Trading Data for Health

mHealth apps are growing in popularity among smartphone users. Such apps often contain social features that enable users to compare their behavior with others but to function, mHealth apps require users to share health information which is considered a threat to individuals’ privacy. Building on social comparison theory and research on privacy decision-making, we investigate the effects of users’ social comparison orientation and privacy attitudes as well as the potential mediating effect of health information disclosure on users’ intention to use a dietary app. Relying on a PLS-based structural-equation model in a sample of N = 528 participants, our study supports claims of a positive effe…

Processing privacy information and decision-making for smartphone apps among young German smartphone users

While privacy behaviour is generally equated with self-disclosure, other forms of behaviour that potentially infringe an individual’s privacy, such as downloading an app, are being neglected by research. We seek to fill this gap by modelling app decision-making within a dual-process model of the attitude–behaviour relationship and the role of privacy attitudes in two kinds of information processing: (1) spontaneous, heuristic processes that rely on automated attitude activation and (2) elaborate, cognitive processes that rely on behavioural intentions to guide behaviour. We used a quasi-experimental design to investigate app decision-making processes for N = 89 participants in N = 254 decis…

Are byline biases an issue of the past? The effect of author’s gender and emotion norm prescriptions on the evaluation of news articles on gender equality

When female journalists write about issues of gender equality, they often become the target of incivility and their work is devaluated. Research has investigated such devaluations based on journalists’ gender under the scope of byline biases, analysing if it matters to readers whether a news piece is authored by a male or female journalist. In this paper, we set out to study if gender byline biases occur when journalists write about gender equality. As gender attributions become particularly salient through the presentation of gendered emotion norms, we also inquire in how it matters for readers’ interest in reading such an article and the attributed credibility of the author when an artic…

sj-pdf-1-jou-10.1177_14648849211012176 – Supplemental material for Are byline biases an issue of the past? The effect of author’s gender and emotion norm prescriptions on the evaluation of news articles on gender equality

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-jou-10.1177_14648849211012176 for Are byline biases an issue of the past? The effect of author’s gender and emotion norm prescriptions on the evaluation of news articles on gender equality by Leyla Dogruel, Sven Joeckel and Claudia Wilhelm in Journalism

The Routledge Handbook of Media Use and Well-Being

Default effects in app selection: German adolescents’ tendency to adhere to privacy or social relatedness features in smartphone apps

Cognitive biases such as default effects impact on user preferences for a broad range of different choices. This paper investigates these default effects among adolescents configuring apps that either satisfy relatedness or enhance autonomy by protecting privacy. Relatedness and privacy are two innate needs that adolescents can satisfy with the use of smartphone apps. This study argues that adolescents’ choice of features supporting either privacy protection or social relatedness is a consequence of default effects, so that adolescents adhere to preselected defaults. We test this assumption in an experimental survey design including four app configuration tasks with N = 280 German adolesce…