Judith Möller
Biographic Data
| ID | 5696992 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Judith Möller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Judith |
| FAMILY NAME | Möller |
| SIGNATURE | MOLLER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The role of AI competencies: How do AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes shape users’ understanding and evaluation of explainable news recommendations?
This study investigates how explanations in AI-driven news recommender systems (RS) influence user understanding, trust, and attitudes toward the RS, and whether these effects depend on individual differences in AI competence. An online experiment ( N = 754) was conducted in the Netherlands with a no-explanation condition as baseline. Results show that joint explanations significantly improved users’ objective understanding of the RS but had no c…
Cascades or salmons? Longitudinal upstream and downstream effects of political participation
Digitally networked and new, unconventional activities allow citizens to participate politically in activities that are low in the effort and risks they bear. At the same time, low-effort types of participation are more loosely connected to democratic political systems, thereby challenging established modes of political decision-making. This can set in motion two competing dynamics: While some citizens move closer to the political system in their…
Worlds Apart? Public Agenda Fragmentation in Sweden 1987–2021
Claims concerning media fragmentation and political polarization permeate discussions about our changing democratic public sphere. As traditional mass media lose ground and people increasingly construct their own personal information environments, citizens may develop highly contrasting perceptions of politics and society—potentially undermining the common ground needed for rational public discourse. Two widely discussed expressions of these deve…
Fulfilling data access obligations: How could (and should) platforms facilitate data donation studies
Research into digital platforms has become increasingly difficult. One way to overcome these difficulties is to build on data access rights in EU data protection law, which requires platforms to offer users a copy of their data. In data donation studies, researchers ask study participants to exercise this right and donate their data to science. However, there is increasing evidence that platforms do not comply with designated laws. We first discu…
Trust in a Digital World. The Roles of Media Trust and Ordinary Citizen Cues in Online Disinformation’s Credibility
The perception of disinformation as societal risk has reached a troubling peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically targeting vulnerable audiences through digital media by mirroring characteristics of vox populi disinformation. This study investigates the conditions under which COVID-19-related disinformation referring to a polarized (refugees) and neutral (runners) out-group appears most credible. In the early stages of the pandemic, we con…
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
The artificial intelligence divide: Who is the most vulnerable
This study investigates users’ artificial intelligence (AI)-related competencies (i.e., AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and identifies the vulnerable user groups in the AI-shaped online news and entertainment environment. We surveyed 1088 Dutch citizens over the age of 16 years and identified five user groups through the latent class analysis: the average users, the expert advocates, the expert skeptics, the unskilled skeptics, and the neutr…
Degrees of deception: The effects of different types of Covid-19 misinformation and the effectiveness of corrective information in crisis times
Responding to widespread concerns about misinformation’s impact on democracy, we conducted an experiment in which we exposed German participants to different degrees of misinformation on COVID-19 connected to politicized (immigration) and apolitical (runners) issues (N = 1,490). Our key findings show that partially false information is more credible and persuasive than completely false information, and also more difficult to correct. People with …
Nudging towards news diversity: A theoretical framework for facilitating diverse news consumption through recommender design
Growing concern about the democratic impact of automatically curated news platforms urges us to reconsider how such platforms should be designed. We propose a theoretical framework for personalised diversity nudges that can stimulate diverse news consumption on the individual level. To examine potential benefits and limitations of existing diversity nudges, we conduct an interdisciplinary literature review that synthesises theoretical work on new…
How to Capture Reciprocal Communication Dynamics: Comparing Longitudinal Statistical Approaches in Order to Analyze Within- and Between-Person Effects
Choosing an appropriate statistical model to analyze reciprocal relations between individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors over time can be challenging. Often, decisions for or against specific models are rather implicit and it remains unclear whether the statistical approach fits the theory of interest. For longitudinal models, this is problematic since within- and between-person processes can be confounded leading to wrong conclusions. Tak…
Digital Platforms and the Digitisation of Government Surveillance
In Europe today, digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, provide essential means for millions of people to express themselves, engage in public debate, and organise politically (Poell & van Dijck, 2018). Crucially, governments are leveraging the power of platforms to impose new forms of restrictions on free expression, and engage in surveillance of individuals and online activism. This has profound implications for the rights to…
