Ozan Kuru
Biographic Data
| ID | 322743 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ozan Kuru |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ozan |
| FAMILY NAME | Kuru |
| SIGNATURE | KURU O |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0485-1705 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Medical Decision Making in Relative Risk Scenarios: Understanding the Challenges of Communicating Alternative Health
1,020 individuals in Singapore, a country where AH is widely used. Drawing from the orientation-stimulus-reasoning-orientation-response model, we investigated 1) the mechanism in the relationship between AH media usage and willingness to use AH versus conventional treatments by probing the (serial) mediating roles of risk-benefit perceptions of AH versus conventional treatments and belief in AH-related misinformation, and 2) the moderating role o…
Conditioning Public Opinion Perceptions by “Survey Methods 101”: Informing, Engaging, and Motivating Individuals for Critical Processing of Public Opinion Polls
Can we train individuals on survey methods to boost their critical processing of public opinion evidence? While polls are one of the most systematic and scientific methods for measuring and communicating public opinion, they face credibility challenges, such as decreasing public trust, the prevalence of straw and misinformation polls, and individuals’ biased dismissal of polls that deliver unfavorable results. These issues manifest and fuel mispe…
The effect of thinking styles on belief in conspiracy theories in the context of Covid-19
From alternative health media to vaccine misbeliefs: The roles of medical folk wisdom and institutional trust
Although alternative health (AH) digital media plays a substantial role in disseminating misinformation and contributing to misconceptions about health-related topics, the intermediary mechanisms and boundary conditions of this relationship need further investigation. In this study, we focus on two key constructs that are related to beliefs and attitudes about the healthcare system, (1) belief in medical folk wisdom (MFW) and (2) trust in health …
Perceived political incivility and trust in government: The moderating roles of election news exposure and favorability of election outcomes
While extensive research has shown that political incivility can lead to unfavorable democratic outcomes, our understanding of the dynamics in election campaigns is limited. The current study investigates the effects of perceived political incivility on trust in government by taking into account both informational and motivational factors during elections: the distinct channels through which individuals receive election news (institutional, socia…
Understanding the Effects of Visual Misinformation: A Systematic Review of 10 Years (2014–2024)
Campaign Deepfakes and Affective Polarization: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Campaigns in Shaping Voter Attitudes
Does exposure to news about out-party campaigns’ increasing use of deepfakes further increase polarization among partisans, and how does this impact vary among different evaluations of political coalitions, parties, and leaders? What role does approval for candidates’ usage of AI play as a moderator in this relationship? This paper examines these questions using data from a survey experiment ( N = 1627), in which each respondent exposed to a news…
Exploring Alternative Health Facebook Groups in the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Automated Content Analysis Through Structural Topic Modeling
Alternative health (AH) has an important role in public health across cultures, as the World Health Organization acknowledges. Using structural topic modeling, we analyzed 25,561 posts from public Facebook groups that contained AH-related content during the COVID-19 pandemic over 3 years. Thirty-one topics emerged, and they were categorized into six major themes, including (1) sharing information regarding AH treatment for COVID-19, (2) spiritual…
Partisan Bias in Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories: News Reliance and the Moderating Role of Trust in Health Authorities
Neglecting the role of political bias in the public’s perceptions of health authorities could be deceptive when studying potentially politicized COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CCTs); however, previous studies often treated health authorities as a single entity and did not distinguish between different types of CCTs. Drawing from motivated reasoning theory, we investigate the politically motivated nature of CCTs by examining their associations with…
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
Explaining Health Misinformation Belief through News, Social, and Alternative Health Media Use: The Moderating Roles of Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition
Explaining the spread and impact of health misinformation has garnered considerable attention with the uptake of social media and group messaging applications. This study contributes to that line of work by investigating how reliance on multiple digital media may help support or suppress misinformation belief, and how individual differences in misinformation susceptibility condition this process. Alternative health outlets (AH media), advocating …
Covid-19 News Exposure and Vaccinations: A Moderated Mediation of Digital News Literacy Behavior and Vaccine Misperceptions
Being exposed to and believing in misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines is a challenge for vaccine acceptance. Yet, how countervailing factors such as news literacy could complicate "the information exposure-belief in vaccine misinformation-vaccination" path needs to be unpacked to understand the communication of scientific information about COVID-19. This study examines (1) the mediating role of belief in vaccine misinformation between COVID-19…
The Great and Powerful Dr. Oz? Alternative Health Media Consumption and Vaccine Views in the United States
Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, until recently the host of a nationally syndicated U.S. television show, is among the media figures who have espoused health views unsanctioned by established medical authorities such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. In a large, probability-based national longitudinal study, we examine the prevalence and consequences of consuming alternative health media (…
