Sanne Kruikemeier
Biographic Data
| ID | 308036 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sanne Kruikemeier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sanne |
| FAMILY NAME | Kruikemeier |
| SIGNATURE | KRUIKEMEIER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wageningen University & Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8053-8200 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 364 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
News as Bridge or Barrier? The Role of News Consumption in Immigrants’ Sense of Belonging
This study examines how immigrants’ news consumption relates to their sense of belonging in the receiving society. We conceptualize news consumption along three dimensions (frequency, sources, and trust) and analyze associations with belonging, controlling for age, gender, education, length of stay, language proficiency, migration pathway, and friendships. Drawing on an eight-language survey of 633 immigrants in the Netherlands, results show that…
Immersive Stories: The Effect of Inclusion, Narrative, and Interaction in Journalism
The Impact of Online Political Conflict Frames on Party Evaluations and Trust in Politicians
Politicians’ emphasis on conflict has been linked to public dislike of political parties and political distrust. Previous research has focused on how different conflict types, such as civil versus uncivil conflicts, impact perceptions of political actors and politics. However, little is known about how other relevant dimensions of conflict affect evaluations of political actors and trust in politicians. To address this gap and reconcile fragmente…
Navigating news across borders: Everyday news consumption among immigrants
As European countries experience growing immigration, the need for policies supporting immigrants’ cultural adaptation has intensified. Journalism plays a crucial role in this process, traditionally fostering a shared understanding among citizens and offering a common reference point to understand societal issues. However, little research addresses how immigrants navigate today’s digital news landscape, where the boundaries between countries are …
Google as Journalists’ Invisible Research Assistant? The Impact of Algorithmically-Driven Search Results in Journalistic Information Gathering Routines
Search engines play an important role in the information-gathering process of journalists. This paper analyzes the possible influence Google has on journalists when consulting, selecting, and evaluating sources through this search engine. We conducted a rare experiment on site with 73 journalists working within newsrooms in the Netherlands. We, firstly, find that all participating journalists use Google and mainly remain on the first page of resu…
Online political advertising literacy: A scoping review
This study reviews the literature on online political advertising literacy, sorting concepts and evidence. Through reflexive thematic analysis of 39 articles, we identify key concepts, interventions, and reported effects of online political advertising literacy. Based on this analysis, we propose a definition that includes conceptual understanding, evaluation, ethical considerations, and skills as components necessary for interpreting political a…
Shifted by Similarity? How Politically Targeted Ads Based on Party and Issue Persuade Voters
The scientific literature offers crucial insights into ad effectiveness; however, we argue that research on political advertising should extend beyond measuring success in terms of voting preferences by examining its influence on public opinion regarding broader societal issues. In this paper, we used two experimental designs to examine how politically targeted ads influence people’s attitudes and their stance on the featured issue (i.e., a sugar…
AI meets politics: Examining the effects of different targeting strategies across 15 countries
This study investigates the persuasive effects of messages generated with artificial intelligence in online political targeting, focusing on three distinct strategies: targeting based on political orientation, age, and personality traits. Through an experimental design conducted across 15 countries ( N = 7118), we uncovered that political targeting based on voters’ pre-existing political orientation, receiving messages from a party that is alread…
Effects of data-driven campaigning: An integrative framework, literature review, and research agenda
The positive and negative consequences of data-driven campaigning (DDC) in the digital era have been hotly debated among policymakers and scholars. This article applies a top–down approach by first introducing a framework to conceptualize the potential individual-level effects of DDC. Based on the framework, we then conducted a literature review to evaluate existing findings. A research agenda is proposed to call for more attention to: (a) DDC wi…
Scrolling through? Generational divides in media consumption and their impact on trust and polarization
The purpose of this article is to examine news consumption among different generations, with a focus on younger adults. Additionally, we investigate how social media news use and news minimalism influence political and media trust, as well as affective polarization during an election campaign. We conducted a longitudinal survey during the run-up to the Dutch general election in November 2023 (Wave 1: N = 2405; Wave 2: N = 1785). Results show that…
What Matters to Voters? Analyzing the Influence of Targeted Online Ads on Perceived Issue Importance During the United States 2022 Midterm Election and the Dutch General Election 2021
