Incidental and intentional exposure in a mock election setting on social media: effects on subjective and objective political knowledge and aligned voting Abstract. As political campaigns increasingly use social media to reach voters, scholars debate whether users actually acquire election-related knowledge o

📢 New in HCR by @janadreston.bsky.social and @andreasnanz.bsky.social:

Both intentional search and accidental exposure to election info on social media boost political knowledge—but don’t improve vote-choice alignment. Intentional seekers just feel more confident.

Read: doi.org/10.1093/hcr/...

🎓 Top Student-Led Paper

🎓 @janadreston.bsky.social & @andreasnanz.bsky.social

📄 Incidental Exposure in a Mock Election Setting on Social Media: Effects on Subjective and Objective Political Knowledge and Aligned Voting

Hmm, not sure whether I agree...🤔 to get any structured data (not only but, e.g., rectangular data) out of a PDF, I typically need more information (e.g., what is the separator between values) than I need to parse a standard excel. PDFs are not really designed for data storage, imho.

Read-only for raw data is great advice. Also, an intuitive structure for subdirectories is important. But raw data as *.pdf seems a bit... impractical? Are reviewers and (future) readers then supposed to parse your data from a PDF? This sounds a bit error-prone to me (or I don't get it)

Reviewer notes: That’s a very nice mediation analysis you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Mediation analysis has gotten a lot of flak, including classic titles such as “Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (Don’t expect an easy answer)” (Bullock et al., 2010), “What mediation analysis can (not) ...

New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words!

If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance.

www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...

Scanning vs. Thorough Processing the News: Antecedents of First- and Second-Level Incidental Exposure and the Role of the Relevance Appraisal The Internet and particularly social media offer opportunities for exposure to political information even when individuals were not looking for such information. This phenomenon is called incidenta...

ONLINE FIRST! This article by @andreasnanz.bsky.social and colleagues investigate how crucial political predispositions as well as how perceptions of content characteristics predict the two levels of incidental exposure to #news. Available with OPEN ACCESS.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Feeling informed or being informed about politics? Effects of first- and second-level incidental exposure on political surveillance knowledge and internal political efficacy Uninformed participation might be a threat to the functioning of democracies. Scholars have pointed out the discrepancy that social media use is positively associated with political engagement but,...

#OutNow in #iCS
Nanz and Matthes examine how incidental exposure to political information on social media impacts users’ political knowledge and sense of political efficacy.
doi.org/10.1080/1369...

New paper on incidental exposure (IE) w. @rutakaskeleviciute.bsky.social, Stubenvoll, and Matthes in @digitaljournalism.bsky.social📝 We investigated how pol. predispositions (interest and news avoidance) as well as perceptions of content relate to first- and second-level IE. doi.org/10.1080/2167...

Why We Should Stop Using Mediation Analysis "Imagine that a medical research group were to conduct an experimental test of a new drug for dementia, and use mediation analysis…”

New blog post on #MediationAnalysis (MA), which is widely misunderstood and overused in #CommunicationResearch and #Psychology.

I made mistakes using MA myself, and no one should be blamed. But it's important to discuss flaws, esp. as MA has become so popular.

www.raffaelheiss.com/post/mediation

New paper on incidental exposure (IE) in @icsjournal.bsky.social 📝 We investigated how first- (scanning of IE content) and second-level IE (thorough processing) relate to internal pol. efficacy and pol. surveillance knowledge (w. a 3W survey during 2021 GER election 🗳️). doi.org/10.1080/1369...

The Relationship Between Incidental News Exposure and Political Participation: A Cross-Country, Multilevel Analysis In the modern, networked information environment, incidental exposure (IE) to political news is often theorized to benefit democracy, particularly by fueling political participation. Using cross-na...

📢 Publication 📢

Jörg Matthes, @alonzoizner.bsky.social, @andreasnanz.bsky.social, @1864.bsky.social, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social, & Selina Noetzel report findings from a 17-country survey about incidental pol news exposure & both online and offline pol participation.

👉🏼 doi.org/10.1080/2167...

The Relationship Between Incidental News Exposure and Political Participation: A Cross-Country, Multilevel Analysis In the modern, networked information environment, incidental exposure (IE) to political news is often theorized to benefit democracy, particularly by fueling political participation. Using cross-na...

ONLINE FIRST & OPEN ACCESS! This study by Jörg Matthes,
@alonzoizner.bsky.social, @andreasnanz.bsky.social et al. examines incidental political news exposure, revealing how its effects on participation depend on engagement levels and the quality of democracy.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....