Suchergebnisse

Ein Lehr- und Handbuch, das den Gegenstandsbereich der Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft umreißt und in ihre Grundbegriffe, nämlich Kommunikation, Massenkommunikation und computervermittelte Kommunikation einführt. Breiten Raum nehmen dann die wichtigsten Lehr- und Forschungsfelder ein. Abschließend wird ein Überblick über die wichtigsten Methoden der empirischen Kommunikationsforschung wie Befragung, Inhaltsanalyse, Beobachtung und Experiment gegeben.

"Den wissenschaftlichen Konsens über die Ursachen des Klimawandels leugnen oder bezweifeln sie und hinter der Forschung vermuten sie globale Verschwörung: Wie Klimaskeptiker argumentieren, um ein breites Publikum zu überzeugen, zeigt die Analyse von 97 klimaskeptischen Sachbüchern." (Autorenreferat)

Dieses Lehrbuch bietet einen kompakten und theoretisch fundierten Einstieg in die wichtigsten Ansätze der kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Rezeptionsforschung. Im Mittelpunkt steht das Individuum, das sich einem Medium zuwendet und es nutzt – die dabei ablaufenden kognitiven, emotionalen und verhaltensbezogenen Aspekte werden systematisiert und anhand von Beispielen dargestellt. Der Rezeptionsprozess wird umfassend beleuchtet – von der Medienselektion bis hin zur Verarbeitung medialer Informationen und der Rolle der Interaktivität. Ein weiteres wichtiges Feld sind die konkreten Formen des Rezeptionserlebens, z. B. Emotionen und Stimmung, Spannung und Interesse, Identifikation und parasoziale Interaktion sowie Realismus und Unterhaltungserleben.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an excess of accurate and inaccurate information (infodemic) that has prevented people from finding reliable guidance in decision-making. Non-professional but popular science communicators - some with a political agenda - supply the public with scientific knowledge regarding Covid-19. This kind of communication represents a worrisome force in societal discourses on science-related political issues. This article explores online content (N = 108 articles) of two popular German "alternative news" media (NachDenkSeiten and PI News) that present and evaluate biomedical research concerning Covid-19. Using thematic analysis, we investigated how scientific evidence was presented and questioned. Regarding the theoretical background, we drew on the concept of "evidencing practices" and ideas from argumentation theory. More specifically, we studied the use of the following three evidencing and counterevidencing practices: references to Data/Methods, references to Experts/Authorities, and Narratives. The results indicate that the studied alternative news media generally purport to report on science using the same argumentation mechanisms as those employed in science journalism in legacy media. However, a deeper analysis reveals that argumentation directions mostly follow preexisting ideologies and political agendas against Covid-19 policies, which leads to science coverage that contradicts common epistemic authorities and evidence. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of our findings for audience views and consider strategies for countering the rejection of scientific evidence.

Stories have long been discussed as a tool to make science accessible to the public. The potential of stories to stimulate emotions in their audiences makes them an emotional communication strategy par excellence. While studies exist that test the effects of stories in science communication on the one hand and the effects of emotions on the other hand, there is no systematic elaboration of the mechanisms through which stories in science communication evoke emotions and how these emotions influence outcomes such as knowledge gain and attitude change. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework of the "Emotional Effects of Science Narratives" (EESN-Model), which includes a typology of emotions likely to arise from reading science communication as well as mechanisms for each of the emotions to evoke the (desired) outcomes. The model serves as a heuristic to delineate the emotional effects of narratives in science coverage and will help guide research in this domain to provide a deeper understanding of the role of emotion in science news.

This study explores discrete emotions (guilt, fear, hope) as mediators for effects of goal framing on perceived threat of climate change and willingness to sacrifice. To reconcile conflicting evidence, the study introduces and tests the distinction between gain-positive frames (positive consequences of engaging in climate protection), gain-negative frames (avoiding negative consequences when engaging in climate protection), and loss frames (negative consequences of not engaging in climate protection). Results show that gain-negative frames increase perceived threat and willingness to sacrifice, while loss frames increase them through guilt and fear. Hope is increased by a gain-positive frame but subsequently lowers both outcomes.

Abstract
An expanding media universe confronts readers, viewers, and users with an abundance of media content that, for the most part, will not be used by the audience, and will, in many cases, not even be considered for use. Selecting what to use and not to use is functional in avoiding information overload (Carlson, 2003) or 'technostress' (Rosen and Weil, 1997), but, at the same time, necessary to make use of the media environment. The selection of media initiates gratifications, serves particular functions, enables certain effects, all depending on the perspective. Media use and selectivity constitute a field of remarkable tradition in communication research. The question how individuals deal with media and why they use certain media content has been in the focus of communication research from the very beginning of empirical media research; since Lazarsfeld and his colleagues conducted their radio research projects (Lazarsfeld and Stanton, 1944), which included Herzog's (1944) widely cited study on daytime serial listeners. Thinking about media use reached a first prime with the emergence of Uses and Gratifications approaches; an abundance of studies about 'what people do with the media' have been published during the golden years of Uses and Gratifications in the 1970s and 1980s. Bryant and Miron (2004) identified Uses and Gratifications – along with Agenda Setting – as the approach most frequently used in three communication journals from 1956 through 2000.