“Toxic atmosphere effect”: Uncivil online comments cue negative audience perceptions of news outlet credibility

Uncivil user comments have been found to have a negative effect on how people perceive an issue featured in the news, a news story, or a journalist who reports a news story. To advance this line of research, we draw on expectancy violations theory and the concept of heuristic cues to theorize the toxic atmosphere effect. We theorize that incivility in online comment threads could pose an even larger challenge to news organizations by cuing news audience members to perceive an entire news outlet—not just an individual story—as lacking in credibility. Based on two experiments in the United States (Study 1, n = 520; Study 2, n = 1056), we show that exposure to incivility can lead people to perceive a news outlet as less credible even though the incivility did not directly attack the news outlet. Such effects hold true even when people are exposed to comment threads in which the first several comments are civil. Democratic and business implications are discussed.

Atmosphere Effect in Post-Annealing Treatments for Amorphous InGaZnO Thin-Film Transistors with SiOx Passivation Layers

We investigated the electrical performance and positive bias stress (PBS) stability of the amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs) with SiOx passivation layers after the post-annealing treatments in different atmospheres (air, N2, O2 and vacuum). Both the chamber atmospheres and the device passivation layers proved important for the post-annealing effects on a-IGZO TFTs. For the heat treatments in O2 or air, the larger threshold voltage (VTH) and off current (IOFF), smaller field-effect mobility (μFE), and slightly better PBS stability of a-IGZO TFTs were obtained. The X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) measurement results indicated that the oxygen atoms from the ambience led to less oxygen vacancies (VO) and more oxygen-related defects in a-IGZO after the heat treatments in O2 or air. For the annealing processes in vacuum or N2, the electrical performance of the a-IGZO TFTs showed nearly no change, but their PBS stability evidently improved. After 4500 seconds’ stressing at 40 V, the VTH shift decreased to nearly 1 V. In this situation, the SiOx passivation layers were assumed to effectively prevent the oxygen diffusion, keep the VO concentration unchanged and refuse the oxygen-related defects into the a-IGZO films.

Synthesis of Porous ZnO Films on Quartz Substrates by Thermal Oxidation and the Oxidant Atmosphere Effect

The synthesis and characterization of porous ZnO films using a two stage process by thermal oxidation using a bilayer precursor film (ZnO/Zn) consisting of a Zn film covered with a ZnO nanofilm formed on quartz substrates is reported. The Zn films of 50 nm were grown by DC sputtering method at 300K. In the first stage bilayer precursor films (BPF) of ZnO/Zn were produced by growing a ZnO nanofilm on Zn films by thermal oxidation at 350 °C by 30 min in N2 atmosphere containing 5 ppm of O2, and in the second stage the BPFs were oxidized at 800 °C for one hour either in dry N2, dry or wet air with 42% of humidity. The produced porous ZnO films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-Vis spectroscopy measurements. The results revealed the role of the oxygen content and the relevance of the humidity content in the processing atmosphere. When the BPF was oxidized in N2 with low oxygen content nanoporous ZnO films of wurtzite phase with its c-axis perpendicular to the plane of the substrate were produced. When rich oxygen content oxidation atmospheres were used, either in dry or wet air, nanoporous ZnO films with three main crystallite orientations (100), (002) and (101), were produced. The optical transmittance characteristics at the band edge region were strongly influenced by the humidity content but induce the formation of reproducible nanoporous ZnO films with sizes of ≈ 10 nm.