“I Might Get Your Heart Racing in My Skin-Tight Jeans”: Sexualization on Music Entertainment Television

This study explores the culture of sexualizing the (female) body in music entertainment television. A quantitative content analysis was conducted, analyzing 9,369 scenes from 1,393 music videos and 180 programs, broadcast on Belgian music entertainment channels. Results indicated that 39.3% of the coded scenes contained sexualizing messages. These sexualizing messages were predominantly messages equating (female) Western body ideals to being sexually attractive. Music videos were shown to be a more sexualizing genre than nonfictional programs and fictional programs. Findings are discussed in light of objectification theory.     

The effects of message source and fear appeal on young adults’ response to Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) messages in Singapore

This study examines the psychological processes that determine how fear appeal and sponsor type impact young adults’ responses to public campaigns against Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) in Singapore. The results showed that fear appeal in the STD messages increased the level of anger arousal, while the STD messages sponsored by a commercial company versus a government agency increased the level of negative cognitions among participants. The interaction between fear appeal and sponsor type was found in both affective and cognitive responses of psychological reactance against the STD messages.     

Supportive communication from bystanders of cyberbullying: indirect effects and interactions between source and message characteristics

Cyberbullying is an increasingly common experience that produces psychosocial consequences for targets. Interventions encouraging bystanders to support targets of cyberbullying are limited by a lack of focus on what to communicate. This study considers supportive messages that emphasize emotional comfort, attributions of responsibility, and beliefs that people can change as relevant to this context, and it examines how perceptions of messages differ based on whether support providers have or lack experience with cyberbullying. We extend research on the indirect effects model of supportive communication by randomly assigning participants (N?=?304), who self-identify as targets of cyberbullying, to message and source conditions and assessing their perceptions of messages, providers, and outcomes. Impressions of messages mediate their influence on outcomes, and the experiential similarity of support providers moderates these effects. Certain messages, notably those contending that bullies can change, are less effective when delivered by sources who lack experience with bullying.     

Merchant of Mercy,Merchant of Death: How Values Advocacy Messages Influence Jury Deliberations

This exploratory study addresses the ability of values advocacy messages to influence target publics’ behavior beyond consumer purchase decisions. In doing so, it fills a gap in the research by extending our understanding of the persuasive premises of values advocacy messages beyond rhetorical (de)construction; consumer behavior; and the establishment of typologies, definitions, and methods of inquiry. Using focus group methodology, target audience members (n=37) of a contemporary values advocacy campaign reflect upon the messages presented in the context of jury deliberations. The findings show that focus group participants would likely reduce punitive damage judgments if exposed to values advocacy messages. The social and cultural implications exposed by participants’ comments reflect ongoing concern among critical scholars about the ability of corporations to manipulate public behavior and indicate the ethical conundrum between corporate and community speech.     

“Anyone free to chat?” Using technological features to elicit quality support online

This study examines how support seekers can integrate verbal and nonverbal cues in social network sites (SNSs) to elicit quality support from others. Building from sensitive interaction systems theory and verbal person centeredness (VPC), participants (N?=?579) evaluated a SNS profile that contained manipulated levels of directness in status updates used to seek support and nonverbal emotional expression in profile pictures. To capture the transaction of support, participants provided supportive messages in public and private conditions that were coded for their level of VPC. Negative emotional cues in profile pictures increased VPC in private messages, whereas directness in status updates negatively predicted VPC in private messages. Participants produced messages with higher levels of VPC after they viewed profiles that incorporated more features to disclose distress effectively. Broadly, this study addresses whether the content people post on SNS profiles shapes the quality of the supportive messages they receive.     

