? The empirical study uses qualitative, guideline-based expert interviews to examine how issues management is carried out today under changed environmental conditions. For this purpose, the research question is deepened on the basis of six issue management dimensions: the concept, the structure, the process, the management, the actor and the resource dimension. For the research, 22 experts from the agency/consultancy context and the corporate environment were interviewed. Conceptually, issues management has not altered under changed environmental conditions. It remains a preventive function that identifies issues in the corporate environment as early as possible in order to secure and enhance the companys reputation and to deal with these issues in a strategically planned manner. Issues management has a deprioritised existence in many companies, partly because the overlaps with other disciplines are high. Therefore, in many com- panies issues management is practised but not called such. At the structural level of issues management, changes due to digitalisation and globalisation are becoming visible. Modern is- sues management organisations have to work faster, more agile and more flexibly than before. They have to identify issues globally, in real time, and prepare them in a way that is appropriate for different cultural areas. This requires efficient and transparent information and knowledge management systems as well as flexible resource adjustment options. The study shows that changes due to digitalised environmental conditions are effective on the processual level. Due to the acceleration of environmental developments, the process phases run faster or parallel to each other. Reflection and reaction times have shortened with increasing issue complexity. Fol- lowing the sequences of the Scrum logic from software development, an alternative process model is developed in the study that maps the simultaneity and growing complexity of environ- mental developments. The management level is characterised by changes due to accelerated environmental developments, globalisation, medialisation and changed public structures, which are evident to different degrees in the individual phases of the management level. The study shows that the evaluation of issues management is still a challenge today and is only carried out with limitations in the companies. Agencies see a lack of will here, companies justify this with the lack of meaningfulness of the results about the actual performance of issues management. At the actor level, the transformation of the public sphere is having an effect. There is an in- crease in the number of situational, volatile and well-networked sub-publics, which are grouped around various issues and ensure that once an issue has arisen, it can no longer be laid to rest. In addition, the balance of power has shifted in favour of previously weakly represented groups. Furthermore, "journalism bypassing" is a frequently observed phenomenon. On the resource level, issues managers need a significantly expanded repertoire of competences and skills due to digitalisation and medialisation. Furthermore, the use of digital tools in issues management is increasing. At the time of the survey, these were primarily online monitoring tools, editorial management tools, collaborative work platforms and virtual team environments. AI and chat- bots, on the other hand, are the exception. Overall, the study concludes that the changed environmental conditions make the idea of issues management more relevant than ever. Although not always under the name, strategically planned early recognition and management of issues has become established in most compa- nies. At the same time, the environmental changes have a strong impact on implementation. Furthermore, there is a need to catch up especially in the area of digital and data-based corporate communication. This is where potential lies dormant to remedy some of the problems identified in the paper.
Navigating the information landscape: uncovering links between information perception, processing, and behavior
(2023) Utz, Lena; Gimpel, Henner
Digitalization has transformed how individuals access and share information, making some of it available anytime and anywhere through the internet, mobile devices, and social media. Digitalization has also changed how information is created and disseminated, enabling individuals to actively participate in the Information Age by creating user-generated content. The exponential growth of digital content presents both opportunities and challenges. While individuals can access information quickly and easily regarding a wide range of topics, it is essential to distinguish between truthful and false information. Fake news, especially from social media, has political and societal consequences, eroding trust in traditional media and institutions. Additionally, even if the information is true, individuals can be intentionally or unintentionally manipulated by specific characteristics of the information. Cognitive biases, such as the negativity effect and confirmation bias, influence how people perceive and process information. Individuals’ social environments, platform design, and individual characteristics also shape how they deal with information. To navigate the information landscape, it is essential to understand how individuals perceive and process information and how it can influence their behavior. This topic is a subject of the study of Human Information Behavior. To better understand the links, this dissertation builds on