Biased perceptions against female scientists affect intentions to get vaccinated for Covid-19
Based on role congruity theory, we investigated how gender bias may influence public attitudes toward the vaccine in Turkey. Using a between-subjects design, we tested whether an emphasis on the female versus the male scientist as the vaccine’s inventor in a news story influenced attitudes about the BioNTech vaccine and vaccination intentions. Partly confirming role congruity theory, three-way interaction results from 665 participants demonstrate…
Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll Messages
This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated asse…
Religious affiliation and philosophical and moral beliefs about vaccines: A longitudinal study
How do religious affiliation and beliefs shape vaccine attitudes and behaviors? This study examined the associations of attitudes and behaviors relevant to the flu, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), and human-papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines with religious affiliations, as well as philosophical, spiritual, and moral beliefs. Respondents were 3005 adults from a probability-based, four-wave panel survey in the United States. Longitudinal structural equatio…
Who Gets Exposed to Political Misinformation in a Hybrid Media Environment? The Case of the 2019 Indonesian Election
In the wake of the US 2016 Presidential Election, concerns about misinformation traversing on social media have heightened. Since then, much of the public discourse has been on developing effective strategies to combat the spread of misinformation online. While several studies have focused on the effects of a mixed/hybrid regime of information channels on political participation and campaigns, we know little about how the existence of a hybrid me…
Social by definition: How users define social platforms and why it matters
When Pundits Weigh In: Do Expert and Partisan Critiques in News Reports Shape Ordinary Individuals’ Interpretations of Polls
Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the …
Policy Views and Negative Beliefs About Vaccines in the United States, 2019
Objectives. To determine whether holding vaccine misconceptions, in the form of negative beliefs about vaccines, correlates with opposing governmental action at all levels designed to increase vaccination (e.g., removing personal belief and religious vaccine exemptions). Methods. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey of 1938 US adults, we assessed the relation between negative beliefs about vaccines and provaccination policies. …
When Polls Disagree: How Competitive Results and Methodological Quality Shape Partisan Perceptions of Polls and Electoral Predictions
This study leverages a survey experiment in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election to evaluate how partisan biases, poll results, and their methodological quality interact to shape people’s assessments of polling accuracy and electoral expectations. In a nationally representative sample, we find that individuals disproportionately find polls more credible when their preferred candidate is leading. Partisan biases are mitigated when th…
Motivated Reasoning in the Perceived Credibility of Public Opinion Polls
How do citizens’ motivations shape their perceptions of poll reports? Increasingly, scholars are finding that citizens engage in motivated reasoning, whereby they discredit information that differs from their preexisting attitudes. The perceived credibility of opinion polls might be prone to similar motivational processes, as individuals could discount results suggesting that they hold minority opinions. We assess whether motivated reasoning infl…
Understanding and measuring mobile Facebook use: Who, why, and how
Although social media are increasingly used through mobile devices, the differences between mobile and computer-based practices remain unclear. This study attempts to tease out some of these differences through multiple analytical strategies and samples. Drawing on theoretical expectations about the affordances, motivations, and cognition of mobile use, we investigate who uses mobile Facebook, why they use it, and how they use it. To do this, we …
Motivated Reasoning in the Perceived Credibility of Public Opinion Polls
How do citizens’ motivations shape their perceptions of poll reports? Increasingly, scholars are finding that citizens engage in motivated reasoning, whereby they discredit information that differs from their preexisting attitudes. The perceived credibility of opinion polls might be prone to similar motivational processes, as individuals could discount results suggesting that they hold minority opinions. We assess whether motivated reasoning infl…
When Polls Disagree: How Competitive Results and Methodological Quality Shape Partisan Perceptions of Polls and Electoral Predictions
This study leverages a survey experiment in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election to evaluate how partisan biases, poll results, and their methodological quality interact to shape people’s assessments of polling accuracy and electoral expectations. In a nationally representative sample, we find that individuals disproportionately find polls more credible when their preferred candidate is leading. Partisan biases are mitigated when th…
Religious affiliation and philosophical and moral beliefs about vaccines: A longitudinal study
How do religious affiliation and beliefs shape vaccine attitudes and behaviors? This study examined the associations of attitudes and behaviors relevant to the flu, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), and human-papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines with religious affiliations, as well as philosophical, spiritual, and moral beliefs. Respondents were 3005 adults from a probability-based, four-wave panel survey in the United States. Longitudinal structural equatio…
Who Gets Exposed to Political Misinformation in a Hybrid Media Environment? The Case of the 2019 Indonesian Election
