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This study aims to understand how and why emerging adults come into contact with food media messages, and what they perceive as positive and negative outcomes related to food literacy. Seven focus groups, stratified by gender and socio-economic status, with 37 emerging adults aged between 18 and 25 were conducted. Photovoice was used to reflect on participants’ real-life food media experiences. Findings reveal that food media consumption is a combination of actively searching and incidentally encountering. The results suggest that food media messages attract emerging adults’ attention by bringing content in an entertaining, engaging, and appealing way, and featuring popular food personalities. Finally, food media messages were perceived to both enhance and distort food literacy. The results show how food media messages for food literacy interventions can be designed in order to attract emerging adults’ attention and fulfill their specific needs.

Online hate speech on social media platforms causes harm to those who are victimized as well as society at large. The prevalence of hateful content has, thus, prompted numerous calls for improved countermeasures and prevention. For such interventions to be effective, it is necessary to gain a nuanced understanding of influences that facilitate the spread of hate speech. This study does so by investigating what are relevant digital determinants for online hate perpetration. Moreover, the study explores possibilities of different technology-driven interventions for prevention. Thereby, the study specifically considers the digital environments in which online hate speech is most often produced and disseminated, namely social media platforms. We apply frameworks related to the concept of digital affordances to focus on the role that technological features of these platforms play in the context of online hate speech. Data were collected using the Delphi method in which a selected sample of experts from both research and practice answered multiple rounds of surveys with the goal of reaching a group consensus. The study encompassed an open-ended collection of initial ideas, followed by a multiple-choice questionnaire to identify, and rate the most relevant determinants. Usefulness of the suggested intervention ideas was assessed through the three lenses of human-centered design. The results of both thematic analysis and non-parametric statistics yield insights on how features of social media platforms can be both determinants that facilitate online hate perpetration as well as crucial mechanisms of preventive interventions. Implications of these findings for future intervention development are discussed.

Celebrities regularly become the victims of online bashing and criticism by the audience, a phenomenon known as celebrity bashing. Part of the reason why audience members are so aggressive toward famous people is that they consider this an acceptable and even entertaining behavior. However, there is limited knowledge on how these acceptable attitudes are formed. Based on the general aggression model (GAM), this study tested the extent to which attitudes toward celebrity bashing are formed based on situational (exposure to bashing) and personal (trait moral disengagement and empathy) factors and the interaction between them. The results of an online survey conducted among adolescents (N = 159) indicated that a combination of personal and situational factors determines the attitudes toward celebrity bashing. In particular, regular exposure to bashing and higher scores on moral disengagement were related to more acceptable attitudes, whereas cognitive empathy was associated with less acceptable attitudes. Moreover, the interaction effect between exposure and cognitive empathy suggests an underlying mainstreaming effect, with the effect of empathy disappearing when exposure increases among adolescent audiences.

Drawing on theory from entertainment experiences and (narrative) persuasion research, this study investigates destigmatizing responses to a genre-hybrid (human-interest and stand-up comedy) nonfiction television program about minority groups. Using an online between-subjects experiment with 417 participants, we found that the combination of human-interest and stand-up comedy can simultaneously stimulate hedonic and eudaimonic experiences, and that this combination reduces trivialization, but not counterarguing responses compared to its separate genre components. Results also show that combining stand-up comedy with human-interest led to higher perceptions of self-efficacy regarding future intergroup contact with minorities, and that this relation was mediated via counterarguing and trivialization. This study is the first to show the potential and unique workings of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences to reduce resistance to persuasion to achieve destigmatizing outcomes.

Indoor radon is a natural radioactive gas and is one of the leading causes of lung cancer. Despite multiple policy and communication interventions to increase radon testing and mitigation, the uptake of these measures remains insufficient. A participatory research design was applied in Belgium and Slovenia to probe the barriers and facilitators homeowners experience regarding radon protective behavior on the one hand and co-designing communication tools on the other hand. The results show that there remains a need for interventions on all levels (i.e., policy, economic interventions, and communication). Moreover, results indicated a need for a communication strategy that follows the different steps between awareness and performing mitigation measures. Further, involving the target group in the early stages of intervention design was beneficial. Future research is needed to test the effectiveness of the proposed communication strategies in a controlled setting.