the Stimulus-Organism-Response model. This psychological model explains how stimuli (such as information) influence an individual’s cognitive and emotional state (organism), leading to observable behaviors (responses). Thereby, the dissertation distinguishes between primary and context stimuli, between cognitive and affective processes as part of the organism, and between psychological and behavioral responses. This cumulative dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of how individuals perceive and process information and how information influences their behavior. For this purpose, it relies on literature-based theorizing and the analysis and interpretation of empirical data obtained from online experiments and surveys. Because false information tremendously influences society, politics, and every individual, this dissertation focuses on fake news. The first three chapters examine socio-technical interventions to combat fake news. Chapter 2 provides an approach to improving reporting behavior. It analyzes the influence of injunctive and descriptive social norms (SNs) on social media users’ reporting of fake news. The findings revealed that SN messages influence users’ re-porting behavior. While injunctive SN messages can serve as motivational tools and affect user reporting behavior in social media environments, the empirical results demonstrated no significant effect from the sole application of descriptive SN messages. However, combining both types of SN messages proved to be the most effective approach. Chapter 3 addresses the influence of the order of intervention on the short- and long-term perception of fake news. The findings showed that the order in which the intervention, consisting of warning messages and verified information, is displayed impacts the perception of fake news. When delivered after fake news exposure, such interventions can decrease the believability of fake news more effectively than interventions delivered before exposure. Chapter 4 examines how the fake news reader’s emotions influence the believability of fake news and whether warning labels can mitigate these effects. The results revealed that while low-arousal emotions in the reader could decrease the believability of fake news, high-arousal emotions did not affect believability compared to the control group. However, the presence of a warning label before reading the fake news could reduce its believability, regardless of the level of emotional arousal. Chapter 5 broadens the perspective beyond fake news. Using the example of online product reviews and information, it examines how different characteristics of information influence the user evaluation of digital products. The findings revealed that there is a “placebo effect.” This placebo effect depends on the source of information and negative placebo information has a stronger effect than positive placebo information. Furthermore, the timing of the presentation of the placebo information is important. Placebo information provided after physical sensory input had a stronger effect than information provided before it. In summary, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of how individuals perceive and process information and how information influences their behavior. The insights from this dissertation can support individuals and society in the fight against fake news. Furthermore, it uncovered the manipulative power of specific characteristics of information. The insights from this dissertation provide a foundation for future research and practical applications in the realm of human information behavior.
News endorser influence in social media
(2020) Teutsch, Doris; Trepte, Sabine
Social networking sites have become an online realm where users are exposed to news about current affairs. People mainly encounter news incidentally because they are re-distributed by users whom they befriended or follow on social media platforms. In my dissertation project, I draw on shared reality theory in order to examine the question of how the relationship to the news endorser, the person who shares news content, determines social influence on opinion formation about shared news. The shared reality theory posits that people strive to achieve socially shared beliefs about any object and topic because of the fundamental epistemic need to establish what is real. Social verification of beliefs in interpersonal communication renders uncertain and ambiguous individual perceptions as valid and objectively true. However, reliable social verification may be provided only by others who are regarded as epistemic authority, in other words as someone whose judgment one can trust. People assign epistemic authority particularly to socially close others, such as friends and family, or to members of their in-group. I inferred from this that people should be influenced by the view of a socially close news endorser when forming an opinion about shared news content but not by the view of a socially distant news endorser. In Study 1, a laboratory experiment (N = 226), I manipulated a female news endorser’s social closeness by presenting her as an in-group or out-group member. Participants’ opinion and memory of a news article were not affected by the news endorser’s opinion in either of the conditions. I concluded that the news article did not elicit motivation to strive for shared reality because participants were confident about their own judgment. Therefore, they did not rely on the news endorser’s view when forming an opinion about the news topic. Moreover, the results