In the wake of the US 2016 Presidential Election, concerns about misinformation traversing on social media have heightened. Since then, much of the public discourse has been on developing effective strategies to combat the spread of misinformation online. While several studies have focused on the effects of a mixed/hybrid regime of information channels on political participation and campaigns, we know little about how the existence of a hybrid me…
Policy Views and Negative Beliefs About Vaccines in the United States, 2019
Objectives. To determine whether holding vaccine misconceptions, in the form of negative beliefs about vaccines, correlates with opposing governmental action at all levels designed to increase vaccination (e.g., removing personal belief and religious vaccine exemptions). Methods. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey of 1938 US adults, we assessed the relation between negative beliefs about vaccines and provaccination policies. …
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll Messages
This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated asse…
When Pundits Weigh In: Do Expert and Partisan Critiques in News Reports Shape Ordinary Individuals’ Interpretations of Polls
Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the …
Understanding and measuring mobile Facebook use: Who, why, and how
Although social media are increasingly used through mobile devices, the differences between mobile and computer-based practices remain unclear. This study attempts to tease out some of these differences through multiple analytical strategies and samples. Drawing on theoretical expectations about the affordances, motivations, and cognition of mobile use, we investigate who uses mobile Facebook, why they use it, and how they use it. To do this, we …
Understanding and measuring mobile Facebook use: Who, why, and how
Although social media are increasingly used through mobile devices, the differences between mobile and computer-based practices remain unclear. This study attempts to tease out some of these differences through multiple analytical strategies and samples. Drawing on theoretical expectations about the affordances, motivations, and cognition of mobile use, we investigate who uses mobile Facebook, why they use it, and how they use it. To do this, we …
Motivated Reasoning in the Perceived Credibility of Public Opinion Polls
How do citizens’ motivations shape their perceptions of poll reports? Increasingly, scholars are finding that citizens engage in motivated reasoning, whereby they discredit information that differs from their preexisting attitudes. The perceived credibility of opinion polls might be prone to similar motivational processes, as individuals could discount results suggesting that they hold minority opinions. We assess whether motivated reasoning infl…
When Polls Disagree: How Competitive Results and Methodological Quality Shape Partisan Perceptions of Polls and Electoral Predictions
This study leverages a survey experiment in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election to evaluate how partisan biases, poll results, and their methodological quality interact to shape people’s assessments of polling accuracy and electoral expectations. In a nationally representative sample, we find that individuals disproportionately find polls more credible when their preferred candidate is leading. Partisan biases are mitigated when th…
When Pundits Weigh In: Do Expert and Partisan Critiques in News Reports Shape Ordinary Individuals’ Interpretations of Polls
Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the …
Policy Views and Negative Beliefs About Vaccines in the United States, 2019
Objectives. To determine whether holding vaccine misconceptions, in the form of negative beliefs about vaccines, correlates with opposing governmental action at all levels designed to increase vaccination (e.g., removing personal belief and religious vaccine exemptions). Methods. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey of 1938 US adults, we assessed the relation between negative beliefs about vaccines and provaccination policies. …
Social by definition: How users define social platforms and why it matters
The Great and Powerful Dr. Oz? Alternative Health Media Consumption and Vaccine Views in the United States
Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, until recently the host of a nationally syndicated U.S. television show, is among the media figures who have espoused health views unsanctioned by established medical authorities such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. In a large, probability-based national longitudinal study, we examine the prevalence and consequences of consuming alternative health media (…
Biased perceptions against female scientists affect intentions to get vaccinated for Covid-19
Based on role congruity theory, we investigated how gender bias may influence public attitudes toward the vaccine in Turkey. Using a between-subjects design, we tested whether an emphasis on the female versus the male scientist as the vaccine’s inventor in a news story influenced attitudes about the BioNTech vaccine and vaccination intentions. Partly confirming role congruity theory, three-way interaction results from 665 participants demonstrate…
Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll Messages
This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated asse…
Religious affiliation and philosophical and moral beliefs about vaccines: A longitudinal study
How do religious affiliation and beliefs shape vaccine attitudes and behaviors? This study examined the associations of attitudes and behaviors relevant to the flu, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), and human-papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines with religious affiliations, as well as philosophical, spiritual, and moral beliefs. Respondents were 3005 adults from a probability-based, four-wave panel survey in the United States. Longitudinal structural equatio…
Who Gets Exposed to Political Misinformation in a Hybrid Media Environment? The Case of the 2019 Indonesian Election
