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In lifestyle politics, citizens take political action by adapting their everyday lives to address transnational challenges, such as climate change. An important driver of lifestyle politics is exposure to media--both mass media, serving as important information sources, and social media, enabling discussion and expression. To explore how elements of culture shape this relationship, this study examines (a) the link between media use (measured by mass media and social media use) and lifestyle politics across 28 European countries and (b) how cultural context factors (measured by national levels of postmaterialist orientation and trust) moderate this relationship. Results of a multilevel analysis support the positive link between mass media use and lifestyle politics across all countries. However, the results also suggest that the relationship between social media use and lifestyle politics is positive only in countries with postmaterialist orientations and high levels of trust, underscoring the importance of cultural context factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With reference to the current debate about a loss of trust in news media, journalism experts in practice and research often demand that journalists should concentrate on enhancing the quality of their reporting and hence focus on facts and evidences. Building on research on trust and credibility, we investigate how the use of different forms of evidences affects the credibility and quality evaluation of news stories, as well as the reading experience from the audience's perspective. We conducted an online experiment to detect the influence of the presence of scientific sources, statistical information, and their visualization in an online article. Our findings indicate that these evidences increase the perceived credibility. At the same time, we found that adding scientific sources, statistical data and, visualizations to an article does not lessen its reading enjoyment but improves its perceived vividness in the view of news users. Further results and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personalities in the media both influence and restrict topics of discussion and the amount of information available, thus exerting a substantial influence on the formation of the audience's political opinion. The present study examines this impact by integrating the theoretical concepts of parasocial relationship and opinion leadership. The resulting phenomenon, parasocial opinion leadership, is based on viewers' perceptions and emerges if (a) a media user ascribes certain attributes to a media communicator based on a parasocial relationship, which (b) allows for a gradual influence of the media personality on the user's opinions and attitudes by fulfilling at least one of three functions: information and reduction of complexity, orientation, or arousal of interest. A qualitative survey among TV users confirms the main assumptions of the concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Publizistik: Vierteljahreshefte für Kommunikationsforschung is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)