Christoph Klimmt
Biographic Data
| ID | 185373 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christoph Klimmt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christoph |
| FAMILY NAME | Klimmt |
| SIGNATURE | KLIMMT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hanover University of Music Drama and Media |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2725-6378 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 168 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding citizens’ responses to imagined future and existing onshore wind farms: Toward a model of environmental change communication
This study explores citizens’ anticipations of wind turbines that may be installed in their vicinity and the experiences of those living near existing turbines – reflecting different stages of the installation process. Findings from a German online survey (N = 2664) reveal that citizens experience considerable uncertainty regarding the impacts of wind farms, both prior to and after construction. Across several dimensions, including ecological and…
Social support through shared experiences: An exploratory analysis of various manifestations, reasons, and outcomes of implant patients interacting with other patients
This study explores the role of social support for implant patients, focusing on interactions with others who share similar experiences. Based on qualitative interviews with 32 orthopedic and cochlear implant patients, it examines the reasons for establishing peer relations and the evaluation of the support received. Different relationship types (bilateral, group-based, and parasocial) were theoretically derived and compared. The results demonstr…
Disclosure of perpetrator origin in crime news: Changing practices in journalism after populist accusations
If news reports on crime disclose the ethnic or national origin of suspects or perpetrators, severe consequences for audience stereotypes and public policy may arise. Thus, many professional codices advise journalists to limit origin disclosure to rare exceptions. Right-wing populists have, however, accused news media of obfuscating the ‘true dimension’ of immigrant crime. Conducting a content analysis of N = 10,943 crime reports released between…
Mental Models of Smart Implant Technology: A Topic Modeling Approach to the Role of Initial Information and Labeling
Public understanding of medical innovations such as smart technology is decisive for its acceptance and implementation. Thus, it is important to understand what visions people develop of a technology based on initial information such as the label. We chose smart implants as an example and conducted qualitative interviews with 47 former implant patients to record their mental models after exposing them to the idea of smart implants through a vigne…
Is There an Easy Path to Eudaimonia? Novel Insights on the Dual-process Perspective in Media Entertainment
The dual-process perspective in entertainment research differentiates between hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences. Hedonic responses are thought to result from relatively effortless reception of non-challenging (or “light”) media fare. In contrast, eudaimonic entertainment experiences are theorized to depend on cognitively or affectively challenging content (e.g., tragedies) and effortful reflection. The present work builds on the me…
The Internalization of a Performance-Oriented Self-Concept Among Adolescents Through Their Favorite Music Artists
sponsorship: European Commission|852317
Catering to the impatient digital listener: Accelerated composition patterns in popular music, 1986–2020
The present study explored trends of compositional acceleration in top hit songs as a potential consequence of streaming platforms and digital habits of music consumption. Many media users have been shifting towards ‘Permanently online, permanently connected’ ( Vorderer et al., 2018 ) behaviors and are thus likely to face choice overload in many episodes of music consumption. In turn, the creative audio industries seem to adjust strategically to …
Health Information Repertoires of Implant Patients: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Multiple Source Use and the Role of Health-Related Motives
Health information-seeking behavior can be understood as an active and purposeful acquisition of information from selected information sources. It supports patients to cope with medical and health-related uncertainties and enables them to engage in informed decision-making. To obtain health information, patients can turn to a variety of sources, such as going to a physician, exchanging information with their family, or using different Internet so…
Misconceptions Still Drive Citizens’ Scepticism Towards Biotechnologically Produced Food
Given the invisible complexities of new food technologies, citizens oftentimes rely on the media and heuristics to form their judgments. Thus, citizens are at risk of believing in misconceptions that undermine technology acceptance and consequently hinder innovative solutions to global problems. The present study examined whether agreeing with widely spread misconceptions about biotechnologically produced food (BTF) predicts more negative attitud…
Social inequality and news media repertoires in seven Mena countries
Social inequality shapes peoples’ chances and strategies to keep informed about current affairs. We study citizens’ news media repertoires – individual patterns of combining selected news media – in a world region of extreme social inequality within and between countries: the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). We report a secondary analysis of a large-scale survey in seven MENA countries to develop news user typologies. We explore how digita…
