Sonja Utz
Biographic Data
| ID | 223836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sonja Utz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sonja |
| FAMILY NAME | Utz |
| SIGNATURE | UTZ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7979-3554 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Who Said What? Confusing Scientists and Laypeople on Social Media
The public widely uses social media platforms to access science-related information, yet their design encourages rapid scrolling and often conceals sender details. Building on social categorization theory, we hypothesize that limited sender profile information impairs users’ ability to distinguish between scientists and laypeople in science communication. In two preregistered online experiments (total N = 599), we used the Who said what? paradigm…
Knowledge benefits through work-related social media use
The claim that work-related social media use can help people to get better access to information has received cross-sectional empirical support, but it remains unclear to what extent these benefits are really media effects or rather selection effects. We conducted a year-long five-wave panel study with two intensive measurement periods (bi-daily assessment for one workweek after Waves 3 and 4) to disentangle within- and between-person effects. Wi…
Beyond voice
Examining the Automaticity of Ambient Awareness via Its Persistence Under Cognitive Load
Knowing where expertise is in one’s network is essential for knowledge transfer and collaboration. Browsing social media can foster ambient awareness of who-knows-what. Although ambient awareness is defined by its automaticity, its persistence under cognitive constraints remains unexplored. In two preregistered experiments (Ntotal = 1,218), we tested whether people automatically infer others’ areas of expertise when browsing work-related social m…
Do fears drive media consumption? A longitudinal study on the relationships between different fears and media consumption during Covid-19 in Germany
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, cross-sectional work identified differential relationships between health-related vs. economic fears and the consumption of quality versus alternative media. However, it was unclear whether these fears triggered media use and whether these patterns persisted throughout different phases of the pandemic and beyond. To address this, we conducted a pre-registered longitudinal study with a German quota s…
Navigating fairness
People’s concerns regarding the fairness of algorithmic decision-making, coupled with its expanding utilization across various spheres of our lives underscores the need for robust measures to assess perceived fairness in standardized survey research. Existing fairness scales often suffer from inadequate content coverage, particularly in terms of Perceived Group Discrimination , and frequently employ suboptimal measurement methods, such as single-…
What do you mean by “social media”? Introducing the Reporting Items for Social Media Research (RISoMeR)
Scholars from various disciplines study social media. However, neither researchers nor users have a unified understanding of social media. Even more problematically, many researchers do not define how social media is understood in their studies reducing the transparency, interpretability, and comparability of research. In this article, we introduce the Reporting Items for Social Media Research (RISoMeR), a flexible and easy-to-use matrix with whi…
Media use in groups of friends
Friendships are important throughout the lifespan, but groups of friends who disperse geographically need communication media to stay connected. Prior research on the use of media in long-distance communication focused on dyads, thereby neglecting issues like the heightened coordination effort in groups. We conducted a survey on a representative sample of German adults to discover the media ensembles of (geographically dispersed) friend groups an…
Learned Insignificance of Credibility Signs
A large part of how people learn about their shared world is via social information. However, in complex modern information ecosystems, it can be challenging to identify deception or filter out misinformation. This challenge is exacerbated by the existence of a dual‐learning problem whereby: (1) people draw inferences about the world, given new social information; and simultaneously (2), they draw inferences about how credible various sources of …
Chatbot vs. Human
As educational organizations increasingly consider supporting or replacing human chat advisors with chatbots, it is crucial to examine if users perceive a chatbot differently from a human. Chatbots’ conversational features may signal responsiveness and thus improve user responses. To explore this, we conducted three online experiments using a study advising setting. We computed pooled data analyses because the individual study results did not pro…
Ambient Awareness of Who Knows What
Being aware of others’ expertise is essential for knowledge exchange. Browsing social media has been shown to foster such awareness, often referred to as “ambient awareness”. However, the underlying psychological mechanism has not yet been established. In a series of three preregistered experiments (total N = 445), we tested the notions that individuals make inferences about others’ domains of expertise when being exposed to domain-implying socia…
Coping with the Covid-19 Pandemic by Using Media