Public opinion on Twitter? How vote choice and arguments on Twitter comply with patterns in survey data, evidence from the 2016 Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands
Following Politicians on Social Media: Effects for Political Information, Peer Communication, and Youth Engagement
Young citizens increasingly turn to social media platforms for political information. These platforms enable direct communication between politicians and citizens, circumventing the influence of traditional news outlets. We still know little about the consequences of direct contact with politicians on such platforms for citizens’ political participation. Here, we argue that the interplay of different actors in the political news diet of citizens …
The Politics of Privacy—A Useful Tautology
While communication and media studies tend to define privacy with reference to data security, current processes of datafication and commodification substantially transform ways of how people act in increasingly dense communicative networks. This begs for advancing research on the flow of individual and organizational information considering its relational, contextual and, in consequence, political dimensions. Privacy, understood as the control ov…
Interested in Diversity: The role of user attitudes, algorithmic feedback loops, and policy in news personalization
Using survey evidence from the Netherlands, we explore the factors that influence news readers’ attitudes toward news personalization. We show that the value of personalization depends on commonly overlooked factors, such as concerns about a shared news sphere, and the depth and diversity of recommendations. However, these expectations are not universal. Younger, less educated users have little exposure to non-personalized news, and they also sho…
Explaining Online News Engagement Based on Browsing Behavior: Creatures of Habit
Understanding how citizens keep themselves informed about current affairs is crucial for a functioning democracy. Extant research suggests that in an increasingly fragmented digital news environment, search engines and social media platforms promote more incidental, but potentially more shallow modes of engagement with news compared to the act of routinely accessing a news organization’s website. In this study, we examine classic predictors of ne…
News media’s position-taking regarding the European Union: The synchronization of mass media’s reporting and commentating in the 2014 European Parliament elections
We analyse whether a newspaper’s editorial position regarding the European Union is related to its selection decisions in the news section. We ask whether such a synchronization between news and editorials exists, whether it is conditioned by the type of media system and under which conditions it also affects the selection of transnational voices. Our study is based on a quantitative content analysis of the quality press in seven European countri…
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…
Do not blame it on the algorithm: An empirical assessment of multiple recommender systems and their impact on content diversity
In the debate about filter bubbles caused by algorithmic news recommendation, the conceptualization of the two core concepts in this debate, diversity and algorithms, has received little attention in social scientific research. This paper examines the effect of multiple recommender systems on different diversity dimensions. To this end, it maps different values that diversity can serve, and a respective set of criteria that characterizes a divers…
Should we worry about filter bubbles?
Some fear that personalised communication can lead to information cocoons or filter bubbles. For instance, a personalised news website could give more prominence to conservative or liberal media items, based on the (assumed) political interests of the user. As a result, users may encounter only a limited range of political ideas. We synthesise empirical research on the extent and effects of self-selected personalisation, where people actively cho…
The Real Spiral of Cynicism? Symbiosis and Mistrust between Politicians and Journalists
The relationship among media, politicians, and the public has been studied a lot, especially how the media’s portrayal of politics affects people’s (cynical) attitudes. Scholars know little about the antecedent of this assumed spiral of cynicism: How cynical are politicians and journalists about each other and about politics? Based on a survey among Dutch politicians and political journalists, the research presented in this article tries to fill …
The Real Spiral of Cynicism? Symbiosis and Mistrust between Politicians and Journalists
The relationship among media, politicians, and the public has been studied a lot, especially how the media’s portrayal of politics affects people’s (cynical) attitudes. Scholars know little about the antecedent of this assumed spiral of cynicism: How cynical are politicians and journalists about each other and about politics? Based on a survey among Dutch politicians and political journalists, the research presented in this article tries to fill …
Explaining Online News Engagement Based on Browsing Behavior: Creatures of Habit
Understanding how citizens keep themselves informed about current affairs is crucial for a functioning democracy. Extant research suggests that in an increasingly fragmented digital news environment, search engines and social media platforms promote more incidental, but potentially more shallow modes of engagement with news compared to the act of routinely accessing a news organization’s website. In this study, we examine classic predictors of ne…
News media’s position-taking regarding the European Union: The synchronization of mass media’s reporting and commentating in the 2014 European Parliament elections
We analyse whether a newspaper’s editorial position regarding the European Union is related to its selection decisions in the news section. We ask whether such a synchronization between news and editorials exists, whether it is conditioned by the type of media system and under which conditions it also affects the selection of transnational voices. Our study is based on a quantitative content analysis of the quality press in seven European countri…