Explaining the Rich Entertainment Appeal of Nature Documentaries and its Conflicting Motivational Consequences
Nature documentaries are among the most popular media formats but are understudied in communication research. However, due to the format’s multifaceted potential to simultaneously inform, entertain, and persuade, nature documentaries seem particularly worthy of investigation. The present contribution has two aims: (1) to explain how nature documentaries facilitate entertainment responses in their viewers and (2) to investigate how entertainment e…
Bettering Biotech Foods’ Foul Flavor: An Experiment on Correcting Citizens’ Misconceptions About Genetic Modification
This study aims to develop and test “myth-busting,” a promising strategy for science communicators to debunk common misconceptions among citizens. Widely spread counterfactual beliefs about biotechnologically produced food (BTF) as (a) unhealthy and unsafe, (b) unsustainable, and (c) unnatural served as context of application. A preregistered online experiment ( N = 2,925) showed that myth-busting messages effectively correct misconceptions. Trus…
What Drives or Inhibits Individuals’ Intention to Seek Information About Medical Innovations? Findings From an Online Survey Among German Residents
Innovation research fighting for public attention and counteracting science-skeptical views raise the need for insights into why individuals are motivated to engage with scientific knowledge. Guided by the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM), additionally considering mistrust in science and innovativeness, the study aimed to explain individuals’ intention to seek information about medical innovations. Findings of an online survey among…
Beyond the Freebie Mentality: A News User Typology of Reasonings About Paying for Online Content
Online news providers struggle to pull audiences behind their paywalls in order to complement (insufficient) advertising revenue with sales income. But what do consumers think about paying for—once freely available—online news content and how does it affect their payment behavior? The present study complements the existing research by developing a typology of attitudes and behavior toward paying for online news content based on qualitative interv…
The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory
This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video games, from fictional stories to mediated sports. As becomes clear in this handbook, the history of en…
Engagement With the Gurus of Gaming Culture: Parasocial Relationships to Let’s Players
Let’s Players have emerged as a successful class of entertainers in the YouTube® universe. Most of their broadcasts not only relate to video games and gaming but also feature elements of talk shows and other modes of personality entertainment, including star–fan interaction through social media channels. Hence, they represent focal points of reference for gamers and important manifestations of contemporary gaming culture. The present contribution…
Permanently Online—Always Stressed Out? The Effects of Permanent Connectedness on Stress Experiences
Concerns have been expressed that permanent online connectedness might negatively affect media user’s stress levels. Most research has focused on negative effects of specific media usage patterns, such as media multitasking or communication load. In contrast, users’ cognitive orientation toward online content and communication has rarely been investigated. Against this backdrop, we examined whether this cognitive orientation (i.e., online vigilan…
The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Themes and affective user responses to meaningful memes in social media
Recent work on eudaimonic media entertainment has demonstrated that not only movies carry meaningful or inspiring topics but also content that is usually uploaded online, such as YouTube videos or memes in social media. Although past research found beneficial effects of eudaimonic movies for psychosocial well-being and motivational intentions, the daily audience of eudaimonic online fare has not been investigated yet. This article reports first f…
Permanently online and permanently connected: Development and validation of the Online Vigilance Scale
Smartphones and other mobile devices have fundamentally changed patterns of Internet use in everyday life by making online access constantly available. The present paper offers a theoretical explication and empirical assessment of the concept of online vigilance, referring to users' permanent cognitive orientation towards online content and communication as well as their disposition to exploit these options constantly. Based on four studies, a va…
The daily dose of digital inspiration: A multi-method exploration of meaningful communication in social media
Research on eudaimonic media has so far predominantly focused on audiovisual offerings: movies or YouTube video clips. However, much meaningful and inspiring content nowadays is uploaded on social media in so-called memes. Three exploratory studies therefore investigated the occurrence, content, and effects of inspiring and meaningful memes in social media: The hashtags of eudaimonic memes were analyzed in semantic networks (study 1), a content a…
Permanently Online, Permanently Connected: Living and Communicating in a Popc World
A woman checking messages on her phone while standing next to a newspaper rack. A girl waiting in line scrolling down the Facebook timeline, stumbling upon a video clip about the outcome of the recent US presidential elections. A young man playing a game on his tablet, with TV news running in another window. These are just three everyday scenarios that illustrate how today’s “permanently online, permanently connected” (POPC) communication environ…
