0000000000261050
AUTHOR
Sebastian Scherr
Supporting Reporting: On the Positive Effects of Text- and Video-Based Awareness Material on Responsible Journalistic Suicide News Writing.
Suicide is a global public health problem. Media impact on suicide is well confirmed and there are several recommendations on how media should and should not report on suicide to minimize the risk of copycat behavior. Those media guidelines have been developed to improve responsible reporting on suicide (RRS). Although such guidelines are used in several countries, we lack empirical evidence on their causal effect on actual journalistic news writing. We conducted an experiment with journalism students (N = 78) in Germany in which we tested whether exposure to awareness material promoting RRS influences news writing. As a supplement to the widely used text-based material, we tested the impac…
How perceived persuasive intent and reactance contribute to third-person perceptions: evidence from two experiments
In two experiments, this study presents a process model that explains third-person perceptions (TPP) as a function of perceived persuasive intent and reactance. Using two nonstudent samples, findings were internally replicated for two topics. The study shows that media messages evoking perceptions of persuasive intent also activate reactance, which in turn predicts TPP topic-independently. Remarkably, half of the total stimulus effect on TPP could be explained through reactance, which offers new implications for existing theoretical explanations of strong TPP after undesirable messages but weak effects after, for example, prosocial messages.
Reducing the Bias: How Perspective Taking Affects First- and Third-Person Perceptions of Media Influence
Third- and first-person perceptions (TPPs/FPPs) are considered to be biased judgments of media influence on self and others. Research suggests that perspective taking, i.e., thinking from another person’s position, decreases perceptual gaps between self and others via assimilation. In a two-factorial experiment (n = 431), we test whether this effect of perspective taking (Factor 1) holds true for the presumed influence of desirable and undesirable messages (Factor 2). Results indicate that perspective taking significantly reduces TPPs in the case of an undesirable message but not FPPs that are provoked by the desirable message. The observable effect traces back to a change in presumed messa…