The artificial intelligence divide: Who is the most vulnerable
This study investigates users’ artificial intelligence (AI)-related competencies (i.e., AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and identifies the vulnerable user groups in the AI-shaped online news and entertainment environment. We surveyed 1088 Dutch citizens over the age of 16 years and identified five user groups through the latent class analysis: the average users, the expert advocates, the expert skeptics, the unskilled skeptics, and the neutr…
Nudging towards news diversity: A theoretical framework for facilitating diverse news consumption through recommender design
Growing concern about the democratic impact of automatically curated news platforms urges us to reconsider how such platforms should be designed. We propose a theoretical framework for personalised diversity nudges that can stimulate diverse news consumption on the individual level. To examine potential benefits and limitations of existing diversity nudges, we conduct an interdisciplinary literature review that synthesises theoretical work on new…
Public opinion on Twitter? How vote choice and arguments on Twitter comply with patterns in survey data, evidence from the 2016 Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
The Real Spiral of Cynicism? Symbiosis and Mistrust between Politicians and Journalists
The relationship among media, politicians, and the public has been studied a lot, especially how the media’s portrayal of politics affects people’s (cynical) attitudes. Scholars know little about the antecedent of this assumed spiral of cynicism: How cynical are politicians and journalists about each other and about politics? Based on a survey among Dutch politicians and political journalists, the research presented in this article tries to fill …
Should we worry about filter bubbles?
Some fear that personalised communication can lead to information cocoons or filter bubbles. For instance, a personalised news website could give more prominence to conservative or liberal media items, based on the (assumed) political interests of the user. As a result, users may encounter only a limited range of political ideas. We synthesise empirical research on the extent and effects of self-selected personalisation, where people actively cho…
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…
Do not blame it on the algorithm: An empirical assessment of multiple recommender systems and their impact on content diversity
In the debate about filter bubbles caused by algorithmic news recommendation, the conceptualization of the two core concepts in this debate, diversity and algorithms, has received little attention in social scientific research. This paper examines the effect of multiple recommender systems on different diversity dimensions. To this end, it maps different values that diversity can serve, and a respective set of criteria that characterizes a divers…
Interested in Diversity: The role of user attitudes, algorithmic feedback loops, and policy in news personalization
Using survey evidence from the Netherlands, we explore the factors that influence news readers’ attitudes toward news personalization. We show that the value of personalization depends on commonly overlooked factors, such as concerns about a shared news sphere, and the depth and diversity of recommendations. However, these expectations are not universal. Younger, less educated users have little exposure to non-personalized news, and they also sho…
Explaining Online News Engagement Based on Browsing Behavior: Creatures of Habit
Understanding how citizens keep themselves informed about current affairs is crucial for a functioning democracy. Extant research suggests that in an increasingly fragmented digital news environment, search engines and social media platforms promote more incidental, but potentially more shallow modes of engagement with news compared to the act of routinely accessing a news organization’s website. In this study, we examine classic predictors of ne…
News media’s position-taking regarding the European Union: The synchronization of mass media’s reporting and commentating in the 2014 European Parliament elections
We analyse whether a newspaper’s editorial position regarding the European Union is related to its selection decisions in the news section. We ask whether such a synchronization between news and editorials exists, whether it is conditioned by the type of media system and under which conditions it also affects the selection of transnational voices. Our study is based on a quantitative content analysis of the quality press in seven European countri…
Following Politicians on Social Media: Effects for Political Information, Peer Communication, and Youth Engagement
Young citizens increasingly turn to social media platforms for political information. These platforms enable direct communication between politicians and citizens, circumventing the influence of traditional news outlets. We still know little about the consequences of direct contact with politicians on such platforms for citizens’ political participation. Here, we argue that the interplay of different actors in the political news diet of citizens …
The Politics of Privacy—A Useful Tautology
While communication and media studies tend to define privacy with reference to data security, current processes of datafication and commodification substantially transform ways of how people act in increasingly dense communicative networks. This begs for advancing research on the flow of individual and organizational information considering its relational, contextual and, in consequence, political dimensions. Privacy, understood as the control ov…
How to Capture Reciprocal Communication Dynamics: Comparing Longitudinal Statistical Approaches in Order to Analyze Within- and Between-Person Effects