The past two decades have witnessed an increase in ethnicity-related peer aggression, driven by the intensification of the migration phenomenon and rise of information and communication technologies. The goal of the current study is to extend the scope of previous reviews on peer aggression to examine the emerging evidence on the role of technological tools in the prevention, detection, and handling of ethnicity-related peer aggression among young people. We have identified 14 relevant papers published between 2005 and 2020 that help us answer the following research questions: What forms of aggression among young ethnic minorities do these technological interventions try to address? What types of technological interventions are being used? The results indicate that the technological tools are being used to tackle both intergroup as well as intragroup peer aggression, in which ethnic minorities youth is involved (as a victim, perpetrator or bystander). Most studies have focused on adolescents and young adults in the US or in Europe. The technological tools reported on, include: online games, videos, social media, and chat-based programmes, or machine learning algorithms aimed at tackling online and offline peer aggression. They can be used either as stand - alone tools, or as part of intervention programmes (at the school, family or community level). These findings can be useful to improve and elaborate future digital technologies developed to address ethnicity-related peer aggression.

Abstract. Boredom is a prevalent and relevant, yet understudied, negative emotion in the field of media psychology. This paper proposes novel theoretical foundations to study boredom as an emotion and its related regulation strategies in the context of mobile media. Due to their pervasive nature, mobile media allow for boredom regulation via passive and (inter)active exposure to a wide variety of media contents. It is still unclear how and through which processes mobile media provide successful boredom regulation. This paper first describes the existing scarce and mostly older literature on boredom from the field of media psychology and links this to recent insights from general psychology with as its core the meaning and attentional components (MAC) model ( Westgate & Wilson, 2018 ). It then integrates media psychology predictions for mobile media into the MAC model and identifies gaps and opportunities to be tackled in future media psychology studies, by also taking into account the broader boredom findings from within general psychology, for example, those focusing on the meaning component. Finally, the paper provides a summary of the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms giving rise to boredom and proposes methodological innovations for studying the research questions that are still left unanswered. The aim is to inspire future media psychology research on boredom as a highly relevant emotional state and how boredom regulation through mobile media use for can be both a challenge and an opportunity for individuals’ well-being.

Compartir, leer y responder a narraciones personales en webs de apoyo entre iguales puede tanto fortalecer como amenazar la confianza de los adolescentes para hacer frente a los acontecimientos estresantes (es decir, la autoeficacia como estrategia de afrontamiento). Los principios de la escritura expresiva, el intercambio social de emociones, la persuasión narrativa y los efectos en uno mismo pueden proporcionar información sobre la forma en que esas acciones pueden relacionarse con la autoeficacia como estrategia de afrontamiento. Mediante una encuesta transversal en línea con 311 adolescentes de habla holandesa de entre 14 y 18 años, este artículo explora cómo estas acciones y los motivos del apoyo social (es decir, la búsqueda de información y la búsqueda de apoyo emocional) se relacionan con la autoeficacia de los adolescentes como estrategia de afrontamiento tras usar la web de apoyo entre iguales. Los resultados muestran que la experiencia de los usuarios al leer y responder a narraciones personales no estaba relacionada con su autoeficacia de afrontamiento. Sin embargo, se encontró una relación negativa entre la experiencia de compartir una narración personal y la autoeficacia, por lo que los usuarios no percibieron que el sitio web fuera útil para su confianza general a la hora de hacer frente a acontecimientos estresantes. No obstante, esta relación negativa se invirtió cuando también tenían el objetivo de encontrar apoyo emocional con sus iguales, Sharing, reading and responding to personal narratives on peer-to-peer support websites may provide adolescents with informational and emotional support to feel more confident in coping with stressful events. However, their use may also pose a threat to adolescents’ coping self-efficacy. Principles of expressive writing, social sharing of emotions, narrative persuasion and self-effects may provide insight in how these actions may both positively and negatively relate to coping self-efficacy. By using a cross-sectional online survey with 311 Dutch-speaking adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18, this article explores how these actions and social support motives (i.e. information-seeking and emotional supportseeking) are related to adolescents’ perceptions about the usefulness of these websites to their coping self-efficacy. The results showed a positive relation between adolescents’ social support motives and their belief in the usefulness of these websites to their coping self-efficacy. Therefore, we conclude that it may be an effective coping strategy for many adolescents. There was a negative relation between experience with sharing a personal narrative and coping self-efficacy, meaning that these users did not perceive the website to be helpful to their overall confidence in coping with stressful events. However, this negative relation was reversed when they were motivated to find emotional support with similar others