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to cope with stress in two different ways: engaging in problem-focused behaviors (e.g. seeking information) and regulating their emotions. In particular, during lockdowns, media played an important role in these coping processes. This short-term longitudinal study during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 in Germany (N = 348) tested how coping strategies related to two categories of cop…
Diplomacy online
Online discussions can fuel perceptions of misalignment, disagreement, conflict or even polarization. In this study, we look at everyday diplomatic expressions that could buffer this. We use automated and manual coding to analyze diplomatic behaviour in online discussions and its consequences for discussion sentiment. We analyze Reddit forums with differing norms: civil ( N = 4594 comments), incivil ( N = 2126) and social support subreddits ( N =…
Conditionally helpful? The influence of person-, situation-, and device-specific factors on maternal smartphone use for stress coping and on coping effectiveness
Smartphones are omnipresent in the daily lives of parents and provide access to multiple resources in stressful situations. Thus, smartphones might be valuable coping tools. Previous research has mostly focused on the negative effects of parental phone use. In the present study, we investigated how mothers use smartphones for coping with stress and whether their phone use for coping is effective. We also explored factors on different levels (situ…
Do you love your phone more than your child? The consequences of norms and guilt around maternal smartphone use
Previous research mainly linked smartphone use while parenting to adverse consequences. However, smartphones also offer helpful resources for parents, especially in stressful situations. We suggested that negative norms against maternal smartphone use and associated feelings of guilt may inhibit effective smartphone use for coping with stress. In a 1-week experience sampling study with mothers of young children (N = 158), we found that more negat…
Social media use, stress, and coping
In this review, we systematize work on the relationship between social media use and stress by providing a functional perspective that distinguishes between three functions that social media can have in the stages of the stress-coping process: as stressors, as resources, and as coping tools. Current research provides evidence that social media can cause stress, serve as resources, and can be used as a tool for various coping strategies, but it re…
You Want This Job? Influence and Interplay of Self-Generated Text and Picture Cues in Professional Networking Service Profiles on Expertise Evaluation
Job applicants’ self-presentation in their profiles on professional networking services (PNS), such as LinkedIn, may be crucial for the evaluation of their expertise for a job. Importantly, on PNS profiles, self-generated picture-based and text-based cues are shown together, and both may influence expertise evaluations. In three experiments, we systematically analyzed impression formation in the context of PNS profiles by investigating the influe…
How-to videos on YouTube
How-to videos on YouTube have become a popular source for procedural learning. An important difference to traditional educational videos is that the instructor is often not a professional educator, but an amateur or peer. Building on work on social learning from models, this paper explores how instructor characteristics such as model-observer similarity, instructor credibility (expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness), and conversational human…
Guidance in the chaos
During the COVID-19 pandemic, virologists gained a prominent role in traditional and social media in Germany; several participated in regular podcasts. Using a two-wave survey ( n = 696/361 at Time 1/2), we explore which impact the strong media presence of virologists had on media users and what role parasocial phenomena (asymmetric interactions and relationships with virologists) played. People who favored a specific virologist scored higher on …
My daily dose of sedation” The secret to success of the science communication podcast ‘Coronavirus-Update’ with the virologist Christian Drosten and its effect on listeners
Während der COVID-19-Pandemie erreichte der Podcast mit Christian Drosten, einem deutschen Virologen, Millionen von Zuhörer*innen. Aufbauend auf Literatur zu erfolgreicher Wissenschaftskommunikation und ersten Erkenntnissen, die belegen, dass der Kontakt mit Virolog*innen mit kognitiven, affektiven und verhaltensbezogenen Effekten zusammenhängt, und die zusätzlich auf parasoziale Phänomene (PSP) mit den Virolog*innen hindeuten, haben wir eine qua…
Understanding darkness
This article examines how people understand technology-mediated abuse (TMA) between adult romantic partners. Because knowledge and attitudes regarding sensitive issues are created and shaped via technology, users’ interpretations are crucial to understanding life-threatening relational situations such as TMA. In this study, 551 individuals were recruited via community-based chain-referral sampling and asked to describe TMA (e.g., online stalking,…
Individual and Situational Factors Influencing Active Behavior in Professional Video Conferences With Strangers
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of video conferences in professional settings increased rapidly. Here, we examine how individual and situational characteristics jointly predict active behavior in video conferences (i.e., activating one’s webcam, small talk, contacting other attendees) between strangers. We focus on external networking as well as proactive and reactive online networking and social anxiety as individual charact…
The Effects of Situational and Individual Factors on Algorithm Acceptance in Covid-19-Related Decision-Making