Online advertising is an important component of political campaigning. With microtargeting techniques, voter groups who have shared concerns about specific issues can be identified and, subsequently, targeted with posts addressing those issues. This paper aims to provide an initial investigation into the dynamics and effects of targeted issue ads. We study whether these targeted persuasion efforts influence which issues matter to voters and, vice…
From permanent campaign to permanent communication: Parliamentarians’ cross-media practices in routine and election times
With the advent of social media, politicians must navigate an increasingly complex and fast-paced political communication landscape. Scholars have argued that the development pushes politicians to be in permanent campaign mode and that this, in turn, weakens their engagement in other policy-making tasks. In this study, we examine parliamentarians’ cross-media behaviors and strategies in a hybrid media environment in light of the theory of permane…
Affecting voters through eyes and mind? An eye-tracking study to understand how political preferences affect attention and memory of political advertisements
While online political targeting is increasingly used in political campaigns, its effect on voters’ attention toward political advertisements and the extent to which they are remembered remain unclear. This paper reports a within-subjects eye-tracking study (N = 135) to determine whether voters spend more time looking at political advertisements aligning with their political preferences while performing a goal-directed task. Moreover, it examines…
Embedding, embedding on the wall; who is the most prominent politician of them all? Exploring automated methods to study multimodal political news coverage
Although it is widely acknowledged that political communication is multimodal and that textual and visual modalities have an interactive effect on how content is interpreted, research thereto is still limited. In particular, methods for creating multimodal datasets are rarely discussed; their validation is typically omitted. This study addresses this gap by (1) designing and validating a reliable method to create a multimodal dataset, and (2) use…
Understanding the Complexity of News Avoidance: Insights from a Delphi Study among Journalism Experts
In this high-choice media landscape, we witness people avoiding news to substantial degrees. This avoidance behavior raises critical questions about its implications for informed citizenship and the normative role of news media. The research on news avoidance surged in the past five years. However, we know little about the interplay between by whom, why and how the news is avoided, and how that determines the implications. Therefore, we seek a fr…
How Ads Get in Our Head: Studying Processing of Political (Mis)Targeting Using a Thought-Listing Approach
This study aims to understand how people process, think about, and respond to targeted political ads (political microtargeting). Using an extensive online thought-listing experiment (N = 1,196), we are able to closely examine how people process targeted political advertising by exploring their cognitive responses. Results show that targeted political ads that are incongruent (mistargeted based on people’s political preferences) lead people to lis…
Unveiling Climate Adaptation: A Comprehensive Analysis of Agenda-Setting Dynamics in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands
Climate change adaptation occurs within a complex interplay of science, media, politics, policy, and the public. Using comparative longitudinal data (2012–2021) from online newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, policy documents, and social media, we analyze agenda-setting dynamics in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Vector autoregression models, incorporating scientific output as an exogenous variable, reveal traditional agenda-settin…
Uncovering the audience perspective: A qualitative analysis of experiences and evaluations of two immersive journalism productions in the Netherlands
There has been limited adoption of Immersive Journalism (IJ) by the audience; simultaneously, the audience’s perspective is rarely considered in the production and research of IJ. At this point, however, it is crucial to incorporate an audience perspective to identify potentially unintended effects of IJ and improve on the innovation of IJ. This study investigates the audience’s experience and evaluation of IJ by qualitatively analyzing their tho…
Are Certain Types of Microtargeting More Acceptable? Comparing US, German, and Dutch Citizens’ Attitudes
Much of the research on political microtargeting has focused on growing public concerns about its use in elections, fuelling calls for greater regulation or even a ban on the practice. We contend that a more nuanced understanding of public attitudes toward microtargeting is required before further regulation is considered. Drawing on advertising psychology research and the results of academic analyses into microtargeting, we argue that individual…
On or off topic? Understanding the effects of issue-related political targeted ads
Whilst data-driven strategies are allegedly prevalent in political campaigns, evidence regarding their actual effectiveness is scarce. This study investigates, from an individual perspective, the effect of issue congruency in political ads on immediate responses and voting behaviors. To reach our goal, we combined different types of data collection: mobile experience sampling method (mESM), panel survey, and content analysis. The combined approac…
Performing Discourse in Pursuit of Credibility: A Quantitative Content Analysis of Dutch Live Blogs