Choosing an appropriate statistical model to analyze reciprocal relations between individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors over time can be challenging. Often, decisions for or against specific models are rather implicit and it remains unclear whether the statistical approach fits the theory of interest. For longitudinal models, this is problematic since within- and between-person processes can be confounded leading to wrong conclusions. Tak…
Digital Platforms and the Digitisation of Government Surveillance
In Europe today, digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, provide essential means for millions of people to express themselves, engage in public debate, and organise politically (Poell & van Dijck, 2018). Crucially, governments are leveraging the power of platforms to impose new forms of restrictions on free expression, and engage in surveillance of individuals and online activism. This has profound implications for the rights to…
Public opinion on Twitter? How vote choice and arguments on Twitter comply with patterns in survey data, evidence from the 2016 Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands
Nudging towards news diversity: A theoretical framework for facilitating diverse news consumption through recommender design
Growing concern about the democratic impact of automatically curated news platforms urges us to reconsider how such platforms should be designed. We propose a theoretical framework for personalised diversity nudges that can stimulate diverse news consumption on the individual level. To examine potential benefits and limitations of existing diversity nudges, we conduct an interdisciplinary literature review that synthesises theoretical work on new…
Degrees of deception: The effects of different types of Covid-19 misinformation and the effectiveness of corrective information in crisis times
Responding to widespread concerns about misinformation’s impact on democracy, we conducted an experiment in which we exposed German participants to different degrees of misinformation on COVID-19 connected to politicized (immigration) and apolitical (runners) issues (N = 1,490). Our key findings show that partially false information is more credible and persuasive than completely false information, and also more difficult to correct. People with …
Fulfilling data access obligations: How could (and should) platforms facilitate data donation studies
Research into digital platforms has become increasingly difficult. One way to overcome these difficulties is to build on data access rights in EU data protection law, which requires platforms to offer users a copy of their data. In data donation studies, researchers ask study participants to exercise this right and donate their data to science. However, there is increasing evidence that platforms do not comply with designated laws. We first discu…
Trust in a Digital World. The Roles of Media Trust and Ordinary Citizen Cues in Online Disinformation’s Credibility
The perception of disinformation as societal risk has reached a troubling peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically targeting vulnerable audiences through digital media by mirroring characteristics of vox populi disinformation. This study investigates the conditions under which COVID-19-related disinformation referring to a polarized (refugees) and neutral (runners) out-group appears most credible. In the early stages of the pandemic, we con…
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
The artificial intelligence divide: Who is the most vulnerable
This study investigates users’ artificial intelligence (AI)-related competencies (i.e., AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and identifies the vulnerable user groups in the AI-shaped online news and entertainment environment. We surveyed 1088 Dutch citizens over the age of 16 years and identified five user groups through the latent class analysis: the average users, the expert advocates, the expert skeptics, the unskilled skeptics, and the neutr…
Cascades or salmons? Longitudinal upstream and downstream effects of political participation
Digitally networked and new, unconventional activities allow citizens to participate politically in activities that are low in the effort and risks they bear. At the same time, low-effort types of participation are more loosely connected to democratic political systems, thereby challenging established modes of political decision-making. This can set in motion two competing dynamics: While some citizens move closer to the political system in their…
Worlds Apart? Public Agenda Fragmentation in Sweden 1987–2021
Claims concerning media fragmentation and political polarization permeate discussions about our changing democratic public sphere. As traditional mass media lose ground and people increasingly construct their own personal information environments, citizens may develop highly contrasting perceptions of politics and society—potentially undermining the common ground needed for rational public discourse. Two widely discussed expressions of these deve…
The role of AI competencies: How do AI knowledge, skills, and attitudes shape users’ understanding and evaluation of explainable news recommendations?
This study investigates how explanations in AI-driven news recommender systems (RS) influence user understanding, trust, and attitudes toward the RS, and whether these effects depend on individual differences in AI competence. An online experiment ( N = 754) was conducted in the Netherlands with a no-explanation condition as baseline. Results show that joint explanations significantly improved users’ objective understanding of the RS but had no c…
Computer Science (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Social Media and Politics (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Internet privacy (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Media Studies and Communication (6 works)