Ming M Boyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 4377968 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ming M Boyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ming M |
| FAMILY NAME | Boyer |
| SIGNATURE | BOYER M M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8475-2960 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Negative Campaigns, Negative Votes? Meanings of Voting and Political Campaigns
Negative campaigns can have different effects on voting behavior and political attitudes. While recent work has differentiated between contexts and campaigns, few have investigated the mechanisms underlying the effects of negative campaigns. We argue that negative campaigning may affect whether citizens understand voting as supporting one candidate or party (positive meanings of voting), as opposing another (negative meanings of voting), or even …
Voting against or against voting
Politics is increasingly negative, especially surrounding elections, raising concerns about mass disengagement and democratic backsliding. Despite these worries, the literature on how negativity in voting affects democratic attitudes and voting intentions is riddled with ambiguous and contradictory results. We argue that this may partly be due to the failure to distinguish between two types of negativity in voting: (a) understanding voting as a w…
Trust in Government or in Technology? What Really Drives Internet Voting
Internet voting is considered a crucial potential technological innovation, and scholars agree that trust plays a key role for its adoption and use by citizens. But which type of trust is essential, trust in government or trust in technology? We leverage on a cross-sectional analysis and a preregistered online experiment in Estonia to test a multidimensional trust framework. Examining the impact of trust dimensions on i-voting likelihood, we unve…
Don’t Throw the Frame Out With the Bathwater
Framing research has predominantly revealed detrimental effects of episodic news frames, including individualist blame attributions and political cynicism. However, such frames may also discourage group biases and impede motivated reasoning regarding identity politics. In two experiments ( N = 815; N = 1,019), we test the effect of episodic frames on group-consonant attitudes through identity-motivated reasoning. The two studies produce mixed res…
Can We Counteract Hate? Effects of Online Hate Speech and Counter Speech on the Perception of Social Groups
Hate speech can increase stereotyped thinking and social distancing in a society. However, there is still a lack of variety in the social groups under study and research into possible solutions to the problem. Thus, our aim is to (1) study effects of hate speech against Chinese people and transgender people and (2) to investigate if counter speech can offset the detrimental effects of hate speech. We conducted a pre-registered online experiment w…
Social mobility or social change? How different groups react to identity-related news
In times of identity politics, journalists use group primes to organize events and reduce their complexity. Because research has mostly investigated the effects of single group primes on opinion formation and news selection, two aspects of group primes in the news have remained understudied: (1) whether they directly affect group identification itself, and (2) how these effects differ between groups. This experiment ( N = 750) shows that group pr…
Populist attitudes and politicians’ disinformation accusations
Populist politicians increasingly accuse opposing media of spreading disinformation or “fake news.” However, empirical research on the effects of these accusations is scarce. This survey experiment (N = 1,330) shows that disinformation accusations reduce audience members’ trust in the accused news outlet and perceived accuracy of the news message, while trust in the accusing politician is largely unaffected. However, only individuals with strong …
Motivated Reasoning in Identity Politics
Western democracies are increasingly defined by identity politics, where politics appeals to both political and other social identities. Consequently, political information processing should depend not just on political identity, but also on other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. For any given issue, we argue that the extent to which reasoning is motivated by one’s political identity depends on citizens’ group status in other relev…
Aroused Argumentation
There is increasing evidence that citizens consume the news because it arouses them. However, to explain the motivated processing of news messages, research usually focuses on negative discrete emotions or the valence dimension of affect. This means that the role of arousal is largely overlooked. In this experiment, conducted in 2019 in Austria, I exposed 191 citizens to a televised news item about immigration—varying the level of threat, while t…
Learning From News on Different Media Platforms
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…
Learning From News on Different Media Platforms
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…
Motivated Reasoning in Identity Politics
Western democracies are increasingly defined by identity politics, where politics appeals to both political and other social identities. Consequently, political information processing should depend not just on political identity, but also on other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. For any given issue, we argue that the extent to which reasoning is motivated by one’s political identity depends on citizens’ group status in other relev…
Aroused Argumentation
There is increasing evidence that citizens consume the news because it arouses them. However, to explain the motivated processing of news messages, research usually focuses on negative discrete emotions or the valence dimension of affect. This means that the role of arousal is largely overlooked. In this experiment, conducted in 2019 in Austria, I exposed 191 citizens to a televised news item about immigration—varying the level of threat, while t…