Live blogs are a popular format for covering crises, breaking news, politics, or sports events. Despite their popularity among journalists and the public, the format has also been subject to scholarly debate regarding the conflict between immediacy versus credibility, resulting in a high degree of uncertainty for producers and consumers. Journalists cope with this paradox by performing discourse: imposing valid and persuasive representations of t…
Understanding Digital Campaign Competence: Conceptualizing Data-Driven Political Advertising Literacy
Technological advancements create new ways of informing and persuading citizens in the political advertising context. Insights are limited regarding how citizens deal with data-driven political advertising (DDPA). This is problematic because the collection and combination of large amounts of data render them vulnerable to information and power asymmetries. Using multidisciplinary perspectives, this article discusses the digital campaign competenc…
Who Are They? Different Types of News Avoiders Based on Motives, Values and Personality Traits
The number of people that intentionally avoid the news is growing. This could have several personal and societal implications. Previous research exposed various motives to avoid news, which lead to different manifestations of news avoidance, and consequently different implications. However, so far less is known about the differences in news avoidance types. In this study, we aim to explore different profiles of news avoiders beyond demographics, …
What’s on and who’s Watching? Combining People-Meter Data and Subtitle Data to Explore Television Exposure to Political News
Understanding television viewing behavior is highly relevant, as it remains an important source of political news for many. Nowadays, viewers can choose between a growing diversity of formats covering political news, varying from traditional news broadcasts to late-night talk shows and satire. Yet, we have little to no information about the specific political content provided by television programs; and much less how this can be connected to view…
Citizens’ Acceptance of Data-Driven Political Campaigning: A 25-Country Cross-National Vignette Study
This paper investigates how the acceptance of data-driven political campaigning depends on four different message characteristics. A vignette study was conducted in 25 countries with a total of 14,390 respondents who all evaluated multiple descriptions of political advertisements. Relying on multi-level models, we find that in particular the source and the issue of the message matters. Messages that are sent by a party the respondent likes and de…
The Mix of Media Use Matters: Investigating the Effects of Individual News Repertoires on Offline and Online Political Participation
In contemporary high-choice media environments, people increasingly mix and combine their use of various news media into personal news repertoires. Despite this, there is still limited research on how people compose their individual news repertoires and the effects of these news repertoires. To address this and further our understanding of how media use influences political participation, this study investigates (a) how people combine the use of …
Learning From News on Different Media Platforms: An Eye-Tracking Experiment
A large number of studies focus on the effects of news consumption on learning. However, we know surprisingly little about how the process of news consumption itself influences learning across different platforms. This experimental study (N = 149) uses eye tracking to examine to what extent news modality (i.e., whether news is presented in a printed newspaper or on a news website) affects visual attention to news, and subsequently, knowledge. Res…
News Media Use and Political Engagement Among Adolescents: An Analysis of Virtuous Circles Using Panel Data
This study analyzes reinforcing spirals between news media use and two manifestations of political engagement: political interest and participation intention. Drawing on a three-wave panel study among adolescents, we test the Virtuous Circle Thesis (VCT) in both an online and an offline setting, by distinguishing between selection effects and media effects as key ingredients of the VCT. Overall, the findings lend mixed support to the general argu…
Unraveling the effects of active and passive forms of political Internet use: Does it affect citizens’ political involvement
In the time since the rise of the Internet, it has often been claimed that it has the potential to contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering citizens’ involvement in politics. So far, empirical evidence regarding this purported effect has been mixed, and many questions about the consequences of specific forms of political Internet use (PIU) have remained unanswered. This study expands the knowledge about the relation between PIU and pol…
Getting closer: The effects of personalized and interactive online political communication
Political parties and politicians increasingly use the possibilities of the Internet to communicate interactively with citizens and vice versa. The Internet also offers opportunities for individual politicians to profile themselves. These developments are often said to bring politics closer to citizens, increasing their political engagement in politics. Empirical evidence for such claims is, however, scarce. In a scenario experiment and a laborat…
Data-driven campaigning and democratic disruption: Evidence from six advanced democracies