revealed that participants had stronger trust in the news endorser when she expressed a positive (vs. negative) opinion about the news topic, while social closeness to the news endorser did not predict trust. On the one hand, this is in line with the social norm of sharing positive thoughts and experiences on social networking sites: adherence to the positivity norm results in more favorable social ratings. On the other hand, my findings indicate that participants generally had a positive opinion about the topic of the stimulus article and thus had more trust in news endorsers who expressed a similar opinion. In Study 2, an online experiment (N = 1, 116), I exposed participants to a news post by a relational close vs. relational distant news endorser by having them name a close or distant actual Facebook friend. There was a small influence of the news endorser’s opinion on participants’ thought and opinion valence irrespective of whether the news endorser was a close or distant friend. The finding was surprising, particularly because participants reported stronger trust in the view of the close friend than in the view of a distant friend. I concluded that in light of an ambiguity eliciting news article, people may even rely on the views of less trustworthy news endorsers in order to establish a socially shared and, therefore, valid opinion about a news topic. Drawing on shared reality theory, I hypothesized that social influence on opinion formation is mediated by news endorser congruent responses to a news post. The results indicated a tendency for the proposed indirect relation however, the effect size was small and the sample in Study 2 was not large enough to provide the necessary statistical power to detect the mediation. In conclusion, the results of my empirical studies provide first insights regarding the conditions under which a single news endorser influences opinion formation about news shared on social networking sites. I found limited support for shared reality creation as underlying mechanism of such social influence. Thus, my work contributes to the understanding of social influence on news perception happening in social networking sites and proposes theoretical refinements to shared reality theory. I suggest that future research should focus on the role of social and affiliative motivation for social influences on opinion formation about news shared on social networking sites.
On the implications of recent advancements in information technologies and high-dimensional modeling for financial markets and econometric frameworks
(2019) Schmidt, Alexander; Jung, Robert
Around the turn of the millennium, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published an article, which summarizes the organizations expectations towards technological developments of the 21st century. Of particular interest to the authors are innovations in the area of information technology, highlighting their far-reaching impact on, amongst others, the financial sector. According to the article, the expected increasing interconnectedness of individuals, markets, and economies holds the potential to fundamentally change not only the flow of information in financial markets but also the way in which people interact with each other and with financial institutions. Looking back at the first two decades of the 21st century, these predictions appear to have been quite accurate: The rise of the internet to a platform of utmost relevance to industries and the economy as a whole profoundly impacts how people nowadays receive and process information and subsequently form, share, and discuss their opinions amongst each other. At the financial markets around the globe trading has become more and more accessible to individuals. Less financial and technical knowledge is required of retail investors to engage in trading, resulting in increased market participation and more heterogeneous trader profiles. This, in turn, influences the dynamics in the financial markets and challenges some of the conventional wisdom concerning market structures. In this context, the interdependencies between the media, retail investors, and the stock market are of particular interest for practitioners. However, the changed dynamics in the flow and exchange of data and information are also highly interesting from a researchers perspective, resulting in entire branches of the academic literature devoted to the topic. While these branches have grown in many different directions, this doctoral thesis explores two specific aspects of this field of research: First, it investigates the consequences of the increased interconnectedness of individuals and markets for the dynamics between the new information technologies and the financial markets. This entails gaining new insights about these dynamics and assessing how investors process certain company-related information for their investment decisions by means of sentiment analysis of large, publicly available data sets. Secondly, it illustrates how an advanced understanding of high-dimensional models, resulting from such analyses of large data sets, can be beneficial in re-thinking and improving existing econometric frameworks. Three independent but related research projects are presented in this thesis that address both of the aforementioned aspects to give a more holistic picture of the implications that the profoundly changed flow and exchange of data and information of the last decades hold for finance and econometrics. As such, the projects (i) highlight the importance of carefully assessing the