Effects of entertainment media framing on support for gay rights in China: Mechanisms of attribution and value framing

This study investigates the framing effects of gay-themed entertainment media in China. Specifically, the study explores the mechanisms underlying attribution framing and value framing, through two separate experiments. The results of the first experiment indicate that exposure to attribution frames had considerable influence on the participants' perceptions of the controllability of homosexuality and their emotional responses. In addition, fictional entertainment media's framing of the origin of homosexuality indirectly influenced the participants' opinion through anger. Those participants exposed to a program homosexuality as a type of ‘controllable’ sexuality were likely to express anger and thus were not likely to support gay rights. The results of the second experiment indicate that the core values reflected in a gay-themed program affected the participants' opinions by changing their perception of the importance of value-related beliefs. Those participants exposed to a frame reflecting family values were likely to consider beliefs about family values to be important, which facilitated their support for gay people's personal dignity and equal rights to jobs, housing, and freedom of expression, among others.     

Perceptions of social‐sexual communication at work: The effects of message,situation, and observer characteristics on judgments of sexual harassment

Social‐sexual communication at work may contribute to either the initiation of an organizational romance or sexual harassment. We examined forces that influence perceptions of sexual messages as harassing rather than flirtatious. We presented 94 working adults with questionnaires soliciting workplace attitudes and experiences. Then, participants reviewed newsletters describing male and female coworkers in a fictitious organization. Finally, participants evaluated the degree of sexual harassment evident in six hypothetical interactions wherein one of the employees introduced in the newsletter makes a suggestive remark to his or her coworker. Newsletters and questionnaires manipulated the explicitness of messages, the initiator's status as supervisor versus subordinate, the attractiveness of the message initiator and target, and the initiator's sex. Message explicitness accounted for 88% of the variance in perceptions of harassment. A five‐way interaction among message and situational cues suggested that perceptions of sexual harassment are also influenced by contextual information. Females rated highly explicit messages as more harassing than did males, and individuals who were more accepting of socializing or dating between coworkers rated scenarios as less harassing. Exposure to socializing at work had a curvilinear association with perceptions of harassment such that low to moderate exposure corresponded with perceptions of greater harassment and moderate to high exposure was associated with lower ratings of sexual harassment. The discussion highlights applications for sexual harassment training programs within organizations.     

Merchant of Mercy, Merchant of Death: How Values Advocacy Messages Influence Jury Deliberations

This exploratory study addresses the ability of values advocacy messages to influence target publics' behavior beyond consumer purchase decisions. In doing so, it fills a gap in the research by extending our understanding of the persuasive premises of values advocacy messages beyond rhetorical (de)construction; consumer behavior; and the establishment of typologies, definitions, and methods of inquiry. Using focus group methodology, target audience members (n=37) of a contemporary values advocacy campaign reflect upon the messages presented in the context of jury deliberations. The findings show that focus group participants would likely reduce punitive damage judgments if exposed to values advocacy messages. The social and cultural implications exposed by participants' comments reflect ongoing concern among critical scholars about the ability of corporations to manipulate public behavior and indicate the ethical conundrum between corporate and community speech.     

How can Booktok on TikTok inform readers' advisory services for young people?

Libraries provide readers' advisory services to young people to foster reading for pleasure. The Booktok community on TikTok is a resource that can be drawn upon to support promotion of books with this demographic. A hybrid content analysis of 116 TikTok videos explores presence of hashtags, authors and books, and recurring themes promoted in Booktok videos. Popular hashtags build community and promoted authors and books are a small and select group. Young people use Booktok to provide recommendations, explore reader experience and emotional response, generate reader community and identity, discuss fictional characters and places, develop and promote writing, and discuss personal library management and being a reader in the family. Libraries' reader advisory services for young people can use these findings to employ language of the discourse community for insider signposting of the library's physical space and give greater primacy to the emotional response evoked by books and reading.     

Nostalgic Emotional Appeals for Smoking Prevention

Nostalgia-evoking messages are used to promote consumer products, but their use for encouraging healthy behaviors is not well understood. This study examines the use of nostalgia as an emotional appeal to influence attitudes and reduce smoking behavior. The study hypothesized that exposure to a nostalgic public service announcement (PSA) will result in (a) more negative attitude toward smoking; and (b) increased intention to limit smoking, relative to a control. Participants exposed to the nostalgia-evoking PSA expressed more negative attitudes toward smoking and stronger intentions to limit smoking than did participants exposed to nonnostalgic messages. The findings suggest nostalgic appeals as a promising strategy for smoking prevention messages.     

