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Being socially excluded seriously threatens individuals' need to belong and emotional well-being. This article investigates to what extent different coping strategies help overcome these detrimental effects: thinking about real-life friends/enemies (i.e. orthosocial relationships, OSRs) and thinking about (dis)liked media characters (i.e. parasocial relationships, PSRs). Across three experiments (N Pilot = 129, N Study1 = 132, N Study2 = 855), we first induced social exclusion using a virtual ball-tossing game. Afterward, we manipulated different relationship types and valences and compared them to non- or less-relational control conditions. As hypothesized, belongingness and emotional well-being increased from pre- to post-coping. This effect was fully mediated by perceived relationship closeness to the respective person(a). Highlighting that PSRs represent more than surrogates (i.e. secondary replacements of OSR), both relationship types did not differ in coping effectiveness. Moreover, positive relationships were more effective in fulfilling both coping goals than negative ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called "replication crisis" has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the meaningful sides of media entertainment has blossomed over the last decade, with numerous scholars examining how certain media content can enhance social good and well-being. Because social scientific work in this area is relatively new and is rapidly evolving, numerous conceptualizations of meaningful media experiences have been introduced. In this paper we argue for the importance of recognizing a unique form of media experience that causes us to look beyond our own concerns, to recognize moral beauty, and to feel unity with humanity and nature—what we label here as “self-transcendent media experiences.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the controversial relationship of entertainment and political communication. On the basis of a theoretical integration of entertainment theory with theories of motivated information processing, we suggest that entertainment consumption can either be driven by hedonic, escapist motivations that are associated with a superficial mode of information processing, or by eudaimonic, truth-seeking motivations that prompt more elaborate forms of information processing. Results of two experiments indicate that eudaimonic forms of emotional involvement (characterized by negative valence, moderate arousal, and feeling moved) stimulated reflective thoughts about politically relevant content, issue interest, and information seeking. This pattern was consistent across two types of entertainment stimuli (fictional films and soft news) and two types of affect manipulations (moving film music and moving exemplars). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latent state–trait theory (LSTT) considers the fact that measurement does not take place in a situational vacuum. LSTT decomposes any observed variable into a latent state component and a measurement error component, and any latent state into a latent trait component and a latent state residual representing situational influence and/or interactional influences. Furthermore, it provides more precise reliability estimates than common coefficients. This article introduces the basic concepts of LSTT, discusses its usefulness for public opinion research, and applies LST models to panel data on political efficacy from the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study. The findings show that internal efficacy is a rather trait-like disposition and external efficacy is significantly due to situational and/or interactional influences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]