In the wake of the US 2016 Presidential Election, concerns about misinformation traversing on social media have heightened. Since then, much of the public discourse has been on developing effective strategies to combat the spread of misinformation online. While several studies have focused on the effects of a mixed/hybrid regime of information channels on political participation and campaigns, we know little about how the existence of a hybrid me…
Explaining Health Misinformation Belief through News, Social, and Alternative Health Media Use: The Moderating Roles of Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition
Explaining the spread and impact of health misinformation has garnered considerable attention with the uptake of social media and group messaging applications. This study contributes to that line of work by investigating how reliance on multiple digital media may help support or suppress misinformation belief, and how individual differences in misinformation susceptibility condition this process. Alternative health outlets (AH media), advocating …
Covid-19 News Exposure and Vaccinations: A Moderated Mediation of Digital News Literacy Behavior and Vaccine Misperceptions
Being exposed to and believing in misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines is a challenge for vaccine acceptance. Yet, how countervailing factors such as news literacy could complicate "the information exposure-belief in vaccine misinformation-vaccination" path needs to be unpacked to understand the communication of scientific information about COVID-19. This study examines (1) the mediating role of belief in vaccine misinformation between COVID-19…
Exploring Alternative Health Facebook Groups in the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Automated Content Analysis Through Structural Topic Modeling
Alternative health (AH) has an important role in public health across cultures, as the World Health Organization acknowledges. Using structural topic modeling, we analyzed 25,561 posts from public Facebook groups that contained AH-related content during the COVID-19 pandemic over 3 years. Thirty-one topics emerged, and they were categorized into six major themes, including (1) sharing information regarding AH treatment for COVID-19, (2) spiritual…
Partisan Bias in Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories: News Reliance and the Moderating Role of Trust in Health Authorities
Neglecting the role of political bias in the public’s perceptions of health authorities could be deceptive when studying potentially politicized COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CCTs); however, previous studies often treated health authorities as a single entity and did not distinguish between different types of CCTs. Drawing from motivated reasoning theory, we investigate the politically motivated nature of CCTs by examining their associations with…
The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India
In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded …
The effect of thinking styles on belief in conspiracy theories in the context of Covid-19
From alternative health media to vaccine misbeliefs: The roles of medical folk wisdom and institutional trust
Although alternative health (AH) digital media plays a substantial role in disseminating misinformation and contributing to misconceptions about health-related topics, the intermediary mechanisms and boundary conditions of this relationship need further investigation. In this study, we focus on two key constructs that are related to beliefs and attitudes about the healthcare system, (1) belief in medical folk wisdom (MFW) and (2) trust in health …
Perceived political incivility and trust in government: The moderating roles of election news exposure and favorability of election outcomes
While extensive research has shown that political incivility can lead to unfavorable democratic outcomes, our understanding of the dynamics in election campaigns is limited. The current study investigates the effects of perceived political incivility on trust in government by taking into account both informational and motivational factors during elections: the distinct channels through which individuals receive election news (institutional, socia…
Understanding the Effects of Visual Misinformation: A Systematic Review of 10 Years (2014–2024)
Campaign Deepfakes and Affective Polarization: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Campaigns in Shaping Voter Attitudes
Does exposure to news about out-party campaigns’ increasing use of deepfakes further increase polarization among partisans, and how does this impact vary among different evaluations of political coalitions, parties, and leaders? What role does approval for candidates’ usage of AI play as a moderator in this relationship? This paper examines these questions using data from a survey experiment ( N = 1627), in which each respondent exposed to a news…
Medical Decision Making in Relative Risk Scenarios: Understanding the Challenges of Communicating Alternative Health
1,020 individuals in Singapore, a country where AH is widely used. Drawing from the orientation-stimulus-reasoning-orientation-response model, we investigated 1) the mechanism in the relationship between AH media usage and willingness to use AH versus conventional treatments by probing the (serial) mediating roles of risk-benefit perceptions of AH versus conventional treatments and belief in AH-related misinformation, and 2) the moderating role o…
Conditioning Public Opinion Perceptions by “Survey Methods 101”: Informing, Engaging, and Motivating Individuals for Critical Processing of Public Opinion Polls
Can we train individuals on survey methods to boost their critical processing of public opinion evidence? While polls are one of the most systematic and scientific methods for measuring and communicating public opinion, they face credibility challenges, such as decreasing public trust, the prevalence of straw and misinformation polls, and individuals’ biased dismissal of polls that deliver unfavorable results. These issues manifest and fuel mispe…
Psychology (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Social Media and Politics (10 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Medicine (8 works) · Perception (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)