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Along with the horrific impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been another attack alongside termed as the "infodemic." The main purposes of the current study are to examine (1) the association between literacy variables and misperceptions about COVID-19 and (2) the moderating role of political ideology on these relationships. The findings from a survey conducted in the United States show that self-identified liberals, need for cognition, and misinformation efficacy were negatively related to misperceptions about COVID-19. Findings from Hayes's PROCESS model 1 show meaningful moderating effects of need for cognition, media locus of control, and misinformation efficacy with political ideology. Implications are discussed.

It is beneficial to reflect on the research literature of emerging communication technology and what has been studied so far, given the rapid growth of this area of research. This study conducted a content analysis of the published literature related to emerging communication technology over a period of 16 years from 1998 to 2013. An exhaustive sample was gathered using two methods of sampling: all Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)-listed communication journals and key word searches. The study examined the common patterns in theoretical, methodological, and technological variables. The primary findings reveal a lack of theory, fuzziness in the conceptualization of the research, growth in empirical research methods, frequent use of nonprobability sampling methods, and growth in studies on blogs, social networking sites (SNS), and mobile technology. Implications and future directions are discussed.

The political blogosphere is replete with uncivil discussions and is apt to examine the influence of incivility on news frames. The present study brings in literature from incivility and framing effects and uses two experiments to examine the influence of incivility on news frames for democratic outcomes such as willingness to participate, online participation, openmindedness, and attitude certainty. Primary findings indicate the detrimental effects of incivility causing less openmindedness and more attitude certainty. At the same time, incivility causes more willingness to participate and online participation. More importantly, the findings demonstrate how incivility interacts with news frames. Implications for news framing effects in the social media landscape are discussed.

A consistently growing body of research focuses on the concept of framing. The present study contributes to framing effects literature in three ways: the study examines frames in competitive environment, investigates the influence of motivated processing, and the effects on behavioral intentions of participants. The data were collected using an experiment embedded in a Web-based survey of participants employing the issue of civil liberties conflict. The study used a 2 (motivated processing) × 3 (framed conditions) between-subjects design. Findings show that in case of both the outcomes of behavioral intent, willingness to seek information and talk, motivated processing intensified framing effects and specifically so in the mixed frame condition.

AbstractVisual representations of refugees likely have a determinative function in the ways policies are written and aid is dispensed for crises resolution efforts. We use theoretical concepts from the visual framing literature and two studies—a content analysis and an experiment—to examine the effects of six visual frames. We study the content of newspapers from four countries for the following visual frames: 'individual', 'massified', 'mother and child', 'father and child', 'receiving aid' and 'working refugees.' Next, we examine the impact of these frames on intention to donate. Findings demonstrate that individuals with higher positive attitude towards refugees showed higher intention to donate. However, among these participants, intention to donate was highest in the 'individual' frame condition. On the other hand, among the participants with lower positive attitude towards refugees, the highest intention to donate was in the 'working refugees' frame condition. Implications are discussed.

In this social semiotic analysis, we examined visuals of Rohingya refugees in two U.S. newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. We identified prominent tropes and themes exemplifying those tropes. Visuals connoted refugee vulnerability and subscribed to gender stereotypes. Media also leaned on familiar themes to translate "distant suffering." Our study has addressed the urgent need to bridge academic/critical work on journalism and journalistic practice in the field. Our hope is that media practitioners will take steps to delink refugees from negative connotations.

The communication mediation model asserts that the effects of news use on political participation are mostly indirect, mediated through discussion. Recent research has shown that this mediation process is stronger in countries where freedom of the press and expression are also greater. Relying on data collected during election cycles in seventeen countries between 2013 and 2018, we examine how additional country-level factors, including political freedom and digital infrastructure, moderate the indirect relationship between news use and political participation via political talk. Results provide evidence that these factors condition both outcomes, but in different ways. For protest, two of three country-level indices moderate individual-level variation in the pathway between political talk and protest. For voting, two of three country-level indices moderate aggregate-level variation in the pathway between news use and political talk. Results are discussed in light of their implications for the communication mediation model and comparative political communication research.

While many Americans support the right to protest, increased animus has recently been directed at protesters themselves, often along partisan ideological lines and in partisan media content. However, there is a lack of research on attitudes toward treatment of protesters in the context of political violence and selective exposure to likeminded partisan sources of information. This study finds that a significant, positive relationship exists between self-identified Republicans and thinking that disruptive protesters deserve to be "roughed up," while identifying as a Democrat produced a negative relationship in the same circumstance. Likewise, consumption of conservative partisan media was found to have a positive relationship with the idea of "roughing up" disruptive protesters, while liberal partisan media was found to have a negative relationship. However, selective exposure to attitude-affirming media only had a significant impact among self-identified Democrats, in the sense that Democrats' selective exposure to left-leaning media was associated with less support for "roughing up" disruptive protesters.