Trust in Government or in Technology? What Really Drives Internet Voting
Internet voting is considered a crucial potential technological innovation, and scholars agree that trust plays a key role for its adoption and use by citizens. But which type of trust is essential, trust in government or trust in technology? We leverage on a cross-sectional analysis and a preregistered online experiment in Estonia to test a multidimensional trust framework. Examining the impact of trust dimensions on i-voting likelihood, we unve…
Social mobility or social change? How different groups react to identity-related news
In times of identity politics, journalists use group primes to organize events and reduce their complexity. Because research has mostly investigated the effects of single group primes on opinion formation and news selection, two aspects of group primes in the news have remained understudied: (1) whether they directly affect group identification itself, and (2) how these effects differ between groups. This experiment ( N = 750) shows that group pr…
Learning From News on Different Media Platforms
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…
Aroused Argumentation
There is increasing evidence that citizens consume the news because it arouses them. However, to explain the motivated processing of news messages, research usually focuses on negative discrete emotions or the valence dimension of affect. This means that the role of arousal is largely overlooked. In this experiment, conducted in 2019 in Austria, I exposed 191 citizens to a televised news item about immigration—varying the level of threat, while t…
Populist attitudes and politicians’ disinformation accusations
Populist politicians increasingly accuse opposing media of spreading disinformation or “fake news.” However, empirical research on the effects of these accusations is scarce. This survey experiment (N = 1,330) shows that disinformation accusations reduce audience members’ trust in the accused news outlet and perceived accuracy of the news message, while trust in the accusing politician is largely unaffected. However, only individuals with strong …
Motivated Reasoning in Identity Politics
Western democracies are increasingly defined by identity politics, where politics appeals to both political and other social identities. Consequently, political information processing should depend not just on political identity, but also on other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. For any given issue, we argue that the extent to which reasoning is motivated by one’s political identity depends on citizens’ group status in other relev…
Social mobility or social change? How different groups react to identity-related news
In times of identity politics, journalists use group primes to organize events and reduce their complexity. Because research has mostly investigated the effects of single group primes on opinion formation and news selection, two aspects of group primes in the news have remained understudied: (1) whether they directly affect group identification itself, and (2) how these effects differ between groups. This experiment ( N = 750) shows that group pr…
Don’t Throw the Frame Out With the Bathwater
Framing research has predominantly revealed detrimental effects of episodic news frames, including individualist blame attributions and political cynicism. However, such frames may also discourage group biases and impede motivated reasoning regarding identity politics. In two experiments ( N = 815; N = 1,019), we test the effect of episodic frames on group-consonant attitudes through identity-motivated reasoning. The two studies produce mixed res…
Can We Counteract Hate? Effects of Online Hate Speech and Counter Speech on the Perception of Social Groups
Hate speech can increase stereotyped thinking and social distancing in a society. However, there is still a lack of variety in the social groups under study and research into possible solutions to the problem. Thus, our aim is to (1) study effects of hate speech against Chinese people and transgender people and (2) to investigate if counter speech can offset the detrimental effects of hate speech. We conducted a pre-registered online experiment w…
Negative Campaigns, Negative Votes? Meanings of Voting and Political Campaigns
Negative campaigns can have different effects on voting behavior and political attitudes. While recent work has differentiated between contexts and campaigns, few have investigated the mechanisms underlying the effects of negative campaigns. We argue that negative campaigning may affect whether citizens understand voting as supporting one candidate or party (positive meanings of voting), as opposing another (negative meanings of voting), or even …
Voting against or against voting
Politics is increasingly negative, especially surrounding elections, raising concerns about mass disengagement and democratic backsliding. Despite these worries, the literature on how negativity in voting affects democratic attitudes and voting intentions is riddled with ambiguous and contradictory results. We argue that this may partly be due to the failure to distinguish between two types of negativity in voting: (a) understanding voting as a w…
Trust in Government or in Technology? What Really Drives Internet Voting
Internet voting is considered a crucial potential technological innovation, and scholars agree that trust plays a key role for its adoption and use by citizens. But which type of trust is essential, trust in government or trust in technology? We leverage on a cross-sectional analysis and a preregistered online experiment in Estonia to test a multidimensional trust framework. Examining the impact of trust dimensions on i-voting likelihood, we unve…
Political science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Social Media and Politics (6 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Affect (linguistics (3 works)