Navigating a Diverse Paradigm: A Conceptual Framework for Experimental Framing Effects Research

This review introduces a conceptual framework with three elements to highlight the richness of the framing effects literature, while providing structure to address its fragmented nature. Our first element identifies and discusses the Enduring Issues that confront framing effects researchers. Second, we introduce the Semantic Architecture Model (SAM), which builds on the premise that meaning can be framed at different textual units within a text, which can form the basis of frame manipulations in framing effects experiments. Third, we provide an Inventory of Framing Effects Research Components used in framing effects research illustrated with salient examples from the framing effects literature. By offering this conceptual framework, we make the case for revitalizing framing effects research.

Monitoring, Creeping, or Surveillance? A Synthesis of Online Social Information Seeking Concepts

Affordances of Internet sites and Internet-based applications make personal information about romantic partners, friends, family members, and strangers easy to obtain. People use various techniques to find information about others, capitalizing on online affordances by using search engines to find relevant websites and databases; scouring the target’s social media or social networking site presence; accessing information about the target via their links or network association with others on social media; or asking questions or crowdsourcing information through online channels. Researchers have coined an assortment of terms to describe online social information seeking behaviors, such as interpersonal electronic surveillance, social surveillance, monitoring, patient-targeted Googling, cybervetting, websleuthing, human flesh search, lateral surveillance, Facebook surveillance, and Facebook stalking. Although considerable research has examined these behaviors, there has been little effort to clarify the concepts themselves. As a result, the literature is currently full of inconsistent and overlapping conceptualizations. To synthesize these concepts for future research, this review examines 73 online social information seeking concepts extracted from 186 articles. Specifically, the concepts are reviewed in light of their scope; the information seeker or target of information seeking (e.g., romantic partners, parents, children, employees, criminals); motives for information seeking (e.g., uncertainty, threat, curiosity); and the intensity of the behavior. Recommendations are provided for future research, such as employing clear conceptualizations and incorporating affordances. Finally, we offer a decision tree that researchers can use to help select appropriate terms to use in their work moving forward.

Communication Strategies to Improve Medication Adherence: A Systematic Review of Literature

Less than optimal medication adherence is a persisting issue among many patient groups, resulting in poorer health outcomes along with increased strain on financial and time resources. However, communication strategies employed by clinicians may offer a simple, cost-effective method for improving medication adherence and health outcomes. We conducted a review of literature that rendered search results from seven databases, resulting in 1,513 abstracts. A final sample of 44 studies was included to compare the effectiveness of communication-based adherence strategies among various health conditions. After reviewing the full text of included studies, we organized communication strategies into four categories: patient reminders, collaborative communication, patient education, and counseling strategies. Although all of the strategies indicated some level of success, studies examining patient education components showed the most promise both in generalizability and results. This review’s results indicate that a need remains for quantitative research examining the effectiveness of these strategies to increase medical adherence.

Politicians, Parties, and Government Representatives on Instagram: A Review on Research Approaches, Usage Patterns, and Effects

The photo and video sharing social network Instagram attracts an impressive number of users, among them political actors such as politicians, parties, and members of the government. Instagram's focus on images, which can be accompanied by lengthy captions as well as a range of other communication tools, suggests that the platform has high potential for political communication. Therefore, it is no surprise that Instagram has attracted the interest of scholars of various research areas. This article provides a systematic review of 37 studies on Instagram usage by politicians, parties, and governments. The aim is to gather substantiated knowledge while identifying research gaps. To this end, the review focuses on three key areas of Instagram research: who uses Instagram, how do they use it, and with what effect? Methodological approaches, databases, and applied theories are included to provide a comprehensive overview of research on Instagram. Based on the findings, points of departure for future research are identified.

Do women and men use language differently in spoken face-to-face interaction? A scoping review

Although the question of whether women and men speak differently is a topic of hot debate, an overview of the extent towhich empirical studies provide robust support for a relationship between sex/gender and language is lacking. Therefore, the aim of the current scoping review is to synthesize recent studies from various theoretical perspectives on the relationship between sex/gender and language use in spoken face-to-face dyadic interactions. Fifteen empirical studies were systematically selected for review, and were discussed according to four different theoretical perspectives and associated methodologies. More than thirty relevant linguistic variables were identified (e.g., interruptions and intensifiers). Overall, few robust differences between women and men in the use of linguistic variables were observed across contexts, although women seem to be more engaged in supportive turn-taking than men. Importantly, gender identity salience, institutionalized roles, and social and contextual factors such as interactional setting or conversational goal seem to play a key role in the relationship between speaker’s sex/gender and language used in spoken interaction.