“Not now,maybe later”: The influence of relationship type,request persistence,and alcohol consumption on women's refusal strategies

This study examines strategies employed by women when refusing an unwanted request for increased intimacy. Women (N = 76) orally produced refusal messages to unwanted requests from hypothetical dating partners and friends. The influence of relationship type, request persistence, and alcohol consumption on refusal strategies was examined. Approximately half of the participants (N = 37) drank alcohol before encoding the refusal messages. The results indicate that relationship type influenced women's refusal strategy selection and that request persistence had a more pronounced influence on the refusals to dates’ requests than to friends’ requests. Alcohol consumption did not significantly affect the encoding of refusal strategies. Results suggest that the influence of alcohol consumption on refusals should be examined within the context of the whole message production process.     

The effects of gain versus loss framing and issue involvement on publics’ responses to nuclear energy messages in South Korea

This study investigates how the public’s perceptions of nuclear power, one of the modern technologies at the center of public debate on risk issues, are influenced by gain versus loss framing in the volatile context of nuclear energy applications in South Korea. Drawing upon prospect theory as its conceptual framework, this experiment using 566 adult participants found that loss-framed messages (i.e. emphasizing the negative outcomes of not using nuclear power) were more effective in increasing participants’ message credibility perceptions as compared to gain-framed messages (i.e. emphasizing the positive outcomes of using nuclear power). Additionally, the results found issue involvement to be a significant moderator of the framing effect, by demonstrating that the advantage of loss framing was stronger for participants who were highly involved in nuclear energy issue, as compared to those who were less involved in the issue. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Let Me Tell You About My Success: The Implications of Attribution-Based Capitalization Response Messages for Discloser Affect

Capitalization attempts, or the sharing of personal good news, can have positive outcomes for disclosers when met with a skillful response. This study reports on a test of an attribution-based theoretical framework for capitalization response messages. Participants (N = 314) read capitalization response messages created by crossing the causal attribution dimensions of locus, stability, and globality. They rated messages for their anticipated effect on positive and negative affect. Results indicate that messages that make internal attributions for success are rated significantly higher on positive affect and lower on negative affect than messages making external attributions, as are messages making stable versus unstable attributions. The stability dimension moderates the impact of the globality dimension on message ratings. Implications for attribution and social support theories are discussed.     

Investigating the Role of Problem Severity and Channel Publicness on the Sophistication of Support-Seeking Messages on Social Network Sites: A Replication Study

Oh and LaRose (2016) contended that problem severity and channel publicness shape support seekers’ goals, time spent composing messages, and the sophistication of those messages. The current study seeks to replicate and extend Oh and LaRose’s study to produce a more accurate understanding of the factors that influence the sophistication of support-seeking messages online. Support seekers’ goals varied according to the severity of a stressor and the publicness of a channel, and the amount of time people spent composing a message influenced its sophistication. We extend the original study by examining associations that were not initially tested. Time spent composing messages mediated the influence of problem severity on the quality of people’s messages, and this effect was moderated by channel publicness.     

Communicating to young Chinese about human papillomavirus vaccination: examining the impact of message framing and temporal distance

This research investigated the influence of message framing (gain or loss) and temporal distance (present or future) on the intention of Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. A total of 156 Chinese undergraduates participated in a controlled experiment in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. Results showed that message framing and temporal distance interacted to impact the intention of HPV vaccination. Particularly, among participants who had no prior knowledge of HPV vaccine, the gain-present and loss-future framed messages resulted in more positive attitudes toward the message, higher degree of perceived severity of HPV infection, and more likelihood to get HPV vaccination than the gain-future and loss-present framed messages. Implications of the findings were discussed.     

