SCM Studies in Communication and Media

Psychological professionals are increasingly using social media for digital health promotion, disseminating psychoeducational content and correcting inaccurate and misleading information. In this context, psychologists and psychotherapists face...

Minority groups in a society, such as national, ethnic, or religious minorities, often depend on the support of other groups, so-called outgroup support, to assert their interests and bring about social change. Social media environments provide a...

This article scrutinizes the anti-establishment media sphere in German-speaking countries along high-reach Telegram channels. We are theorizing this sphere as communicative figuration. To describe this figuration, we conducted a quantitative content...

News softening describes a journalistic strategy to attract maximum attention with the help of certain content (soft news) or a soft style – a goal also included in the (algorithm-based) logics of social platforms. However, there is a lack of...

The debate about public service media (PSM) in Germany is shaped not only by structural and political challenges but is increasingly conducted along ideological lines. Empirical findings suggest that attitudes toward the role of PSM among the...

The rise of AI-generated content represents a new frontier in political communication. As synthetic media become more sophisticated and accessible, their role in shaping voter perceptions and influencing public discourse warrants closer examination....

This editorial examines how synthetic media and deepfakes unsettle the epistemic foundations of contemporary public communication. We outline how rapidly advancing generative technologies erode long-standing assumptions about the authenticity of...

Intervening to bolster human detection of deepfakes has proven difficult. Little is known about the behavioural strategies people employ when attempting to detect deepfakes. This paper reports two studies in which non-experts completed a deepfake...

Like other emerging technologies, deepfakes present both risks and benefits to society. Due to harmful applications such as disinformation and non-consensual pornography, calls for their regulation have increased recently. However, little is known...

Since the technology for generating synthetic media content became available to a wider audience in 2022, the social and communication sciences face the urgent question of how these technologies can be used to spread disinformation and how well...

With the arrival of generative AI (genAI) in 2022, waves of hype and handwringing struck the news industry. These initial responses have proved overblown, if not without foundation. The challenges and opportunities of synthetic media for news are...

Our study examines the sustainability communication of German stock index-listed (DAX) companies on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. We examine the frequency and content of sustainability-related posts and seek to answer two main questions: The...

Using data of N = 70 articles from newspapers in the United Kingdom, this study explores whether UK print media of both broadsheet and tabloid press make use of issue-specific frames (Entman, 1993) in the reporting on male rape. Current UK...

User comments have emerged as a prominent feature accompanying news articles, which has changed how audiences interact with journalistic content. While offering options for reader engagement and community building, previous research has shown that...

Recently, autonomous driving has received significant attention in risk and science communication research due to its increasing public visibility. However, media research has not differentiated between individual autonomous mobility (IAM) and...

Many phenomena relevant to communication studies occur at the group level, yet methodological options for collecting data from groups as analytical units are limited. This contribution proposes the idea of a comprehensive, standardized, online group...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a public debate briefly emerged in 2021 regarding the release of coronavirus vaccine patents. The call for such a measure came from the Global South, which was undersupplied with vaccines: A temporary suspension of...

With the intensifying discourse on climate change and the unfolding climate crisis, more and more social media influencers are addressing sustainability. These “greenfluencers” combine entertainment and lifestyle content with environmental...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists were heavily reliant on contributions from scientific experts. Despite the often productive collaboration between scientists and journalists, journalistic practices are largely at odds with scientific...

Nowadays, social media is highly relevant for community building, social exchange and social self-description. In them, knowledge relations and knowledge policies are formed that influence the construction of reality. Here, Telegram plays a crucial...

In the era of COVID-19 and the Ukraine war, the proliferation of misinformation on social media raises concerns for both individuals and society. This study delves into its reception and effects on attitudes, with a focus on individual verification...