In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, difficult decisions such as the distribution of ventilators must be made. For many of these decisions, humans could team up with algorithms; however, people often prefer human decision-makers. We examined the role of situational (morality of the scenario; perspective) and individual factors (need for leadership; conventionalism) for algorithm preference in a preregistered online experiment with German adults (n …
Professional networking
Professional networking has mostly been researched in offline contexts. With professional social networking sites (SNS), such as LinkedIn or the German platform XING, professional networking can be extended to online contexts. Therefore, this study examines if people differ in the intensity of offline and online networking and if influence factors differentially predict offline and online networking. An exploratory online survey of working people…
Do smartphones and social network sites become more important when experiencing stress? Results from longitudinal data
Previous research on stress and media use mainly concentrated on between-person effects. We add to this research field by additionally assessing within-person associations, assuming that experiencing more stress than usual goes along with more nomophobia (“no-mobile-phone phobia”) and more passive and active Facebook use than usual, cross-sectionally and over time, and by exploring potential age differences. We conducted a secondary analysis of t…
Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are
This experiment examines how far extraversion of the target (self-generated information), extraversion of the target's friends (friends-generated information), and number of friends (system-generated information) influence the perceived popularity, communal orientation, and social attractiveness of the target. The warranting principle states that judgments rely more heavily on other-generated than self-generated information because the former is …
The (Potential) Benefits of Campaigning via Social Network Sites
Social network sites (SNS) have become very popular, especially among adolescents and young adults. Consequently, politicians started to use them for their campaigns. This paper examines how this personalized soft campaigning strategy worked in the 2006 Dutch elections and how interaction with potential voters can influence the evaluation of the candidates. The first question is answered by a web survey among active users of Hyves, the largest Du…
The Role of Social Network Sites in Romantic Relationships
On social network sites (SNS), information about one's romantic partner is readily available and public for friends. The paper focuses on the negative (SNS jealousy) and positive (SNS relationship happiness) consequences of SNS use for romantic relationships. We examined whether relationship satisfaction, trait jealousy, SNS use and need for popularity predicted these emotional consequences of SNS use and tested the moderating role of self-esteem…
Types of Deception and Underlying Motivation
In computer-mediated communication, there are various types of possible deception such as category deception (gender switching), attractiveness deception, or identity concealment. The present article argues that it is meaningful to differentiate among these types of deception. More specifically, it is assumed that people attribute the various types of deception to different motivations and that these assumed motivations determine the evaluation o…
Self-activation is a two-edged sword
Social Media and Social Capital
Social media, especially social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook have grown rapidly in popularity in the last ten years. [...]
What is smart in a social dilemma? differential effects of priming competence on cooperation
Prior theorizing of rationality in social dilemmas suggests that individuals pursuing different interaction goals may ‘perceive’ different associations between competence and behaviour in a social dilemma, arguing that competitive individuals associate competence with noncooperation (i.e. noncooperation=smart), whereas prosocial individuals associate competence with cooperation (i.e. cooperation=smart; goal‐prescribes‐rationality principle, Van L…
Online Coping After Negative Life Events
This article explores how individuals use online coping strategies after experiencing a negative life event. Many studies have shown that online coping is of rising importance. However, these studies have not provided all pieces of the puzzle because they tend to focus on one particular online venue (e.g., an online support group or social network site [SNS]) and on a limited number of coping strategies. This article aims to provide a more comple…
Egoboo' vs. altruism
This article focuses on the role of reputation in consumer communities. Reputation systems can have a sanctioning function (incentive for good conduct) or a signalling function (e.g. signalling competence or trustworthiness). If the sanctioning function is dominant, striving for reputation should be the major motivation for contribution. However, contributions also can be motivated by altruism, the pleasure of interaction, earning money or genera…
Is LinkedIn making you more successful? The informational benefits derived from public social media
This article uses a social capital framework to examine whether and how the use of three types of publicly accessible social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) is related to professional informational benefits among a representative sample of Dutch online users. Professional informational benefits were conceptualized as the (timely) access to relevant information and being referred to career opportunities. The effect of content and structure of …