Paper presented at the second biennial conference on Food & Communication

Emerging research has suggested that digital games can generate entertainment experiences beyond hedonic enjoyment towards eudaimonic experiences: Being emotionally moved, stimulated to reflect on one’s self or a sense of elevation. Studies in this area have mainly focused on individual game characteristics that elicit singular and static eudaimonic game moments. However, such a focus neglects the interplay of multiple game aspects as well as the dynamic nature of eudaimonic experiences. The current study takes a novel approach to eudaimonic game research by conducting a qualitative game analysis of three games (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Detroit: Become Human, and God of War) and taking systematic notes on game experiences shortly after playing. Results reveal that emotionally moving, reflective, and elevating eudaimonic experiences were elicited when gameplay notes suggested a strong involvement with the game’s narrative and characters (i.e., narrative engagement) and, in some cases, narrative-impacting choices. These key aspects, in turn, are enhanced by clean player interfaces, graphically realistic characters, close camera perspectives, tone-appropriate soundtrack scores, and both narrative-enhancing (e.g., God of War’s health mechanic) and choice-enhancing mechanics (e.g., Detroit: Become Human’s flowchart). Eudaimonic experiences were also found to evolve throughout the game, with more powerful experiences occurring near the end of the game and some narrative themes fueling the eudaimonic flow of experiences throughout the overall game narrative. This study adds to academic research studying digital games by suggesting an innovative methodological approach that provides a detailed, integrative, and dynamic perspective on eudaimonic game experiences.

In this chapter we argue that the selection of, and engagement with, aggressive entertainment contents can be an emotion regulation strategy, or a way of influencing the nature, expression and intensity of an experienced emotion. We explain this in the context of two, often experienced, negative emotions that have been linked to aggression in the general emotion literature: anger and boredom. By first defining these two emotions and describing their typical action tendencies, we aim to show how the engagement with aggressive media content can be a way of regulating these emotions, sometimes in functional but also in dysfunctional ways. We hereby extend the scope from passively watching aggressive entertainment contents to actively participating and enjoying aggressive acts in the online environment (e.g. online bashing, trolling and cyberbullying).

This paper explores audience responses to the combination of comedy and human-interest television, which can lead to the simultaneous experience of hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonic appreciation. This qualitative audience study consists of 21 interviews with members of the public, reflecting on their viewing experiences of Taboe, a Flemish television programme that combines humour and human-interest about stigmatized groups. This research finds that combining hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences could be key in advancing the way in which television programmes talk about stigmatized groups, leading them to a more inclusive, accessible and overall positive narrative.

One of the challenges Public Service Media institutions face today is how to translate normative values such as universality and diversity into measurable and tangible content in an attempt to realize their “public value”. This contribution shows how the communicative functions of humor can help create public value by introducing audiences to minorities. As a case in point, we analyzed Taboe, a humorous human-interest program about minorities including, amongst others, the visually impaired and the obese, broadcast by Flemish public broadcaster VRT in 2018. Based on in-depth interviews with program makers and participants and a qualitative content analysis of the program, the study found that humor provided the program with a positive, funny yet emotional tone of voice that attracted and kept the audience’s attention. By giving various minorities an active voice, Taboe introduced mainstream audiences to the their perspective, encouraging increased knowledge and understanding and, in turn, tolerance of, and acceptance towards, the minority groups represented.

Chemsex is a growing public health concern, with little evidence-based care and support available. The aim of this study is to understand current risk reduction practices, and the information and care needs of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM) who engage in chemsex. Between January and March 2020, semi structured in-depth interviews with drug-using GBMSM (n = 20) were conducted. Data were analyzed thematically. The reported preparatory measures were: deliberately scheduling chemsex sessions, and discussing preferences regarding setting and attendees. During the event, a logbook is kept to monitor drugs taken by each participant. People try to take care of each other, but this is often counteracted. Respondents highlighted needs: reliable and easily-accessible information, anonymous medical and psychological healthcare, chemsex-specific care, and a value-neutral safe space to talk about chemsex experiences. Results imply two types of users: planned and impulsive users. Adherence to intended harm reduction practices are complicated by drug effects, peer pressure, and feelings of distrust among users.

