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The effects of episodic and thematic framing on the attribution of responsibility for societal problems have previously been investigated with experimental methods and mostly tested general effects on the public. The current work, instead, investigates episodic framing's effect by linking a large-scale content analysis to data of a panel survey ( n = 3,270) and assesses the conditionality upon citizens' individual political ideology. It does so with a focus on perceptions of responsibility for the 2009–2015 economic crisis and within the context of the Netherlands. Results demonstrate that exposure to episodically framed crisis news caused a decline in the attribution of responsibility to individual citizens, whereas thematic framing did not affect this. Framing effects on the attribution of political responsibility, instead, were conditional on political ideology: Episodic framing decreased the attribution of political responsibility, whereas thematic framing increased the attribution of responsibility to political actors, but both effects occurred primarily among citizens with a right-wing political-economic ideology. Accordingly, we add an explanation for the inconsistency of effect directions in previously published research on the effects that episodic and thematic framing may have on responsibility attributions.

AbstractA survey experiment was conducted that exposed Dutch citizens to different scenarios that either emphasized the gains or the losses regarding the number of victims or the economic damage caused by SARS-CoV-2. Replicating prospect theory in an ecologically valid crisis context, we found that gain frames promoted risk-aversive preferences, whereas loss frames increased support for risk-seeking alternatives. We further demonstrate the effect's conditionality: Framing effects are strongest for health compared to economic scenarios and most pronounced when the type of intervention entails the highest risk associated with the respective domain. Theoretically, we show that the strongest media effects occur as an interplay between emphasis and equivalence framing effects, which underlines the need for media effects research to integrate both framing elements rather than studying them separately.

This article studies the tripartite relationship between the economy, economic news, and public economic perceptions. Our analysis is twofold: We investigate the impact of the real economy on economic news in Dutch newspapers (2002-2015, N = 127,120); second, we analyze the impact of economic news on public economic perceptions. Our empirical approach builds on and contributes to the literature by making nuanced distinctions between (a) economic levels and changes (positive/negative), (b) volume and tone of coverage (positive/negative), and, most importantly, (c) people's retrospective and prospective economic judgments. Our analyses show that the public is presented a version of economic reality that is skewed to the negative, which strongly affects people's economic expectations but not evaluations. Extending media-dependency theory, these results demonstrate the necessity to both conceptually and empirically distinguish between people's retrospective and prospective judgments.

Abstract. Following the news is generally understood to be crucial for democracy as it allows citizens to politically participate in an informed manner; yet, one may wonder about the unintended side effects it has for the mental well-being of citizens. With news focusing on the negative and worrisome events in the world, framing that evokes a sense of powerlessness, and lack of entertainment value, this study hypothesizes that news consumption decreases mental well-being via negative hedonic experiences; thereby, we differentiate between hard and soft news. Using a panel survey in combination with latent growth curve modeling (n = 2,767), we demonstrate that the consumption of hard news television programs has a negative effect on the development of mental well-being over time. Soft news consumption, by contrast, has a marginally positive impact on the trend in well-being. This can be explained by the differential topic focus, framing and style of soft news vis-à-vis hard news. Investigating the effects of news consumption on mental well-being provides insight into the impact news exposure has on variables other than the political ones, which definitively are not less societally relevant.

Political satire is often consumed on online platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the effects of its consumption may be highly conditional on the user comments that are surrounding it. By manipulating the valence of comments (positive vs negative) and the focus of these comments (hedonic entertainment value vs eudaimonic entertainment value vs informative value), this pre-registered experiment investigates how user comments affect satire viewers' hedonic entertainment experiences, their eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and their knowledge gain. Analyses showed that the valence of comments congruently affected viewers' hedonic entertainment experiences, eudaimonic entertainment experiences, and subjective knowledge gain, but not their objective knowledge gain. In addition, the focus of user comments affected eudaimonic entertainment experiences and knowledge gain regardless of comments' valence. This study's findings advance our understanding of how viewers are affected when they consume media content that is surrounded by the comments of other viewers.

The possibly detrimental consequences of soft news are subject of popular and academic debate. This study investigates how watching particular news genres—soft versus hard—relates to cynicism about politics among Dutch citizens. A nuanced and novel scale measuring relative exposure to soft versus hard news is introduced using nonparametric unidimensional unfolding. The analysis of three public opinion surveys demonstrates a strong relationship between people's position on this hard versus soft news exposure scale and political cynicism. People who watched relatively more soft news were more cynical about politics than people who watched relatively more hard news. This relationship was not conditional on individuals' level of political knowledge and interest.

Politicotainment and democratainment are concepts used to identify the relevance of popular culture for citizenship. Among the most prominent examples of these concepts are political fiction series. Merging political facts with fictional narratives, such series provide a unique opportunity to engage the audience with political matters in an entertaining way. But can these series also affect the agenda of the public and the news media? Based on aggregate-level data of Google search queries and news-media content, the current study examines the agenda-setting effects of the political fiction series Borgen. Time-series analyses show that only a few Borgen episodes affected the public agenda and even fewer the news media agenda. Evidence is also found for negative patterns. Thus, we should be careful not to overestimate the impact of political fiction in terms of agenda-setting effects: It occasionally has agenda-setting effects but more often not.

AbstractPoliticotainment and democratainment are concepts used to identify the relevance of popular culture for citizenship. Among the most prominent examples of these concepts are political fiction series. Merging political facts with fictional narratives, such series provide a unique opportunity to engage the audience with political matters in an entertaining way. But can these series also affect the agenda of the public and the news media? Based on aggregate-level data of Google search queries and news-media content, the current study examines the agenda-setting effects of the political fiction seriesBorgen. Time-series analyses show that only a fewBorgenepisodes affected the public agenda and even fewer the news media agenda. Evidence is also found for negative patterns. Thus, we should be careful not to overestimate the impact of political fiction in terms of agenda-setting effects: It occasionally has agenda-setting effects but more often not.

Abstract
This article studies the asymmetric effects of credit and blame attributions in economic news on government evaluations. We rely on a dataset combining a manual content analysis of Dutch economic news (print, television, online; N = 5,630) with a three-wave panel survey (N = 3,240) that was fielded in 2015. Results show that people who are exposed to news in which the government is blamed for the economy tend to adopt this frame by assigning responsibility to the government for the economic crisis. In addition, exposure to blame attributions leads to more negative government evaluations. This effect is partly mediated through the attribution of crisis responsibility. Credit attributions in the news do not have any effect on public opinion.

Scholars generally agree that there is a gap between lower- and higher-educated citizens on civic competence, which solidifies during adolescence. This two-wave panel study examines how an educational intervention focused on media literacy influences civic competence among lower-educated youth (age 16 to 26). Additionally, the level of civic involvement among participants is tested on three measures of civic competence: news media literacy, political efficacy and political knowledge. The findings suggest that the educational program has influenced the level of political efficacy and news media literacy. Furthermore, participants with the most active involvement in the program, i.e. co-created the educational video material, also showed the strongest improvements of political efficacy and political knowledge.