SCM Studies in Communication and Media

The discrepancy between (regional) media coverage of criminal activity and official crime statistics, particularly concerning the portrayal of immigrant offenders, is widely acknowledged. The media’s framing of crime and the corresponding...

Self-effects in communication research refer to effects of opinion expressions on the senders themselves. Despite growing empirical support for self-effects, moderators and mediators of these self-effects are barely researched. The article outlines...

Social media platforms play a central role in shaping public opinion on political and societal issues. Users are constantly exposed to a mix of algorithmically and socially filtered content, which can influence how they perceive new topics and form...

Social media plays a central role in adolescents’ lives, suggesting powerful direct and indirect influences on their social norms and behaviors. This study examines these influences by applying the influence of presumed media influence (IPMI)...

The public AI discourse is shaped by visions and interpretations that influence how this emerging technology is perceived, assessed, developed and applied in society. Generating acceptance for a particular vision has thus become a central objective...

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...