Reports of a handful of tragic cyberbullying cases, where assumed victims have committed suicide, have revealed that purported cyberbullying attacks are sometimes actually created by the victim himself or herself (using a fake name or posting anonymously). This phenomenon has been named self-cyberbullying, fictitious cyberbullying, digital self-harm, or digital Munchausen. To date, only a few studies have examined this phenomenon to a limited extent. Via a qualitative and quantitative survey, this study further explored forms, motives, contents, means, platforms, and pretended identities of fictitious online victimization in adolescents. In addition, in order to support future research on this topic, first steps were taken to develop and validate an index to assess fictitious online victimization. Positive correlations were found with traditional and cyberbullying and self-harm and negative correlations with self-esteem, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction. These results add to our understanding of the phenomenon and may lay the groundwork for future studies.

Research shows that media entertainment can induce eudaimonic or meaningful experiences, such as being emotionally moved or being stimulated to reflect about oneself. While these studies have primarily focused on adults’ eudaimonic media entertainment experiences, the current study explores whether games can lead to eudaimonic experiences amongst adolescents, for instance, via characteristics like emotionally deep stories and moral choices. Games are very popular among adolescents, while eudaimonic experiences may possibly fulfill key needs of identity development and peer relatedness as well as prove to be beneficial for adolescents’ well-being and overall development. To explore adolescents’ eudaimonic game experiences, we performed a qualitative study existing of six focus groups (N = 33) and 20 individual in-depth interviews (total N = 53). Results indicate that adolescents do experience eudaimonic game moments. Specifically, they experienced socially bonding, reflective (about oneself and society), emotionally moving, and elevating moments. These were considered particularly meaningful when they were somehow connected to real life. Finally, adolescents mostly mentioned narrative aspects (i.e., the game’s story, characters, moral choices), other real players, and audiovisual aspects like graphics and soundtrack as important elicitors of eudaimonic game experiences. Limitations and future research suggestions are further discussed.

Contains fulltext : 224831.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Modern technologies can aid working processes as well as provide individuals with an opportunity to connect and form interpersonal relationships. However, they can also create a context for displaced aggression. In this study, we examine whether people experiencing work stressors may engage in online antisocial behavioral as a means of venting their negative emotions. Specifically, we investigate whether experiencing stressors at work fuels anger in the private context and whether this anger triggers subsequent displaced aggression in the form of antisocial online behavior (AOB) throughout the evening. Additionally, we examine the crossover of anger to AOB in couples in their private context. We conducted a diary study amongst 95 dual‐earner couples, twice a day, during five consecutive working days. Results confirmed that men’s daily work stressors spilled over to their private context in the form of anger after work and AOB throughout the evening. No crossover effects were found from their partner. For women, a crossover effect was found of their partner's work stressors and anger on their own AOB. These results demonstrate gender differences in displaced online aggression. 29 p.

Adolescents regularly observe practices of online celebrity bashing. Existing research pointed to adolescent bystanders' approving attitudes toward this practice. However, knowledge is lacking on how adolescent bystanders respond emotionally and physiologically to cases of celebrity bashing. An experimental study with two conditions (bashing/neutral) was conducted to investigate the influence of exposure to online celebrity bashing on the emotional responses and physiological arousal among adolescent bystanders (n = 67). Self-reported questionnaires before and after exposure to celebrity bashing were used to measure participants' emotional state. Their physiological activation (heart rate and skin conductance) was recorded using the E4 Empatica Wristlet. The results indicated that adolescents responded quite negatively to the cases of celebrity bashing, expressing increased feelings of anger, sadness, frustration and powerlessness, and decreased feelings of amusement. Moreover, adolescent bystanders experienced celebrity bashing as stressful, as both the heart rate and phasic skin conductance significantly increased after exposure to bashing.