Social norms and expectancy violation theories: assessing the effectiveness of health communication campaigns

College students' processing of alcohol, smoking, and exercise social norms messages, and related effects on judgments, attitudes toward one's own behaviors, and attitudes toward undergraduates' behaviors were examined using social norms marketing and Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) (N=393). Receiving statistical social norms messages led to an expectancy violation of the perceived social norm (i.e., a discrepancy between the expected and actual statistic conveyed with a message). Consistent with Boster et al. (), the effect of the message discrepancy on attitudes was mediated by judgments. In accordance with social norms, when participants were provided with a statistic, the majority moved their judgments (but not their attitudes) toward the provided statistic, a result only consistent with EVT in the case of positive violations. The results have multiple implications: (1) social norms messages may work to change judgments, but do not result in consistent attitude change; (2) the process of judgment change functions similarly across message topics, as well as message types (i.e., attitudinal versus behavioral); (3) judgment change does not appear to be the main cause for attitude change upon receipt of a social norms message; and (4) a message‐based expectancy violation does not function in the same way as a violated behavioral expectation.     

Communicating Social Support in Computer-mediated Contexts: A Meta-analytic Review of Content Analyses Examining Support Messages Shared Online among Individuals Coping with Illness

Research on social support during the past two decades has been marked by a growth in scholarship examining supportive communication in computer-mediated contexts among individuals coping with illness. In an effort to summarize and advance this body of research, a meta-analytic review of content analyses was conducted. Across the 41 content analyses examining social support messages shared in health-related contexts online, informational and emotional support messages were most prevalent. Additionally, the prevalence of particular types of support messages varied based on several stressor dimensions relevant to illness. Nurturant forms of support were more common among content analyses examining health conditions likely to threaten personal relationships as well as among content analyses focusing on health conditions with a greater potential for loss in the form of death. Action-facilitating types of support were more common among content analyses examining more chronic conditions. The findings from this project offer insights about the nuanced ways in which computer-mediated communication is used as a resource for coping with illness.     

The Prevention Effect of Third-Person Perception: A Study on the Perceived and Actual Influence of Polls

This study ties the third-person effect phenomenon to social comparison research by positing that a downward comparison is made when people regard “others” as more influenced than themselves by persuasive messages. A likely consequence of the downward comparison is prevention behavior, which refers to the attempt to avoid undesirable outcomes. Hence we can expect a negative relationship between perceived influence of messages on others and actual influence of the messages on self. This negative relationship should be particularly likely to exist among less efficacious individuals. Utilizing a survey experiment (N = 800), which examined both the perceived and actual influence of opinion poll findings on people's issue opinions, this study shows that the prevention effect does not exist across the board, but there is enough evidence showing its existence among less efficacious people on certain issues.     

Flirting Competence: An Experimental Study on Appropriate and Effective Opening Lines

An experiment was conducted to examine the appropriateness and effectiveness of five flirtatious opening lines enacted by a male participant to initiate conversation with a female participant. Video messages were constructed to represent the following opening lines: direct introductions, direct compliments, humor attempts, cute–flippant lines, and third-party introductions. Participants were 642 college students who viewed one of these five videos and reported on the appropriateness and effectiveness of an opening line after controlling for perceptions of actor physical attractiveness. Results indicated that participants rated the third-party introduction and direct introduction opening lines as the most appropriate, whereas the third-party introduction was perceived as the most effective. Direct compliments, humor attempts, and cute–flippant lines were rated as equally inappropriate and ineffective.     

Check That Body! The Effects of Sexually Objectifying Music Videos on College Men's Sexual Beliefs

The present study examined the effects of sexual objectification of female artists in music videos on male undergraduates' sexual beliefs. Findings showed that participants who viewed music videos of highly objectified female artists reported more adversarial sexual beliefs, more acceptance of interpersonal violence, and, at a level of marginal significance, more negative attitudes about sexual harassment than participants assigned to low-sexual objectifying music videos by the same female artists. Path models indicated that adversarial sexual beliefs mediated the relationship between condition, and (1) acceptance of interpersonal violence and (2) negative attitudes regarding sexual harassment.