dynamics between investor sentiment and stock market volatility in an intraday context, (ii) analyze how investors process newly available, rich sources of information on a firms environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices for their investment decisions, and (iii) propose a new approach to detecting multiple structural breaks in a cointegrated framework enabled by new insights about high-dimensional models. The first original work of this doctoral thesis aims at closing an existing gap in the behavioral finance literature by taking an intraday perspective in assessing the relationship between investor sentiment and stock market volatility. More precisely, the paper titled "The Twitter myth revisited: Intraday investor sentiment, Twitter activity and individual-level stock return volatility", which is joint work with Simon Behrendt, takes a closer look at the dynamics of individual-level stock return volatility, measured by absolute 5-minute returns, and Twitter sentiment and activity in an intraday context. After accounting for the intraday periodicity in absolute returns, we discover some statistically significant co-movements of intraday volatility and information from stock-related Tweets for all constituents of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). However, economically, the effects are of negligible magnitude, and out-of-sample forecast performance is not improved when including Twitter sentiment and activity as exogenous variables. From a practical point of view, this chapter finds that high-frequency Twitter information is not particularly useful for highly active investors with access to such data for intraday volatility assessment and forecasting when considering individual-level stocks. Inspired by this first research project, the second original work presented in this thesis keeps its focus on sentiment analysis in the context of the financial markets. Titled "Sustainable news - A sentiment analysis of the effect of ESG information on stock prices", it investigates the effect of ESG-related news sentiment on the stock market performance of the DJIA constituents. Relying on a large data set of news articles that were published online or in print media between the years of 2010 and 2018, each articles sentiment with respect to ESG-related topics is extracted using a dictionary approach from which a polarity-based sentiment index is calculated. Estimating autoregressive distributed lag models reveals significant effects of both temporary and permanent changes in ESG-related news sentiment on idiosyncratic returns for the vast majority of the DJIA constituents. According to the models results, one can assign the stocks to different groups depending on their investors apparent predisposition towards ESG news, which in turn seems to be linked with a stocks financial performance. The last original work presented is then concerned with the second aspect of this doctoral thesis - the question of how our enhanced understanding of the increasingly high dimensional datasets that occur in practice can produce new solutions to familiar problems in econometrics. The paper "Multiple structural breaks in cointegrating regressions: A model selection approach", which is joint work with Karsten Schweikert, introduces the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (lasso) as a tool for consistent breakpoint estimation. In this paper, we propose a new approach to model structural change in cointegrating regressions using penalized regression techniques. First, we consider a setting with fixed breakpoint candidates and show that a modified adaptive lasso estimator can consistently estimate structural breaks in the intercept and slope coefficient of a cointegrating regression. In such a scenario, one could also perceive our method as performing an efficient subsample selection. Second, we extend our approach to a diverging number of breakpoint candidates and provide simulation evidence that timing and magnitude of structural breaks are consistently estimated. Third, we use the adaptive lasso estimation to design new tests for cointegration in the presence of multiple structural breaks, derive the asymptotic distribution of our test statistics and show that the proposed tests have power against the null of no cointegration. Finally, we use our new methodology to study the effects of structural breaks on the long-run PPP relationship.
The overstated generational gap in online news use? A consolidated infrastructural perspective
(2021) Mangold, Frank; Stier, Sebastian; Breuer, Johannes; Scharkow, Michael
Recent research by Taneja et al. suggested that digital infrastructures diminish the generational gap in news use by counteracting preference structures. We expand on this seminal work by arguing that an infrastructural perspective requires overcoming limitations of highly aggregated web tracking data used in prior research. We analyze the individual browsing histories of two representative samples of German Internet users collected in 2012 (N = 2970) and 2018 (N = 2045) and find robust evidence for a smaller generational gap in online news use than commonly assumed. While short news website visits mostly demonstrated infrastructural factors, longer news use episodes were shaped more by preferences. The infrastructural role of social media corresponded with reduced news avoidance and more varied news repertoires. Overall, the results suggest that research needs to reconsider commonly held premises regarding the uses of digital media in modern high-choice settings.