Adolescents often seek and provide peer support as an effective strategy for countering cyberbullying victimization. Little is known about the actual content of such peer support, however, partly due to limitations inherent to survey, interview or focus group research. The current study examined online peer support that had been sought and provided with regard to cyberbullying. It involved thematic analysis of cyberbullying message threads, and stories of benefit and effectiveness, in two online support group fora for adolescents. Applying Tardy’s (1985) social support framework, and including the social support categorisations proposed by House (1981), we found that peer support in this context involved information on coping strategies, and discussion of: (cyber)bullying as a phenomenon; the actors involved; and, the victim’s specific (cyber)bullying situation. In addition, online fora members provided victims with various subtypes of emotional support. Further research is needed on the effectiveness of different types of peer support, particularly regarding the coping strategies that adolescents recommend.

Bystanders in cyberbullying may play a crucial role in reducing cyberbullying's harm for victims. This study assessed bystander responses, and the associations with adolescent victims' emotional reactions to cyberbullying and victims' mental health outcomes (symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress; suicidal ideation). A total of 1037 adolescents (49.8 percent female, mean age = 15.17 years) participated in the cross-sectional study and filled out an anonymous questionnaire. Victimization was measured with a single-item scale (cybervictims) and a multiple-item scale with cyberbullying examples (youth experiencing offensive practices). Associations of positive (e.g., defending) and negative (e.g., ignoring) bystander responses with victims' emotions (8 types of emotions rated on 5-point Likert scale) were assessed through correlations; and with victims' mental health outcomes (Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale [DASS-21], single item for suicidal ideation) using regression analyses, adjusting for the influence of gender and coping styles (KIDCOPE). Cybervictims (single-item scale) showed more victimization experiences, and more negative emotional and mental health outcomes than youth only experiencing offensive practices. Negative bystander responses predicted some mental health outcomes among cybervictims, but not among youth only experiencing offensive practices. Positive bystander behavior did not predict any mental health outcome. There is a clear need for cyberbullying prevention programs to include components that target bystander responses, to alleviate victims' emotional and mental health harm after cyberbullying. Attention is needed to create effective programs to reduce negative bystander behavior, while most current programs are focused on positive bystander behavior.

This paper describes the items, scale validity and scale reliability of a self-report questionnaire that measures bystander behavior in cyberbullying incidents among adolescents, and its behavioral determinants. Determinants included behavioral intention, behavioral attitudes, moral disengagement attitudes, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, subjective norm and social skills. Questions also assessed (cyber-)bullying involvement. Validity and reliability information is based on a sample of 238 adolescents (M age=13.52 years, SD=0.57). Construct validity was assessed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) or Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) in Mplus7 software. Reliability (Cronbach Alpha, α) was assessed in SPSS, version 22. Data and questionnaire are included in this article. Further information can be found in DeSmet et al. (2018) [1]. ispartof: DATA IN BRIEF vol:18 pages:1588-1595 ispartof: location:Netherlands status: published

The practice of slut-shaming became rampant with the advent of social networking sites (SNS). This chapter will discuss how these platforms pose additional risks for female adolescents to be slut-shamed. It will be argued that SNS have expanded the impact and scope of slut-shaming through, for example, the easy replication and persistence of publicly visible content on SNS. Furthermore, this chapter will examine the prevalence and characteristics of slut-shaming (derived from perceptions of the victim’s point of view) particularly on SNS, based on a survey study amongst 476 adolescent females (12–18 years). To conclude, efforts will be discussed to prevent this form of harassment. Several actors such as parents, schools, mass media and social media providers, should take more responsibility as well as convey equal gender norms starting from a young age.

Cyberbullying research has uncovered several contextual and personal risk factors for cybervictimization, but their interaction has not received much attention. However, the combined influence of several individual and situational factors and the interplay between them may have a different influence on the risk of cybervictimization than each factor separately. Therefore, this longitudinal moderated mediation study, conducted among a large sample of early adolescents, examined how the events adolescents experience in daily life influence their risk of being victimized online via the emotions they experience, and whether this process is moderated by differences in adolescents' habitual tendencies to regulate their emotions (affective styles). The results indicated that negative events were directly and indirectly, via experiencing negative emotions, related to later cybervictimization. Furthermore, the association between negative events and emotions was moderated by concealing and tolerating affective styles: Adolescents who habitually concealed or tolerated their emotions were more likely to experience negative emotions associated with negative events, especially when they experienced few negative events. These findings illustrate the importance of taking person-environment-interactions into account when studying cyberbullying and support the implementation of prevention and intervention programs that assist students in developing adaptive emotion regulation and coping skills.