Data-driven campaigning has become one of the key foci for academic and non-academic audiences interested in political communication. Widely seen to have transformed political practice, it is often argued that data-driven campaigning is a force of significant democratic disruption because it contributes to a fragmentation of political discourse, undermines prevailing systems of electoral accountability and subverts ‘free’ and ‘fair’ elections. In…
Digital diplomacy in GCC countries: Strategic communication of Western embassies on Twitter
Understanding the Effects of Personalization as a Privacy Calculus: Analyzing Self-Disclosure Across Health, News, and Commerce Contexts
The privacy calculus suggests that online self-disclosure is based on a cost–benefit trade-off. However, although companies progressively collect information to offer tailored services, the effect of both personalization and context-dependency on self-disclosure has remained understudied. Building on the privacy calculus, we hypothesized that benefits, privacy costs, and trust would predict online self-disclosure. Moreover, we analyzed the impact…
Invisible Friend or Foe?How Journalists Use and Perceive Algorithmic-Driven Tools in Their Research Process
The use of algorithmic tools by journalists for information-gathering has received particular attention in recent years. While it might facilitate the research process, there are also concerns about their impact on journalism. Based on reconstruction interviews with 27 journalists, we first answer the primary question to what extent journalists actually use algorithmic-driven tools for research purposes. Then, we analyze which folk theories journ…
A first-person promise? A content-analysis of immersive journalistic productions
Major news outlets increasingly use immersive techniques in their journalistic productions. The idea is that, through the application of immersive technologies, the news consumer can engage with and be part of the story. However, we do not know, to what extent this promise is actually fulfilled in productions currently accessible to news audiences. This study uses a multi-step approach to fill this knowledge gap. First, based on an interdisciplin…
News Consumer Perceptions of New Journalistic Sourcing Techniques
This study examines how news consumers evaluate the use of digital sources in the journalistic news production process. It also assesses to what extent credibility judgments depend on whether consumers learn that journalists have visibly verified the information they have obtained from a certain source. Using a scenario study, we found that scenarios picturing online sourcing techniques, such as using information from Twitter and Facebook, are pe…
Citizens’ Acceptance of Data-Driven Political Campaigning: A 25-Country Cross-National Vignette Study
This paper investigates how the acceptance of data-driven political campaigning depends on four different message characteristics. A vignette study was conducted in 25 countries with a total of 14,390 respondents who all evaluated multiple descriptions of political advertisements. Relying on multi-level models, we find that in particular the source and the issue of the message matters. Messages that are sent by a party the respondent likes and de…
Who Are They? Different Types of News Avoiders Based on Motives, Values and Personality Traits
The number of people that intentionally avoid the news is growing. This could have several personal and societal implications. Previous research exposed various motives to avoid news, which lead to different manifestations of news avoidance, and consequently different implications. However, so far less is known about the differences in news avoidance types. In this study, we aim to explore different profiles of news avoiders beyond demographics, …
Do Online Ads Sway Voters? Understanding the Persuasiveness of Online Political Ads
This study investigates the effect of online political ads on party preference, and whether this effect is more pronounced for newer political parties and voters who are less politically knowledgeable and literate regarding online privacy. A mixed-method approach, combining Facebook browser tracking data and a four-wave panel survey, was adopted during the 2021 Dutch General Election campaign. The results showed that the number of political ads r…
Conceptualizing long-term media effects on societal beliefs
This article critically examines long-term media effects in communication research. Focusing on news exposure, the purpose is to provide a review and theoretical conceptualization of long-term effects on societal beliefs. The first part presents an empirical overview of research published in leading communication journals. While longitudinal studies are not uncommon, few have an explicit and elaborated focus on long-term influences. To advance fu…
Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media
This study examines the extent to which politicians' visibility in traditional news coverage explains individual politicians' visibility on social media, and vice versa. We also explore whether these relationships depend on commonly identified characteristics of individual politicians. We collected data for all elected candidates from the 2012 Dutch national elections covering each 15 days prior to the election day (N = 2250). This includes 2736 …
Party and Candidate Websites: A Comparative Explanatory Analysis
This study provides a systematic investigation of party and candidate websites across five countries. It examines three prominent features of current online political communication (interactivity, political personalization, and mobilization). Furthermore it assesses to what extent country, party, and source characteristics explain differences in the usage of these features. In total, 63 websites and 416 pages in Germany, Romania, Hungary, the Net…
