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AbstractDrawing upon the hostile media effect, this study examined how perceived media bias in covering genetically modified (GM) food influences individuals' risk–benefit assessments of it and their food consumption behaviors. The results of a nationally representative survey (N = 1364) showed that individuals seeing media coverage as more biased in favor of GM food perceived it as more hazardous, which was related to a higher proportion of organic food consumption in their diets. In contrast, perceived media coverage as less slanted toward GM food was associated with more benefit perceptions of it, thereby predicting its higher proportion in individuals' diets. More importantly, the indirect effect of perceived media bias on GM food consumption through benefit perceptions was more pronounced among males than females. The findings of this study not only provide empirical evidence of the perceptual and behavioral outcomes of hostile media perceptions, but also offer valuable insights for journalists and education practitioners to improve public understanding of emerging food technologies.

Cyberbullying often happens in the presence of bystanders whose behaviors play a key role in changing dynamics of the situation. To examine the factors influencing cyberbystander likelihood of intervening in cyberbullying on social media, a 2 (degree of cyberbullying severity: high vs low) × 2 (level of interpersonal similarity: high vs low) between-subjects experiment was conducted ( N = 132). Results indicated that cyberbystanders' empathic responses depended on the severity of cyberbullying. The more empathy bystanders felt, the more likely they were to publicly and privately intervene. Moreover, the indirect effect of cyberbullying severity on willingness to intervene through empathy was more pronounced when the interpersonal similarity between victim and cyberbystander was low, rather than it was high.

The growing adoption of artificial intelligence in journalism has dramatically changed the way news is produced. Despite the recent proliferation of research on automated journalism, debate continues about how audiences perceive and evaluate news purportedly written by machines compared to the work of human authors. Based on a review of 30 experimental studies, this meta-analysis shows that machine authorship had a negative, albeit small, effect on credibility perceptions. Furthermore, machine authorship had a null effect on news evaluations, although this effect was significant and stronger (more negative) when (a) the news covered socio-political topics (vs. environmental topics) and (b) the actual source of the news articles was a machine (vs. a human). These findings are discussed in light of theoretical accounts of human–machine communication and practical implications for news media.

Bandwagon cues are system-aggregated information about crowd behavior or peer endorsement displayed on a web interface (e.g., the number of likes on a Facebook post). Despite the recent proliferation of research on the effect of bandwagon cues on credibility perceptions, a comprehensive meta-analytic review of this effect has not yet been performed and published. Based on 161 effect sizes from 41 studies, the current meta-analysis revealed that bandwagon cues had a positive, albeit small, effect on credibility perceptions. Moderator analyses indicated that this effect was stronger (a) when the message was related to the marketing topic, (b) when the source was a non-expert (vs. an expert), and (c) when participants were from collectivistic (vs. individualistic) cultures. However, the bandwagon effect did not vary by cue feature (e.g., deliberateness). These findings are discussed in light of theoretical implications, practical guidelines, and directions for future research.