Permanently Online, Permanently Connected
The Spatial Presence Experience Scale (SPES): A Short Self-Report Measure for Diverse Media Settings
The study of spatial presence is currently receiving increased attention in both media psychology and communication research. The present paper introduces the Spatial Presence Experience Scale (SPES), a short eight-item self-report measure. The SPES is derived from a process model of spatial presence ( Wirth et al., 2007 , Media Psychology, 9, 493–525), and assesses spatial presence as a two-dimensional construct that comprises a user’s self-loca…
Vorwort
SCM Studies in Communication and Media , Seite 3 - 6
Does Storytelling help Adolescents to Process the News: A comparison of narrative news and the inverted pyramid
Previous research has shown decreasing interest and low comprehension of traditional news, particularly in young audiences. As an alternative to traditional news formats, storytelling is often said to improve understanding of news. In our experimental study with N = 706 adolescents aged 12–17 years, we test such effects, comparing traditional and narrative news in terms of comprehension as well as involvement. Findings suggest that narrative news…
Enjoyment: At the Heart of Media Entertainment
This article suggests an integrated view of media entertainment that is capable of covering more of the dimensional complexity and dynamics of entertainment experiences than existing theories do. Based on a description of what is meant by complexity and dynamics, the authors outline a conceptual model that is centered around enjoyment as the core of entertainment, and that addresses prerequisites of enjoyment which have to be met by the individua…
Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females' Dislikes
On average, girls and women are less involved with video games than are boys and men, and when they do play, they often prefer different games. This article reports two studies that investigated the dislikes of German females with regard to video games. Study 1 applied conjoint analysis to female respondents' (N= 317) ratings of fictional video games and demonstrated that lack of meaningful social interaction, followed by violent content and sexu…
A magically nice guy: Parasocial relationships with Harry Potter across different cultures
This study explored parasocial relationships (PSRs) with Harry Potter that readers from different cultures have developed. An overall sample of 2551 Potter fans from Germany (individualistic culture) and Mexico (collectivistic culture) completed an online questionnaire assessing their parasocial relationship with the character. Fans from the collectivistic culture rated Potter’s sociability higher than fans from the individualistic culture. For f…
The daily dose of digital inspiration: A multi-method exploration of meaningful communication in social media
Research on eudaimonic media has so far predominantly focused on audiovisual offerings: movies or YouTube video clips. However, much meaningful and inspiring content nowadays is uploaded on social media in so-called memes. Three exploratory studies therefore investigated the occurrence, content, and effects of inspiring and meaningful memes in social media: The hashtags of eudaimonic memes were analyzed in semantic networks (study 1), a content a…
Does Storytelling help Adolescents to Process the News: A comparison of narrative news and the inverted pyramid
Previous research has shown decreasing interest and low comprehension of traditional news, particularly in young audiences. As an alternative to traditional news formats, storytelling is often said to improve understanding of news. In our experimental study with N = 706 adolescents aged 12–17 years, we test such effects, comparing traditional and narrative news in terms of comprehension as well as involvement. Findings suggest that narrative news…
Forecasting the Experience of Future Entertainment Technology: Interactive Storytelling” and Media Enjoyment
Advances in gaming and other entertainment technologies are evolving rapidly and create new conceptual challenges for understanding and explaining the user experiences they can facilitate. The present article reports a prospective study on a particularly promising entertainment technology of the future: Interactive storytelling (IS). Integrating various streams of computing technology, such as advanced visualization, natural speech processing, an…
The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Themes and affective user responses to meaningful memes in social media
Recent work on eudaimonic media entertainment has demonstrated that not only movies carry meaningful or inspiring topics but also content that is usually uploaded online, such as YouTube videos or memes in social media. Although past research found beneficial effects of eudaimonic movies for psychosocial well-being and motivational intentions, the daily audience of eudaimonic online fare has not been investigated yet. This article reports first f…
Implicit Measures and Media Effects Research: Challenges and Opportunities
Although implicit measures are now widely used in different areas of psychology, they have received only little attention in communication science. This paper discusses the potential benefits of implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) for media effects research. We first address more general theoretical and methodological issues and introduce some practical challenges that come along with implicit methods. The paper conclude…
Interactivity and Generalizability: New Media, New Challenges
