MediaPsychMEP

A Digital Training Program Fostering Media Sign Literacy in Preschool Children. An Evaluation Study Despite the increasing importance of media literacy for preschool children, no scientifically proven measure exists for the training of this skill. We therefore designed a digital training program ...

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Gerigk and colleagues find that digital training did improve media sign literacy and letter knowledge, but not mathematical compentency, in 4- to 5-year-old children compared to a control group that received no training.

📢 New publication alert! Can a digital training program effectively improve media sign literacy in 4- to 5-year-old preschool children?

Sweet love, bitter breakup: Exploring the impact of food intake on identification with media characters Previous research has documented the effects of media engagement on food consumption. In this study, we explore the reverse effects of eating food of different tastes on engagement with media chara...

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Razpurker-Apfeld and Tal-Or findings support the similarity-identification hypothesis, demonstrating that similarity between viewers’ taste experiences and protagonists’ displayed emotions increased character identification.

📢 New publication alert! How does the food eaten while consuming media relate to engagement with characters?

Cognitive effects of political microtargeting: an eye-tracking study Political microtargeting (PMT) is theorized to impact citizens’ attention and cognitive processes required for coping with persuasive messages. The empirical basis for these assumptions is limited....

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Noetzel and colleagues use a 2x2 mixed-design experiment to show that that issue and political fit increased first pass dwell time, but only political fit increased total dwell time.

📢 New publication alert! What are the cognitive effects of political microtargeting?

Stories to Fight Stereotypes: Using Personal Narratives to Reduce Mental Illness Stigma This study concerns the narrative approach to reducing mental illness stigma. It uses an experimental methodology to examine the effects of disclosing (vs. not disclosing) recovery narratives in th...

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Lu and colleagues find that disclosing recovery narratives leads to less social distancing than not disclosing, and this effect is partially mediated by the elicitation of greater perspective-taking when the story is told from the third-person perspective.

📢 New publication alert! Can personal narratives help destigmatize mental illness?

Digital Sexual Communication Among Adolescents: Links with Sociosexual Health Outcomes and Psychosocial Distress Communication with romantic and sexual partners is important for adolescent well-being. Features of digital media, such as limited social cues and asynchronous messaging, transform social interacti...

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Maheux and colleagues find that digital-only communication was common for sexual and relationship discussions, but having some in-person communication (rather than exclusively digital) was linked to better contraceptive use and higher sexual and relationship satisfaction.

📢 New publication alert! Digital Sexual Communication Among Adolescents: Links with Sociosexual Health Outcomes and Psychosocial Distress

Adolescents’ Sexualized Self-Presentations on Social Media: A Cross-National Data Donation Study Scholars, educators, and policymakers have expressed concerns about the sexualization of youth in popular social media platforms. Yet little is known about the prevalence of sexualized content on s...

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@femkekonings.bsky.social found that almost four in ten adolescents had recently posted sexualized visual content on social media, with girls showing three times as much sexualization in their social media data compared to boys.

📢 New publication alert! How prevalent is sexualized content on social media and who is most likely to post it?

This one was a journey. Jobs changed, roles changed, zip codes changed, babies were born, but the meta-analysis kept going. Grateful to the brilliant team (most not on Sky) who made it happen. @stewartcoles.bsky.social
@rcgd-isr.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social @mediamosaiclab.bsky.social

Media Depictions of Minority Groups: A Meta-Analytic Review Examining the Effects of Positive and Negative Portrayals on Outgroup Evaluations After more than five decades of research on media depictions and outgroup evaluations, there remains a need for a comprehensive analysis that includes both positive and negative portrayals across a...

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@nibasaleem.bsky.social and colleagues’ meta-analysis reveals that negative media depictions of ethnic minorities lead to unfavorable evaluations of these groups, while positive portrayals produce the opposite effect.

📢 New publication alert! How do media portrayals of minority groups affect outgroup evaluations?

“This Message was Deleted”: The Psychological Consequences of Being Out of the Loop During Messenger Use Many messenger services, such as WhatsApp or Snapchat, offer the option of deleting messages after they have been sent, leaving a so-called delete notification in the chat. Especially in group chat...

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@sarahlutz.bsky.social and @chrbuettner.bsky.social examined the psychological impact of delete notifications in messenger apps. Their study found that being out of the loop due to deleted messages can provoke feelings of belonging and self-esteem. Surprisingly, FOMO didn’t moderate these effects.

📢 New article! What happens when a message gets deleted before you can read it? 🧐📱

A Meta-Analysis into the Influence of Multi-Screening on Enjoyment The current study synthesizes 34 effect sizes from 18 articles involving 9,271 participants to investigate how media multitasking influences enjoyment under different circumstances. The moderating ...

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Dongdong Yang and David Atkin’s meta-analysis reveals that multi-screening can boost enjoyment, especially when secondary tasks are relevant. Interestingly, older adults reported more enjoyment than younger ones, and real-world settings showed higher enjoyment than lab studies.

📢New publication alert! Does multi-screening enhance entertainment or just add distraction? 📱📺

Strong Foundations and Forward-Thinking in Turbulent Times: A Note from Our Incoming Editors Published in Media Psychology (Vol. 28, No. 1, 2025)

Very excited to start with Morgan Ellithorpe @morganellithorpe.bsky.social, Roselyn Lee-Won and Drew Cingel as new Editors of "Media Psychology".
In the first issue, we explain our goals for the journal. 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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