The emerging media environment introduced fundamental changes in the quality and format of information available to the public, which can now flexibly seek, alter, and disseminate the information they receive. Therefore, the two processes of information selection and information retransmission are crucial for understanding the reach of any information available in the online information environment. From this starting point, we examine the common psychological motives driving information selection and transmission of attitude-relevant information: Defense and accuracy motives adding a focus on interpersonal motives. We also review message factors that can activate psychological motives leading to selection of retransmission of information, such as the desire for novelty and emotional stimulation. We speculate about the directions for the next generation of research necessary to understand exposure as a core outcome in media effects research and theory.

The Reinforcing Spirals Model (RSM, Citation Withheld) has two primary purposes. First, the RSM provides a general framework for conceptualizing media use as part of a dynamic, endogenous process combining selective exposure and media effects that may be drawn on by theorists concerned with a variety of social processes and effects. Second, the RSM utilizes a systems-theory perspective to describe how patterns of mediated and interpersonal communication contribute to the development and maintenance of social identities and ideology as well as more transient attitudes and related behaviors, and how those outcomes may influence subsequent media use. The RSM suggests contingencies that may lead to homeostasis or encourage certain individuals or groups to extreme polarization of such attitudes. In addition, the RSM proposes social cognitive mechanisms that may be responsible for attitude maintenance and reinforcement. This article discusses empirical progress in testing the model, addresses misconceptions that have arisen, and provides elaborated illustrations of the model. The article also identifies potentially fruitful directions for further conceptual development and empirical testing of the RSM.

Little research has been conducted to examine the influence of exposure to televised sexual content on adolescent sexuality or how parental intervention may reduce negative effects of viewing such content. This study uses self-report data from 1,012 adolescents to investigate the relations among exposure to sexually suggestive programming, parental mediation strategies, and three types of adolescent sexuality outcomes: participation in oral sex and sexual intercourse, future intentions to engage in these behaviors, and sex expectancies. As predicted, exposure to sexual content was associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors, increased intentions to do so in the future, and more positive sex expectancies. Often, parental mediation strategies were a significant factor in moderating these potential media influences.

Using a longitudinal web-based survey of adolescents 14-16 years of age, we estimate regression models where self-reported sexual behavior and content analytic-based exposure to sex in the media are related cross-sectionally and longitudinally. We find evidence for both cross-sectional non-recursive and prospective longitudinal relationships even after adjusting for both established predictors of sexual behavior (e.g., physical development, having a romantic partner, parental monitoring, peer and parental norms, respondent's age) and of exposure to sexual media content (e.g., time the respondent goes to bed, extracurricular activities, television in the bedroom, total time spent with television, music, videogames, and magazines). Sexually active adolescents are more likely to expose themselves to sex in the media and those exposed to sex in the media are more likely to progress in their sexual activity. These findings are consistent with others in the literature that demonstrate a causal effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual behavior but extend established results by also looking at the causal effect of sexual behavior on exposure both cross-sectionally and over time.

Mood management studies typically have found that adults will select media that enhance positive moods and reduce negative moods. In this study, adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder and control adolescents without psychiatric disorders were called on customized cell phones up to 4 times a day and asked about their current mood state and media use for five extended weekends across an 8-week period. Mood effects on subsequent media use, mood during media consumption, and media effects on subsequent mood were examined. Results indicated that adolescents who consumed fun media tended to do so in a way that sustained, rather than enhanced their prior positive mood levels during and after consumption-if they turned to media. Adolescents in more negative moods did not often use media to improve their moods. When they did, boys were more likely than girls to use media that ultimately reduced negative mood levels. Findings are discussed in light of the literature on mood management, adolescence, and depression.

Findings from previous studies on smoking cues and argument strength in antismoking messages have shown that the presence of smoking cues undermines the persuasiveness of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs) with weak arguments. This study conceptualized smoking cues (i.e., scenes showing smoking-related objects and behaviors) as stimuli motivationally relevant to the former smoker population and examined how smoking cues influence former smokers' processing of antismoking PSAs. Specifically, by defining smoking cues and the strength of antismoking arguments in terms of resource allocation, this study examined former smokers' recognition accuracy, memory strength, and memory judgment of visual (i.e., scenes excluding smoking cues) and audio information from antismoking PSAs. In line with previous findings, the results of the study showed that the presence of smoking cues undermined former smokers' encoding of antismoking arguments, which includes the visual and audio information that compose the main content of antismoking messages.