This paper discusses potential challenges to research generalizability in studies on interactive communication. In interactive media contexts where users are enabled to individualize their communication, the generalizability of individual studies is likely lower than it is in studies on more conventional one-to-many communication. We discuss research strategies related to sample size and heterogeneity, focus on structural-invariant elements of co…
Avatare: Parasoziale Beziehungen zu virtuellen Akteuren
M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft , page 350 - 368
Avatare: Parasoziale Beziehungen zu virtuellen Akteuren
M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft , page 350 - 368
Enjoyment: At the Heart of Media Entertainment
This article suggests an integrated view of media entertainment that is capable of covering more of the dimensional complexity and dynamics of entertainment experiences than existing theories do. Based on a description of what is meant by complexity and dynamics, the authors outline a conceptual model that is centered around enjoyment as the core of entertainment, and that addresses prerequisites of enjoyment which have to be met by the individua…
Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females' Dislikes
On average, girls and women are less involved with video games than are boys and men, and when they do play, they often prefer different games. This article reports two studies that investigated the dislikes of German females with regard to video games. Study 1 applied conjoint analysis to female respondents' (N= 317) ratings of fictional video games and demonstrated that lack of meaningful social interaction, followed by violent content and sexu…
A Process Model of the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences
In order to bridge interdisciplinary differences in Presence research and to establish connections between Presence and “older” concepts of psychology and communication, a theoretical model of the formation of Spatial Presence is proposed. It is applicable to the exposure to different media and intended to unify the existing efforts to develop a theory of Presence. The model includes assumptions about attention allocation, mental models, and invo…
Interactivity and Generalizability: New Media, New Challenges
This paper discusses potential challenges to research generalizability in studies on interactive communication. In interactive media contexts where users are enabled to individualize their communication, the generalizability of individual studies is likely lower than it is in studies on more conventional one-to-many communication. We discuss research strategies related to sample size and heterogeneity, focus on structural-invariant elements of co…
Media Entertainment
Das Elaboration-Likelihood-Modell
Das Elaboration-Likelihood-Modell gehört zu den prominentesten Ansätzen der modernen Persuasionsforschung. Der Band führt in gut lesbarer und verständlicher Weise in die Grundzüge des Modells von Petty und Cacioppo ein. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf die Perspektive von Kommunikationswissenschaft und Werbepraxis gelegt: Welchen Nutzen hat das ELM für die werbliche Kommunikation und ihre Erforschung?
Implicit Measures and Media Effects Research: Challenges and Opportunities
Although implicit measures are now widely used in different areas of psychology, they have received only little attention in communication science. This paper discusses the potential benefits of implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) for media effects research. We first address more general theoretical and methodological issues and introduce some practical challenges that come along with implicit methods. The paper conclude…
A magically nice guy: Parasocial relationships with Harry Potter across different cultures
This study explored parasocial relationships (PSRs) with Harry Potter that readers from different cultures have developed. An overall sample of 2551 Potter fans from Germany (individualistic culture) and Mexico (collectivistic culture) completed an online questionnaire assessing their parasocial relationship with the character. Fans from the collectivistic culture rated Potter’s sociability higher than fans from the individualistic culture. For f…
Forecasting the Experience of Future Entertainment Technology: Interactive Storytelling” and Media Enjoyment
Advances in gaming and other entertainment technologies are evolving rapidly and create new conceptual challenges for understanding and explaining the user experiences they can facilitate. The present article reports a prospective study on a particularly promising entertainment technology of the future: Interactive storytelling (IS). Integrating various streams of computing technology, such as advanced visualization, natural speech processing, an…
Das Experiment in der Kommunikationswissenschaft
Vorwort
SCM Studies in Communication and Media , Seite 3 - 6
Does Storytelling help Adolescents to Process the News: A comparison of narrative news and the inverted pyramid
Previous research has shown decreasing interest and low comprehension of traditional news, particularly in young audiences. As an alternative to traditional news formats, storytelling is often said to improve understanding of news. In our experimental study with N = 706 adolescents aged 12–17 years, we test such effects, comparing traditional and narrative news in terms of comprehension as well as involvement. Findings suggest that narrative news…
The Spatial Presence Experience Scale (SPES): A Short Self-Report Measure for Diverse Media Settings