Phänomen Shitstorm - Herausforderung für die Onlinekrisenkommunikation von Unternehmen
(2015) Salzborn, Christian; Schweiger, Wolfgang
Social media has found their way into society as well as the corporate world. But the more benefits the new platforms brings to the corporate communication, the more are their responsible members afraid about the potential loss of control over their communication. Customers and consumers communicate now on "eye level" and in the case of criticism it may lead to an accumulation of critical, sometimes gleeful comments in social media, which are directed against the company - the so-called Shitstorm. The term was chosen among others as the Anglizismus of 2011 in Germany and found its way into the “Duden” dictionary. But what exactly is meant by this? How long does a Shitstorm take? Which platforms are involved and how develop it? What topics make up a Shitstorm and how can the players involved be described? What are the consequences of a Shitstorm for the company and how can it react within a professional online crisis communication before, during and after a Shitstorm? The aim of the present communication science work was to answer these and other questions in the context of a theory-based empirical study to identify and describe key characteristics and structures of the phenomenon Shitstorm. For this purpose, a combination of methods was used, which combines the advantages of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Based on the findings the author present also three Shitstorm types as well as a final definition and derives comprehensive recommendations for the crisis communication of the company.
Privacy, self-disclosure, social support, and social network site use : research report of a three-year panel study
(2013) Trepte, Sabine; Dienlin, Tobias; Reinecke, Leonard
This research report presents data from a study conducted in Germany based on a 3-year panel design. From October 2009 to April 2012, five waves of data collection were established. N = 327 participants from a convenience sample gave answers to questions regarding media use, privacy behaviors, well-being, social support, authenticity, and specific online experiences with a particular emphasis on social network sites (SNSs). It was found that across the 3 years of the study, people increasingly gained online social capital, developed a greater need for privacy, started to disclose more personal information online, and continually spent more time on SNSs. At the same time, people's willingness to disclose information in offline settings as well as their risk assessment of SNSs significantly decreased over time. Furthermore, frequent users of SNSs had more online social capital than less frequent users, disclosed more personal information online, knew more ways to restrict the access to their profiles, and were more authentic in their online profiles. People who had a higher need for privacy were less satisfied with their lives, less authentic in both their personal relationships and their online profiles, and generally showed more negative effects on different psychological variables. Respondents who had more online social capital also reported having more general positive affect and more offline social support. In the research report, further results are reported: Each variable is presented both individually and in context with other measures. The study is the first longitudinal study on online privacy and as such the first to be able to report mutual causalities between online experiences and privacy behaviors.
Professional online networking : investigating the technological and the human side of networking with professional social networking sites
(2021) Baumann, Lea; Utz, Sonja
Professional social networking sites (SNS) have become a vital part of modern days professional lives. They are a convenient way to receive information about job offers, work-related content, and to connect with other professionals independent of time and space. Research in the field of social capital has shown that a network of people can give access to information, influence, and solidarity which positively affect both subjective and objective career outcomes. Moreover, research has shown that a diverse network is most beneficial as it gives access to non-redundant information, new perspectives, and new ideas. Yet, most professional SNS users are mainly connected with others from their direct work environments such as colleagues and university friends. For one thing, this is because of the homophily principle which states that people tend to surround themselves with others who are similar to them. On the other hand, contact recommender systems of professional SNS support connecting with similar others as contact recommendations are usually based on similarity. The cumulative dissertation, therefore, was set out to investigate the technological and the human side of professional online networking to gain evidence on how to encourage professional SNS users to build more diverse business networks. The dissertation consists of four research articles answering the following four research questions: 1. Is there a difference between offline and online professional networking in terms of intensity and in terms of influence factors? 2. How do basic technological features and functions (e.g. diverse contact recommendations) influence professional online networking? 3. How do different information designs of contact recommendations influence professional online networking? 4. How does diverse online networking influence people’s social identification with their online business networks? In summary, the four research articles show that people’s online networking is mainly driven by cognitive factors, more specifically, people’s knowledge about the benefits of (diverse) networking. When people know about the benefits of networking and the benefits of diverse networking, they network more and more diverse. This can be addressed in the design of contact recommendations by displaying an explanation why someone is recommended thereby hinting at the benefits of networking in general and at the benefits of diversity. Moreover, this can be addressed by presenting contact recommendations emphasizing dissimilarity information in contrast to similarity information. Both different types of explanations and different types of information weaken the homophily principle and encourage people to network more diverse. Besides, basic technological functions influence online networking. When people are presented with a more diverse set of contact recommendations to choose from, they do not network less but consequently, end up with a more diverse business network. Furthermore, the negative affective influence of anxiety towards unknown people is different for offline than for online networking. In line with the social compensation hypothesis, in online settings, the negative influence is weaker than it is in offline settings. When only looking at online settings we see that higher levels of anxiety still reduce the number of people connected with but not the diversity of the resulting networks. Hence, people do not feel less anxiety when connecting with similar others than when connecting with dissimilar others. Finally, returning to the side of the user we see that more diverse online networking leads to a reduction of social identification with people’s online business networks. Diverse online networking reduces social identification with the network and as a result the willingness to support the network. Hence, diverse online networking compromises the benefits a network provides. Yet, in the absence of similarity, there is also evidence that people attribute others in their online networks with characteristics of their own to perceive them as similar. Shared characteristics function as a reason to identify and compensate for the lack of formal similarity when business networks become more diverse. Moreover, the specific features and functions of professional SNS besides contact recommendations can compensate for the lack of identification.