Understanding the democratic role of perceived online political micro-targeting: Longitudinal effects on trust in democracy and political interest
With the increasing availability of big digital voter data, there are rising concerns that online political micro-targeting (PMT) may be harmful for democratic societies. However, PMT may also be beneficial to democracy because it targets voters with content that matches with their predispositions, potentially increasing political interest. For both, harmful and beneficial outcomes of PMT, we lack empirical evidence on the side of citizens. In a …
Using Panel Data to Study Political Interest, News Media Trust, and News Media use in the Early Stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic
During times of crisis or instability, citizens are more reliant on news media as a source of information. We need to better understand which news media people consume, how it changes over time, and whether two important predictors of news use – political interest and news media trust – affect news use during times of crisis. Specifically, we investigate the reciprocal dynamics between news media use, political interest, and news media trust in t…
WhatsApp with Politics: Examining the Effects of Interpersonal Political Discussion in Instant Messaging Apps
With an increasing number of people, especially adolescents, using more private online platforms, such as WhatsApp, for news, an important question for democracy is whether such platforms can facilitate learning about politics and current events. In this study, we examine adolescents’ affective (emotions, feelings), behavioral (actions and behavioral intentions), and cognitive (political knowledge) responses to interpersonal political discussion …
From “Cool Observer” to “Emotional Participant”: The Practice of Immersive Journalism
Over the past years, innovative technologies (such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) have become more common within news organizations. These technologies allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world. With these types of productions, the journalist tries to engage and involve the user by introducing emotional styles, often to create empathy. This does not only demand new technological skills, but also…
When Does an Infographic Say More Than a Thousand Words: Audience evaluations of news visualizations
In recent years, the use of visualizations or infographics in the news has become increasingly popular. We know, however, surprisingly little about how news consumers use and appreciate news visualizations. We apply a mixed-method approach to answer these two questions. First, we conduct an eye-tracking study that measures use, by means of direct attention to visualizations on three different news platforms (print newspaper, e-newspaper on tablet…
The smartphone as a tool for mobile communication research: Assessing mobile campaign perceptions and effects with experience sampling
Mobile communication differs from other forms of mediated communication in terms of connectedness, dynamics, omnipresence, and interactivity. Consequently, it can be difficult for scholars to investigate mobile communication using traditional research methods. The main goal of this article is to show how the mobile experience sampling method (MESM), in combination with data donations, can be useful for addressing the challenges of mobile communic…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Meeting the Digital Demand through a Multi-Perspective Methodological Approach
This introduction to the special issue makes the argument that, in order to understand journalistic production and consumption in an increasingly complex digital world, journalism studies must employ research designs that combine methods from different academic perspectives and disciplines. In particular, we propose increased collaboration with scholars working in information technology, the arts, psychology, and data science
Shielding citizens? Understanding the impact of political advertisement transparency information
Online targeted advertising leverages an information asymmetry between the advertiser and the recipient. Policymakers in the European Union and the United States aim to decrease this asymmetry by requiring information transparency information alongside political advertisements, in the hope of activating citizens’ persuasion knowledge. However, the proposed regulations all present different directions with regard to the required content of transpa…
Unraveling the effects of active and passive forms of political Internet use: Does it affect citizens’ political involvement
In the time since the rise of the Internet, it has often been claimed that it has the potential to contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering citizens’ involvement in politics. So far, empirical evidence regarding this purported effect has been mixed, and many questions about the consequences of specific forms of political Internet use (PIU) have remained unanswered. This study expands the knowledge about the relation between PIU and pol…
Getting closer: The effects of personalized and interactive online political communication
Political parties and politicians increasingly use the possibilities of the Internet to communicate interactively with citizens and vice versa. The Internet also offers opportunities for individual politicians to profile themselves. These developments are often said to bring politics closer to citizens, increasing their political engagement in politics. Empirical evidence for such claims is, however, scarce. In a scenario experiment and a laborat…