The study of spatial presence is currently receiving increased attention in both media psychology and communication research. The present paper introduces the Spatial Presence Experience Scale (SPES), a short eight-item self-report measure. The SPES is derived from a process model of spatial presence ( Wirth et al., 2007 , Media Psychology, 9, 493–525), and assesses spatial presence as a two-dimensional construct that comprises a user’s self-loca…
Permanently Online, Permanently Connected: Living and Communicating in a Popc World
A woman checking messages on her phone while standing next to a newspaper rack. A girl waiting in line scrolling down the Facebook timeline, stumbling upon a video clip about the outcome of the recent US presidential elections. A young man playing a game on his tablet, with TV news running in another window. These are just three everyday scenarios that illustrate how today’s “permanently online, permanently connected” (POPC) communication environ…
Permanently Online, Permanently Connected
Permanently online and permanently connected: Development and validation of the Online Vigilance Scale
Smartphones and other mobile devices have fundamentally changed patterns of Internet use in everyday life by making online access constantly available. The present paper offers a theoretical explication and empirical assessment of the concept of online vigilance, referring to users' permanent cognitive orientation towards online content and communication as well as their disposition to exploit these options constantly. Based on four studies, a va…
The daily dose of digital inspiration: A multi-method exploration of meaningful communication in social media
Research on eudaimonic media has so far predominantly focused on audiovisual offerings: movies or YouTube video clips. However, much meaningful and inspiring content nowadays is uploaded on social media in so-called memes. Three exploratory studies therefore investigated the occurrence, content, and effects of inspiring and meaningful memes in social media: The hashtags of eudaimonic memes were analyzed in semantic networks (study 1), a content a…
The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Themes and affective user responses to meaningful memes in social media
Recent work on eudaimonic media entertainment has demonstrated that not only movies carry meaningful or inspiring topics but also content that is usually uploaded online, such as YouTube videos or memes in social media. Although past research found beneficial effects of eudaimonic movies for psychosocial well-being and motivational intentions, the daily audience of eudaimonic online fare has not been investigated yet. This article reports first f…
The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory
This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video games, from fictional stories to mediated sports. As becomes clear in this handbook, the history of en…
Engagement With the Gurus of Gaming Culture: Parasocial Relationships to Let’s Players
Let’s Players have emerged as a successful class of entertainers in the YouTube® universe. Most of their broadcasts not only relate to video games and gaming but also feature elements of talk shows and other modes of personality entertainment, including star–fan interaction through social media channels. Hence, they represent focal points of reference for gamers and important manifestations of contemporary gaming culture. The present contribution…
Permanently Online—Always Stressed Out? The Effects of Permanent Connectedness on Stress Experiences
Concerns have been expressed that permanent online connectedness might negatively affect media user’s stress levels. Most research has focused on negative effects of specific media usage patterns, such as media multitasking or communication load. In contrast, users’ cognitive orientation toward online content and communication has rarely been investigated. Against this backdrop, we examined whether this cognitive orientation (i.e., online vigilan…
Beyond the Freebie Mentality: A News User Typology of Reasonings About Paying for Online Content
Online news providers struggle to pull audiences behind their paywalls in order to complement (insufficient) advertising revenue with sales income. But what do consumers think about paying for—once freely available—online news content and how does it affect their payment behavior? The present study complements the existing research by developing a typology of attitudes and behavior toward paying for online news content based on qualitative interv…
Catering to the impatient digital listener: Accelerated composition patterns in popular music, 1986–2020
The present study explored trends of compositional acceleration in top hit songs as a potential consequence of streaming platforms and digital habits of music consumption. Many media users have been shifting towards ‘Permanently online, permanently connected’ ( Vorderer et al., 2018 ) behaviors and are thus likely to face choice overload in many episodes of music consumption. In turn, the creative audio industries seem to adjust strategically to …
Health Information Repertoires of Implant Patients: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Multiple Source Use and the Role of Health-Related Motives
Health information-seeking behavior can be understood as an active and purposeful acquisition of information from selected information sources. It supports patients to cope with medical and health-related uncertainties and enables them to engage in informed decision-making. To obtain health information, patients can turn to a variety of sources, such as going to a physician, exchanging information with their family, or using different Internet so…
Psychology (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Media Influence and Health (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Entertainment (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Business (8 works)