Complete Publication List

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are often considered crucial for teaching media and information literacy (MIL). However, there is a wide variety in educational media, and there are different competence areas in MIL. Thus, the idea that using any ICT can facilitate the fostering of different MIL areas equally seems oversimplified. This study investigates associations between three types of ICT use and four MIL competence areas. It analyzes data of 315 secondary teachers in Germany employing exploratory structural equation modeling. After controlling for teacher and school traits, the findings show that teachers who use the computer lab in their schools and basic computer applications tend to foster their students’ critical, safety, information, and operational competencies more often. Conversely, using ICTs that mainly serve presentation and visualization purposes has a negative or no association with fostering the four MIL areas. Finally, using mobile devices and online resources is positively associated with fostering students’ information competence. The analysis contributes to a more specific understanding of teachers’ practices with digital media. Possible implications are discussed for teachers’ practice and training as well as for research and policy.

The aim of this article is to show whether distinct varieties of populist attitudes emerge within a society, and how they relate to citizens’ Islamophobic attitudes. The study is based on a representative survey conducted in Switzerland in 2019. We used latent class analysis and multinomial regression analyses to identify latent subgroups, yielding five classes of populist attitudes: direct democracy devotees, individuals with populist tendencies, moderate populists, radical anti-elite populists, and radical-universal populists. Compared with the direct democracy devotees class, members of the moderate and the radical-universal populists classes are significantly more likely to hold anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attitudes and to be politically right-wing, while radical anti-elite populists are not associated with either anti-Muslim attitudes or a right-wing ideology.

Responsibility frames potentially shape the public perception of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, or mental illness, specifically regarding responsibility attributions for their causes and treatment. Which responsibility frames prevail in the health context, and the responses they may elicit from audiences, has not been studied systematically. This systematic review includes studies with different methodological approaches published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 68). Content analyses (n = 56) show that different media attribute health responsibility most frequently, but not exclusively to individuals. Individual responsibility was especially emphasized for obesity, which was also the most studied health issue. Tendencies toward societal attributions of responsibility emerged over time, particularly regarding health risks for which the frames describe a specific cause (e.g., sugar, trans-fat). Experimental studies (n = 12) indicate that individual responsibility frames reduce policy support. The effects of responsibility frames were, however, not as clear-cut as expected with research gaps regarding behavioral and affective outcomes. Overall, there is a clear emphasis on noncommunicable diseases in this field. Finally, the conceptual focus on individual vs. societal health responsibility distracts from social network influences as another relevant health determinant. The implications for health communication are discussed.

News search engines are popular tools to navigate the online news landscape. By filtering and ranking articles, they act as secondary gatekeepers and can influence what news is accessible. This study examines to what extent two news search engines deliver different perspectives on political actors in the context of several political events. In a quantitative content analysis of 400 search results and 200 retrieved articles, the portrayal of German politicians in Bing News and Google News search results for 16 different search terms is assessed. The findings show that, although the Google News results are more likely to include opinionated articles, most politicians are portrayed similarly in the articles retrieved by both services.

The role of algorithms for producing and curating content as well as potential outcomes of these mechanisms is one of the most debated issues in existing communication research. "Communicating algorithms" affect processes of political, social and interpersonal communication. A broad variety of communication fields is thus currently touched on by algorithms, ranging from news exposure, public opinion forming, information retrieval, and political communication processes among others. However, a scientific sound and objective consideration of algorithms as actors in digital (mass) communication is still scarce. The special issue "Algorithms and Communication" addresses this research gap. It presents theoretical as well as empirical results in important fields of communication science, such as media literacy, news aggregation or robotics. With this, it aims to shed light on the black-box of algorithms as "hidden actors" in communication processes.