How political candidates use Twitter and the impact on votes
Party and Candidate Websites: A Comparative Explanatory Analysis
This study provides a systematic investigation of party and candidate websites across five countries. It examines three prominent features of current online political communication (interactivity, political personalization, and mobilization). Furthermore it assesses to what extent country, party, and source characteristics explain differences in the usage of these features. In total, 63 websites and 416 pages in Germany, Romania, Hungary, the Net…
Digital diplomacy in GCC countries: Strategic communication of Western embassies on Twitter
Return on interactivity? The characteristics and effectiveness of Web sites during the 2010 Dutch local elections
This article examines the use of interactive features (i.e., discussion and participation features) on the Web sites of Dutch political parties during the 2010 local elections campaign and investigates whether a relationship exists between interactivity and election results. A manual content analysis of 2,135 party Web sites demonstrates that Web sites from national parties that compete in local elections are more interactive than those of indepe…
News Consumer Perceptions of New Journalistic Sourcing Techniques
This study examines how news consumers evaluate the use of digital sources in the journalistic news production process. It also assesses to what extent credibility judgments depend on whether consumers learn that journalists have visibly verified the information they have obtained from a certain source. Using a scenario study, we found that scenarios picturing online sourcing techniques, such as using information from Twitter and Facebook, are pe…
Online Behavioral Advertising: A Literature Review and Research Agenda
Advertisers are increasingly monitoring people's online behavior and using the information collected to show people individually targeted advertisements. This phenomenon is called online behavioral advertising (OBA). Although advertisers can benefit from OBA, the practice also raises concerns about privacy. Therefore, OBA has received much attention from advertisers, consumers, policymakers, and scholars. Despite this attention, there is neither …
When Does an Infographic Say More Than a Thousand Words: Audience evaluations of news visualizations
In recent years, the use of visualizations or infographics in the news has become increasingly popular. We know, however, surprisingly little about how news consumers use and appreciate news visualizations. We apply a mixed-method approach to answer these two questions. First, we conduct an eye-tracking study that measures use, by means of direct attention to visualizations on three different news platforms (print newspaper, e-newspaper on tablet…
News Media Use and Political Engagement Among Adolescents: An Analysis of Virtuous Circles Using Panel Data
This study analyzes reinforcing spirals between news media use and two manifestations of political engagement: political interest and participation intention. Drawing on a three-wave panel study among adolescents, we test the Virtuous Circle Thesis (VCT) in both an online and an offline setting, by distinguishing between selection effects and media effects as key ingredients of the VCT. Overall, the findings lend mixed support to the general argu…
Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy
Online political microtargeting involves monitoring people’s online behaviour, and using the collected data, sometimes enriched with other data, to show people-targeted political advertisements. Online political microtargeting is widely used in the US; Europe may not be far behind. This paper maps microtargeting’s promises and threats to democracy. For example, microtargeting promises to optimise the match between the electorate’s concerns and po…
Internet Use and Political Interest: Growth Curves, Reinforcing Spirals, and Causal Effects During Adolescence
This study analyzes reinforcing spirals between online media usage and political interest among adolescents. By applying a two-dimensional conceptualization of online media usage that distinguishes between content and interactivity characteristics, the study focuses on the mechanisms and processes stimulating the long-term development of political interest during adolescence. Findings from a unique, six-wave panel study conducted in Sweden over a…
Understanding the Effects of Personalization as a Privacy Calculus: Analyzing Self-Disclosure Across Health, News, and Commerce Contexts
The privacy calculus suggests that online self-disclosure is based on a cost–benefit trade-off. However, although companies progressively collect information to offer tailored services, the effect of both personalization and context-dependency on self-disclosure has remained understudied. Building on the privacy calculus, we hypothesized that benefits, privacy costs, and trust would predict online self-disclosure. Moreover, we analyzed the impact…
Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media
This study examines the extent to which politicians' visibility in traditional news coverage explains individual politicians' visibility on social media, and vice versa. We also explore whether these relationships depend on commonly identified characteristics of individual politicians. We collected data for all elected candidates from the 2012 Dutch national elections covering each 15 days prior to the election day (N = 2250). This includes 2736 …
The Mix of Media Use Matters: Investigating the Effects of Individual News Repertoires on Offline and Online Political Participation