Making “Friends” in a Virtual World
Graphical virtual worlds add two new layers to the old question what determines friendship formation. First, it is possible to distinguish between off-line (player) and online (avatar) characteristics. Second, these environments offer new possibilities for studying friendship formation. By tracking friendship requests and their acceptance rate, researchers are able to distinguish between with whom players want to become friends and with whom they…
My daily dose of sedation” The secret to success of the science communication podcast ‘Coronavirus-Update’ with the virologist Christian Drosten and its effect on listeners
Während der COVID-19-Pandemie erreichte der Podcast mit Christian Drosten, einem deutschen Virologen, Millionen von Zuhörer*innen. Aufbauend auf Literatur zu erfolgreicher Wissenschaftskommunikation und ersten Erkenntnissen, die belegen, dass der Kontakt mit Virolog*innen mit kognitiven, affektiven und verhaltensbezogenen Effekten zusammenhängt, und die zusätzlich auf parasoziale Phänomene (PSP) mit den Virolog*innen hindeuten, haben wir eine qua…
Distributive Justice in Common-Bond and Common-Identity Groups
Two experiments tested whether common-bond groups (attachment based on interpersonal bonds between the members) and common-identity groups (attachment based on attraction to the group as a whole; Prentice, Miller, & Lightdale, 1994) make different fairness judgments. Overall, the use of the equality heuristic (Messick, 1993) was expected. Moreover, based on social identity theory, we predicted that members of common-bond groups show an egocentric…
Distributive Justice in Common-Bond and Common-Identity Groups
Two experiments tested whether common-bond groups (attachment based on interpersonal bonds between the members) and common-identity groups (attachment based on attraction to the group as a whole; Prentice, Miller, & Lightdale, 1994) make different fairness judgments. Overall, the use of the equality heuristic (Messick, 1993) was expected. Moreover, based on social identity theory, we predicted that members of common-bond groups show an egocentric…
Self-Construal and Cooperation
The present study examined whether a temporary activation of independent or interdependent self-construals by priming has an influence on cooperation in social dilemmas. It was expected that individuals primed with independence would be primarily concerned with their own outcomes, whereas individuals primed with interdependence would also be concerned with the outcomes of their interaction partner. The former should therefore exhibit lower levels…
What is smart in a social dilemma? differential effects of priming competence on cooperation
Prior theorizing of rationality in social dilemmas suggests that individuals pursuing different interaction goals may ‘perceive’ different associations between competence and behaviour in a social dilemma, arguing that competitive individuals associate competence with noncooperation (i.e. noncooperation=smart), whereas prosocial individuals associate competence with cooperation (i.e. cooperation=smart; goal‐prescribes‐rationality principle, Van L…
Self-activation is a two-edged sword
Types of Deception and Underlying Motivation
In computer-mediated communication, there are various types of possible deception such as category deception (gender switching), attractiveness deception, or identity concealment. The present article argues that it is meaningful to differentiate among these types of deception. More specifically, it is assumed that people attribute the various types of deception to different motivations and that these assumed motivations determine the evaluation o…
Media use in long‐distance friendships
New media such as email and mobile phones have made it easier to maintain relationships over distances. The present paper examines which media people use to maintain long-distance friendships. The main focus lies on the comparison of email and phone. Media choice theories like media richness theory assume that media can be classified according to their richness, and that people choose the medium which fits best to the affordances of a specific ta…
Mediated Interpersonal Communication
Part I. Bridging the disciplines * Elly A. Konijn, Sonja Utz, Martin Tanis, & Susan B. Barnes (editors) How Technology Affects Human Interaction (Introduction) 2. Susan B. Barnes, Ph.D. (Associate Professor Rochester Institute of Technology): Understanding Social Media from the Media Ecological Perspective 3. Melanie D. Polkosky, Ph.D. (CCC-SLP, IBM Corporation and University of South Florida): Machines as Mediators: The Challenge of Technology f…
Egoboo' vs. altruism
This article focuses on the role of reputation in consumer communities. Reputation systems can have a sanctioning function (incentive for good conduct) or a signalling function (e.g. signalling competence or trustworthiness). If the sanctioning function is dominant, striving for reputation should be the major motivation for contribution. However, contributions also can be motivated by altruism, the pleasure of interaction, earning money or genera…
The (Potential) Benefits of Campaigning via Social Network Sites
Social network sites (SNS) have become very popular, especially among adolescents and young adults. Consequently, politicians started to use them for their campaigns. This paper examines how this personalized soft campaigning strategy worked in the 2006 Dutch elections and how interaction with potential voters can influence the evaluation of the candidates. The first question is answered by a web survey among active users of Hyves, the largest Du…
Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are
This experiment examines how far extraversion of the target (self-generated information), extraversion of the target's friends (friends-generated information), and number of friends (system-generated information) influence the perceived popularity, communal orientation, and social attractiveness of the target. The warranting principle states that judgments rely more heavily on other-generated than self-generated information because the former is …
Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media
The Role of Social Network Sites in Romantic Relationships
On social network sites (SNS), information about one's romantic partner is readily available and public for friends. The paper focuses on the negative (SNS jealousy) and positive (SNS relationship happiness) consequences of SNS use for romantic relationships. We examined whether relationship satisfaction, trait jealousy, SNS use and need for popularity predicted these emotional consequences of SNS use and tested the moderating role of self-esteem…
It Is All About Being Popular
Prior research on predictors of social network site (SNS) use has mainly focused on the Big Five, narcissism, and self-esteem. Results have been inconsistent, and variance explained was rather low. Need for popularity (NfP) might be a better predictor of SNS use, because SNSs are ideal venues for people with a high NfP. Study 1 tested NfP, self-esteem, need to belong, entitlement, and vanity as predictors for a range of SNS behaviors; Study 2 rep…
Crisis communication online
The function of self-disclosure on social network sites
The reputation society
Snapchat Elicits More Jealousy than Facebook
Recent news in the media has suggested that younger people are using popular social media such as Facebook less and are quickly adopting newer media, such as the self-destructing app Snapchat. Snapchat is unique in that it erases messages several seconds after they have been sent, affording its users a higher level of privacy. Yet, little research exists on Snapchat use in general, let alone its broader psychological implications. This article of…
The emotional responses of browsing Facebook
On Facebook, users are exposed to posts from both strong and weak ties. Even though several studies have examined the emotional consequences of using Facebook, less attention has been paid to the role of tie strength. This paper aims to explore the emotional outcomes of reading a post on Facebook and examine the role of tie strength in predicting happiness and envy. Two studies - one correlational, based on a sample of 207 American participants a…
Social Media and Social Capital
Social media, especially social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook have grown rapidly in popularity in the last ten years. [...]
Is LinkedIn making you more successful? The informational benefits derived from public social media
This article uses a social capital framework to examine whether and how the use of three types of publicly accessible social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) is related to professional informational benefits among a representative sample of Dutch online users. Professional informational benefits were conceptualized as the (timely) access to relevant information and being referred to career opportunities. The effect of content and structure of …
Making “Friends” in a Virtual World
Graphical virtual worlds add two new layers to the old question what determines friendship formation. First, it is possible to distinguish between off-line (player) and online (avatar) characteristics. Second, these environments offer new possibilities for studying friendship formation. By tracking friendship requests and their acceptance rate, researchers are able to distinguish between with whom players want to become friends and with whom they…
Online Coping After Negative Life Events
This article explores how individuals use online coping strategies after experiencing a negative life event. Many studies have shown that online coping is of rising importance. However, these studies have not provided all pieces of the puzzle because they tend to focus on one particular online venue (e.g., an online support group or social network site [SNS]) and on a limited number of coping strategies. This article aims to provide a more comple…
Medienpsychologie
In diesem Lehrbuch und Nachschlagewerk werden 61 zentrale Konzepte der Medienpsychologie in kurzen Texten vorgestellt, die das aktuelle Wissen zu spezifischen Annahmen und Theorien bündeln. In der Neuauflage werden vor allem aktuelle Konzepte aus dem Bereich der Social Media integriert. Die einzelnen Kapitel sind nach einem einheitlichen Schema gestaltet und enthalten eine kurze Darstellung des jeweiligen Konzepts, eine detaillierte Erläuterung d…
Informational benefits from social media use for professional purposes
Using data from four waves of a longitudinal study among Dutch internet users, we examined whether and how the use of social network sites (SNS) for professional purposes is related to informational benefits. Building on a social capital framework and taking into account the affordances of social media, we specifically looked at users’ activities and the structure of their online networks. Users of LinkedIn or other professional SNS consistently …
Psychology (43 works) · Social Psychology (34 works) · Computer Science (30 works) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (22 works) · Social media (21 works) · World Wide Web (19 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Social Media and Politics (12 works) · Business (11 works)