Self-Presentation in Social Media: Review and Research Opportunities

This paper reviews existing research on self-presentation in social media in order to inform future research. Social media offer seemingly limitless opportunities for strategic self-presentation. Informed by existing self-presentation theories, a review of research on self-presentation in social media revealed three significant context and audience variables that were conceptualized in a model. First, three affordances of social media – anonymity, persistence, and visibility – were discussed, as research has revealed the moderating effects of these affordances between self-presentation goal and the self-presentational content shared in social media. For example, one might expect that social media users are more likely to present their actual selves under conditions of less anonymity, more persistence, and more visibility. On the other hand, the freedom associated with more anonymous, less persistent, and less visibility social media may lead to idealized self-presentation. The second finding revealed the impact of other-generated content in the form of likes, comments, tags, and shares on social media users’ self-presentation content, mediated by how they choose to manage such content.The third theme concerned the moderating effect of context collapse on the relationship between goals and self-presentation content. The composition of an impression manager’s audience from one platform to the next varies across social media platforms, impacting and often complicating the attainment of self-presentation goals in the midst of merging networks of people. Social media users have adopted varying ways to navigate the complexities of context collapse in their pursuit of self-presentation. Although we have learned much from this body of literature, a more comprehensive theory of self-presentation in the hypermedia age is needed to further advance this area of research.

Communicative Functions in Human-Computer Interface Design: A Taxonomy of Functional Animation

Whenever a user performs a task or communicates via their computer or device, they are guided by visual cues to interact successfully with the interface. This human-computer interaction is, therefore, mediated by the communication established between designer and user through the texts, graphic elements, and animations that make up the visual design of the interface. Animation is an element of visual language of the graphical elements of an interface. This study aims to establish the functions of animation. We reviewed the literature and discussed the shortcomings identified in the existing taxonomies of functional animation. We then proposed an updated classification, partly inspired by the functions presented in Jakobson’s communication model. Based on a content analysis of the design guidelines from the leading mobile phone developers and comparing these sources, we propose the following list of categories: Identifying, Structural, Guide, Feedback, Didactic, Esthetic, and Emotive. This new taxonomy aims to contribute to the theoretical frameworks used in visual communication when studying interface design. It will be useful, for example, to help detect, classify, and assess the appropriateness of animations based on the functions they provide to an interface.

Thinking and Feeling through Mobile Media and Communication: A Review of Cognitive and Affective Implications

In recent decades, mobile media and communication have become integral to human psychology, including how people think and feel. Although the popular press, parents, and educators often voice concerns about the integration of mobile media into everyday life (e.g., “smartphone addiction”), the growing body of scholarship in this area offers a mix of positive, negative, and conditional effects of mobile media use. This review article traverses this variegated scholarship by assembling cognitive and affective implications of mobile media and communication. It identifies information processing, offloading, spatial cognition, habit, attention, and phantom vibrations as cognitive themes, and feelings of pleasure, stress/anxiety, safety/security, connectedness, and control as affective themes. Along the way, it helps bring structure to this growing and interdisciplinary area of scholarship, ground psychological work on mobile media in theorizing on technological embedding, inform academic and public debates, and identify opportunities for future research.

Echo Chambers on Social Media: A Systematic Review of the Literature

There have been growing concerns regarding the potential impact of social media on democracy and public debate. While some theorists have claimed that ICTs and social media would bring about a new independent public sphere and increase exposure to political divergence, others have warned that they would lead to polarization through the formation of echo chambers. The issue of social media echo chambers is both crucial and widely debated. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the scientific literature on this issue, shedding light on the different approaches, their similarities, differences, benefits, and drawbacks, and offering a consolidated and critical perspective that can hopefully support future research in this area. Concretely, it presents the results of a systematic review of 55 studies investigating the existence of echo chambers on social media, providing a first classification of the literature and identifying patterns across the studies’ foci, methods and findings. We found that conceptual and methodological choices influence the results of research on this issue. Most importantly, articles that found clear evidence of echo chambers on social media were all based on digital trace data. In contrast, those that found no evidence were all based on self-reported data. Future studies should take into account the possible biases of the different approaches and the significant potential of combining self-reported data with digital trace data.

Unintended Effects of Advertising: An Updated Qualitative Review

Like most strategic communication efforts, advertising produces both intended and unintended effects. However, there has been little systematic effort to synthesizing the unintended effects of advertising. This paper attempt to fill the gap in the literature. A thematic review was conducted to review the dimensions, types, and theories concerning the unintended effects of advertising. Variations of unintended effects in valence, levels of analysis, time lapse, content specificity, and audience types were discerned, on the basis of which a typology of nine unintended effects was proposed, including confusion, materialism, idealization, stereotypes, boomerang, violence, creativity, job performance and economic growth. The implications and directions for future research were discussed. It is hoped that the conceptual dimensions and types of unintended effects presented in this paper will serve as an evolving framework for endeavors to enhancing the theory and practice of advertising.