The psychology of privacy: Analyzing processes of media use and interpersonal communication
(2017) Dienlin, Tobias; Trepte, Sabine
What is the psychology of privacy? How do people perceive privacy? Why do people disclose personal information on the Internet, and what does this reveal about our their personalities? With four studies, this cumulative dissertation discusses potential answers to these questions. Study 1 (“The Privacy Process Model”) proposes a new privacy theory, the so-called Privacy Process Model (PPM). The PPM states that privacy consists of three major elements: the privacy context, the privacy perception, and the privacy behavior. In order to balance the three elements people constantly engage in a privacy regulation process, which can be either explicit/conscious or implicit/subconscious. Through concrete examples of new digital media, several implications of the PPM are demonstrated. Study 2 (“Is the Privacy Paradox a Relic of the Past?”), which is co-authored by Prof. Dr. Sabine Trepte, analyzes the privacy paradox through the results of an online questionnaire with 579 respondents from Germany. By adopting a theory of planned behavior-based approach, the results showed that self-disclosure could be explained by privacy intentions, privacy attitudes, and privacy concerns. These findings could be generalized for three different privacy dimensions: informational, social, and psychological privacy behaviors. Altogether, Study 2 therefore suggests that the privacy paradox does not exist. Study 3 (“An Extended Privacy Calculus Model for SNSs”), co-authored by Prof. Dr. Miriam J. Metzger, builds upon the results of Study 2 and investigates whether psychological antecedents can explain not only online self-disclosure but also online self-withdrawal. Using a privacy calculus-based approach, the study analyzes data from a U.S.-representative online sample with 1,156 respondents. The results showed that self-disclosure could be explained both by privacy concerns and expected benefits. In addition, self-withdrawal could also be predicted by both privacy concerns and privacy self-efficacy. In conclusion, Study 3 demonstrates that perceived benefits, privacy self-efficacy, and privacy concerns together predict both online self-disclosure and online self-withdrawal. Study 4 (“Predicting the Desire for Privacy”), also co-authored by Miriam J. Metzger, analyzes the relationship between the desire for privacy and different facets of personality. In Study 4a, an online questionnaire with 296 respondents was conducted and in Study 4b, a laboratory experiment with 87 participants was run. The results of the questionnaire showed several significant relationships: For example, respondents who reported lacking integrity and being more shy, less anxious, and more risk averse were all more likely to desire privacy. The experiment showed a statistical trend that participants who had written an essay about past negative behaviors were more likely to express an increased desire for privacy from other people; in addition, an implicit association test (IAT) showed that participants whose IAT results implied higher lack of integrity also desired more privacy from government surveillance. In conclusion, the results evidence that the desire for privacy relates with several aspects of personality and, notably, also with personal integrity. In the overarching discussion, the results of the aforementioned studies are combined in order to provide an updated picture of privacy. This picture suggests that online self-disclosure is not paradoxical but explainable. Being able to understand online privacy behaviors is important; however, this is not only because the Internet has paramount importance in social and professional contexts, but also because people’s desire for privacy can reveal central aspects of personality, such as one’s own personal integrity. Finally, several societal implications are discussed. It is argued that modern societies should try to design new cultural artifacts about privacy, update old and obsolete behavioral patterns with regard to privacy, foster a better understanding of the conceptual nature of privacy, work toward new and more protective privacy laws, and aim to leverage overall privacy literacy.
