Publicaties

The unsolved question of whether the media affect political agendas is tackled with an innovative research method: a survey among politicians and journalists in Belgium. This article shows that this new approach can complement existing knowledge and yield new insights. Results largely support the contention that media matter for politics; politicians and journalists state that the media are important agenda setters, even compared to more ...

Media effects research has documented the prevalence of different ideals in media content, and their effects on media users. We developed a framework for the representation of such ideals, and that may increase our understanding of the effects media have on users’ well-being. Drawing on cultural sociology, communication theory, and psychological literature, we introduce the malleability narrative of mediated ideals, described as “a collection of ...

Criticizing mainstream media for their ‘lies’ or ‘fake news’ has become a common political practice on the radical right. Further empirical research is needed to better understand the intricacies of these attacks on media, in particular for the way they relate to criticism of the political system as a whole and to matters of political representation. How do radical right actors construct a sense of political misrepresentation through their ...

A number of studies have suggested that social media use may be negatively related to adolescents’ well-being. One explanation for this relation may lie in the internalization of various types of ideals displayed on social media; however, research supporting this reasoning is largely absent. The present survey study among 1,983 Austrian, Belgian, Spanish, and South Korean adolescents (aged 12-19, 49.7% girls) addressed this gap and found that ...

With the rising popularity of social media as news sources, a new common format element for presenting news has emerged: in addition to the classic headline, lead and picture, news organizations add a status message when they share their news articles on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Based on media logic theory, we argue that the communication style of these messages is likely to be more interpersonal and subjective. To investigate ...

De media evolueren in razend tempo: via Facebook, Twitter en allerhande blogs worden we permanent op de hoogte gehouden van het wel en wee van anderen. Maar hoe relevant en betrouwbaar is die stroom aan informatie?De media vertegenwoordigen, naast de wetgevende, uitvoerende en gerechtelijke, de vierde macht en hebben een bemiddelende functie: de bevolking informeren over beleid en beslissingen. Journalisten geven feiten, maken opinies en creëren ...

The developments in new media inspire debates about the future: some people praise the potential of new media, while others fear the current or pending crisis. This state-of-the-art report analyses how the influence of the new media developments on culture and education can be explored from the perspective of multiliteracies, digital rhetoric and virtual ethnography. Section 1 focuses on the concepts of literacy and culture approached from the ...

//