Does Too Much News on Social Media Discourage News Seeking? Mediating Role of News Efficacy Between Perceived News Overload and News Avoidance on Social Media

Drawing upon Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, this study conceptualizes “social media news efficacy” and examines how news efficacy connects perceived news overload on social media to news avoidance and social filtering. Findings from a two-wave panel survey of South Korean adults show that news overload is significantly related to a decrease of news efficacy, which in turn increases news avoidance on social media. The analysis also finds that news efficacy mediates the positive link between perceived news overload and social filtering over time.

Lighting the Good Life

During late antiquity, the aristocratic house worked as an architectural social filtering system. Many structures of the private residence were used and combined to create, or to strengthen, an impression of social superiority. Ancient sources and archaeological evidence show clearly that light played a key role as an aesthetic element within this aristocratic housing scheme. The function of many key architectural and ornamental features were dependent on lighting. Hence the crucial importance of taking into consideration the ‘variable light’ in any attempt of architectural restitution of domus or villas. This chapter proposes to go deeper into the analysis, attempting to determine whether light should be regarded as a simple variable of aesthetic enhancement or whether, like any other ‘hard’ structures of the house, it should be considered as a fully structuring feature of the aristocratic residential space.

“News comes across when I’m in a moment of leisure”: Understanding the practices of incidental news consumption on social media

Incidental consumption of news on social media has risen in recent years, particularly among young people. Previous studies have characterized what the main dimensions and effects of this phenomenon are. In this article, we complement that literature by looking at how this phenomenon unfolds. Inspired by practice theory, we aim to answer two questions: (1) what are the practices that subtend incidental news consumption on social media among young people? and (2) What are the social consequences of these practices? We draw upon 50 in-depth interviews with respondents aged 18–29 years from Argentina. Our findings show the existence of (1) strong connections between technology and content, “anywhere and anytime” coordinates, derivative information routines, and increasingly mediated sociability and (2) fragmentary reading patterns, loss of hierarchy of the news, and coexistence of editorial, algorithmic, and social filtering. We conclude by elaborating on the empirical and theoretical implications of these findings.

Agenda Setting through Social Media: The Importance of Incidental News Exposure and Social Filtering in the Digital Era

Conventional models of agenda setting hold that mainstream media influence the public agenda by leading audience attention, and perceived importance, to certain issues. However, increased selectivity and audience fragmentation in today’s digital media environment threaten the traditional agenda-setting power of the mass media. An important development to consider in light of this change is the growing use of social media for entertainment and information. This study investigates whether mainstream media can influence the public agenda when channeled through social media. By leveraging an original, longitudinal experiment, I test whether being exposed to political information through Facebook yields an agenda-setting effect by raising participants’ perceived importance of certain policy issues. Findings show that participants exposed to political information on Facebook exhibit increased levels of issue salience consistent with the issues shared compared with participants who were not shown political information; these effects are strongest among those with low political interest.