In contemporary high-choice media environments, people increasingly mix and combine their use of various news media into personal news repertoires. Despite this, there is still limited research on how people compose their individual news repertoires and the effects of these news repertoires. To address this and further our understanding of how media use influences political participation, this study investigates (a) how people combine the use of …
Learning From News on Different Media Platforms: An Eye-Tracking Experiment
A large number of studies focus on the effects of news consumption on learning. However, we know surprisingly little about how the process of news consumption itself influences learning across different platforms. This experimental study (N = 149) uses eye tracking to examine to what extent news modality (i.e., whether news is presented in a printed newspaper or on a news website) affects visual attention to news, and subsequently, knowledge. Res…
Online News User Journeys: The Role of Social Media, News Websites, and Topics
The complexity and diversity of today’s media landscape provides many challenges for scholars studying online news consumption. Yet it is unclear how news consumers navigate online. Moving forward, we used a custom-built browser plug-in—passively tracking Dutch online news consumers 24/7—to examine how context (website) and content (news topic) features affect patterns of online news consumption. This resulted in a data set containing more than o…
Personalization of politics on Facebook: Examining the content and effects of professional, emotional and private self-personalization
With the integration of social media in political communication repertoires, politicians now permanently campaign for support online. By promoting their personal agenda, politicians increasingly profile themselves independent from their associated parties on the web (i.e., self-personalization). By focusing on self-personalization as a multi-layered concept (i.e., professional, emotional, private self-personalization), this study investigates bot…
In AI we trust? Perceptions about automated decision-making by artificial intelligence
WhatsApp with Politics: Examining the Effects of Interpersonal Political Discussion in Instant Messaging Apps
With an increasing number of people, especially adolescents, using more private online platforms, such as WhatsApp, for news, an important question for democracy is whether such platforms can facilitate learning about politics and current events. In this study, we examine adolescents’ affective (emotions, feelings), behavioral (actions and behavioral intentions), and cognitive (political knowledge) responses to interpersonal political discussion …
Introduction to the Special Issue: Meeting the Digital Demand through a Multi-Perspective Methodological Approach
This introduction to the special issue makes the argument that, in order to understand journalistic production and consumption in an increasingly complex digital world, journalism studies must employ research designs that combine methods from different academic perspectives and disciplines. In particular, we propose increased collaboration with scholars working in information technology, the arts, psychology, and data science
A first-person promise? A content-analysis of immersive journalistic productions
Major news outlets increasingly use immersive techniques in their journalistic productions. The idea is that, through the application of immersive technologies, the news consumer can engage with and be part of the story. However, we do not know, to what extent this promise is actually fulfilled in productions currently accessible to news audiences. This study uses a multi-step approach to fill this knowledge gap. First, based on an interdisciplin…
Exploring Motivations for Online Privacy Protection Behavior: Insights From Panel Data
Personally managing and protecting online privacy has become an essential part of everyday life. This research draws on the protection motivation theory (PMT) to investigate privacy protective behavior online. A two-wave panel study ( N = 928) shows that (1) people rarely to occasionally protect their online privacy and (2) people most often delete cookies and browser history or decline cookies to protect their online privacy. In addition, (3) th…
News Avoidance during the Covid-19 Crisis: Understanding Information Overload
This study investigates the degree of news avoidance during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. Based on two panel surveys conducted in the period April–June 2020, this study shows that the increased presence of this behavior, can be explained by negative emotions and feelings the news causes by citizens. Moreover, news avoidance indeed has a positive effect on perceived well-being. These findings point to an acting bala…
How Algorithmic Systems Changed Communication in a Digital Society
This thematic issue invited submissions that address the opportunities and controversies related to algorithmic influence in a digital society. A total of 11 articles address how the use of algorithms has changed communication in various contexts, and cover topics such as personalized marketing communication, self-tracking for health, political microtargeting, news recommenders, social media algorithms, and urban experiences. The articles also in…
Social Media and Politics (50 works) · Political science (47 works) · Psychology (39 works) · Politics (38 works) · Computer Science (37 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Law (29 works) · Media Studies and Communication (29 works) · Business (27 works) · Social Psychology (27 works)