VERZERRT. SCHRILL. GESPALTEN. Meinungsklima und Diskursqualität im Internet und ihre Wirkungen auf den Journalismus
(2022) Fulda, Stefanie; Schweiger, Wolfgang
Journalists play a dual role in shaping public opinion. On one hand, they influence public opinion through their publications. At the same time, they themselves continuously monitor public opinion and orient themselves to it. It seems obvious that the way journalists perceive the world can also influence their work. In fact, it has not yet been studied in terms of the perceived climate of opinion. It is similar with the perceived digital debate culture. Quality, tone and content of online discourses are already widely addressed under keywords such as incivility and hate speech. Effects on journalism are also mentioned, but they don´t focus on how journalists perceive the combined climate of opinion and quality of discourse and how this affects their work. In fact, user comments, individual opinions and opinion leaders are of particular importance to journalists in this perception. Due to the still incomplete state of research on the perception effects of public opinion and discourse quality on journalism, qualitative, guideline-supported interviews were therefore set up on the question "How do journalists perceive opinion climate and discourse quality on the Internet and how does this affect their work?" in order to approach the possible manifestations of this topic in an explorative manner. For these interviews, which lasted 1 - 1.5 hours, 20 journalists from all over Germany were interviewed. The net sample of participating journalists differed according to department, type of employment, age, location, gender, subject areas and degree of position, with the aim of obtaining answers from as many different journalists as possible and being able to compare the answers of certain groups with each other. In addition, a website was created as a central information point for the project. With the help of a repetitive change of perspective in the survey, which addresses the approach and considerations of the interviewees, but also inquires how, from the interviewees point of view, other journalists deal with the same issue, it was possible to identify some hidden perceptual effects. Beginning with the question about the central sources of public opinion perception, via processing and the mechanisms in this process, to the recognizable effects on journalistic work, it was thus possible to trace the path of perception of opinion climate and discourse quality to the effects on journalistic topic selection and topic processing. A key finding of the survey is that it remains unclear to the group of journalists surveyed whether the perceived climate of opinion on the Internet is representative of society as a whole - many do not rule out parallels of digital and general public opinion. At the same time, it is rationally clear to many journalists that they should not be too impressed by the experiences on the Net, since these represent only a small section of society, but emotionally it does happen - because the quality of the experienced, digital discourse is so impressive. On the other hand, almost all of the journalists surveyed assume that the perceived climate of opinion influences their journalistic work, but show a lack of clarity about the extent to which they are personally affected by this in their work. They do not know the concrete effects. Finally, it became obvious that journalists base their perception of public opinion quite significantly on the perceived quality of discourse. This is an understandable approach, but one that harbors the risk of misperceptions due to third person, negativity or false uniqueness effects, to name just a few of the most important potential distortions of perception. This has consequences: If those who report on public opinion are subject to a distorted perception, then they bring this into their reporting, which reinforces the tendency for recipients to also be subject to a distorted perception of public opinion. Citizens, in turn, express themselves in social media or below journalistic articles in the comments. These are read by editorial teams and in turn used for journalistic reporting. This is where the circle closes, because this is how recipients and journalists influence each others distorted perceptions and draw conclusions about public opinion in society. Minority opinions are perceived as majority opinions, the emotionally heated discourse on the Internet shapes the impression of a growing polarization of society, and journalism carries this idea into its reporting. The consequence is a possible misinterpretation of public opinion by journalistic media, so that journalism runs the risk of arguing past the actual public opinion of society through a distorted perception of public opinion and discourse quality on the Internet.