Viewing television and video programming has become a normative behavior among US infants and toddlers. Little is understood about parents' decision-making about the extent of their young children's viewing, though numerous organizations are interested in reducing time spent viewing among infants and toddlers. Prior research has examined parents' belief in the educational value of TV/videos for young children and the predictive value of this belief for understanding infant/toddler viewing rates, though other possible salient beliefs remain largely unexplored. This study employs the integrative model of behavioral prediction (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010) to examine 30 maternal beliefs about infants' and toddlers' TV/video viewing which were elicited from a prior sample of mothers. Results indicate that mothers tend to hold more positive than negative beliefs about the outcomes associated with young children's TV/video viewing, and that the nature of the aggregate set of beliefs is predictive of their general attitudes and intentions to allow their children to view, as well as children's estimated viewing rates. Analyses also uncover multiple dimensions within the full set of beliefs, which explain more variance in mothers' attitudes and intentions and children's viewing than the uni-dimensional index. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

This study investigated how content and context features of headlines drive selective exposure when choosing between headlines of a monthly e-mail health newsletter in a naturalistic setting over a period of nine months. Study participants received a monthly e-mail newsletter and could freely open it and click any headline to read the accompanying article. In each e-mail newsletter, nine headlines competed with each other for selection. Textual and visual information of the headlines was content-analyzed, and clickstream data on the headlines were collected automatically. The results showed that headlines invited more frequent audience selections when they provided efficacy-signaling information in an imperative voice, when they used a moderate number of negative emotion words, when they presented negative thumbnail images while mentioning cancer or other diseases, and when they were placed higher in position.

Virtual simulations allow users to feel and manipulate objects as they would in the physical world. Guided by exemplification theory and risk communication research, a virtual exemplar was developed to allow users to feel the weight of the caloric density of unhealthy snacks (e.g., potato chips) to heighten risk perceptions on snack choices. A 3 (base-rate statistics, print exemplar, virtual exemplar) × 3 (Time 1, Time 2, Time 3) mixed design experiment ( = 152) compared the effect of three mediated modes of delivering health information at baseline, immediately after, and 1 week after treatments. Virtual exemplars led to greater spatial presence, issue involvement, and recommended health behavior than did base-rate statistics or print exemplars, but had no effect on perceived vividness. Heightened perceived susceptibility following virtual exemplars persisted for 1 week. Findings emphasized the importance of spatial presence elicited by an exemplar in heightening the perceived susceptibility of health risks both immediately after and 1 week after exposure. The role of spatial presence and vividness in the context of virtual exemplars that afford the illusion of firsthand experiences is discussed and compared against traditional exemplification research that has focused on the impact of secondhand experiences.

Health communication delivered via media channels can substantially influence adolescents' choices, and the effects of messages are amplified through interpersonal sharing. However, the underlying psychological and neurocognitive mechanisms that influence message effectiveness and likelihood of sharing are not well understood, especially among adolescents. Based on research in adults, we hypothesized and preregistered that message-induced neural activation in regions associated with self-reflection, social processing, and positive valuation would be related to greater perceived ad effectiveness and intentions to share messages. We focused on brain activity in meta-analytically defined regions associated with these three processes as 40 adolescent nonsmokers viewed advertisements from "The Real Cost" antismoking campaign. Perceived message effectiveness was positively associated with brain activity in the hypothesized social processing regions and marginally associated with brain activity in self-relevance regions, but not associated with brain activity in valuation regions. By contrast, intentions to share the messages were not associated with neural response in these 3 systems. In contrast to previous neuroimaging studies with adult subjects, our findings highlight the role of social cognition in adolescent processing of persuasive messages. We discuss the possibility that the mental processes responsive to effective and shareworthy messages may reflect developmental processes pertinent to media effects.

The influence of presumed influence hypothesis (IPI) is a communication theory accounting for the process of persuasive media effects. The present study integrates theoretical perspectives in persuasion and new and traditional media effects research to investigate the assumptions and explanatory mechanisms of IPI in an experiment. View numbers in social media directly predicted presumed exposure by others and indirectly predicted presumed influence on others, consistent with IPI and inconsistent with the bandwagon heuristic. Presumed exposure predicted presumed influence, consistent with IPI. Other predictors of presumed exposure and presumed influence were also found. Self's evaluation of the message (realism) and engagement in the message (identification) predicted presumed exposure by others and presumed influence on others, supporting the expectation that a motivational mechanism of IPI is self-centric social perception. Social media message view numbers did not predict persuasive outcomes directly, but the evaluation of and engagement in the message did. Finally, the data were inconsistent with the assumption of pervasive mass media reach. This study provides theoretical implications for examining persuasive effects of social media messages, while enhancing and expanding IPI. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.

Humorous media entertainment frequently punctuates the everyday lives of adolescents. Theorists have suggested that this exposure may impact behavior, particularly real-life aggression. Specifically, exposure to prosocial (coping) humor in media entertainment is posited to decrease aggression, whereas the reverse has been argued for exposure to antisocial (disparaging and slapstick) humor. Despite these suppositions, little empirical evidence about this relationship exists. To fill this gap, this study employed a cohort-sequential design using latent growth curve models to estimate the (co-)development of adolescents' preferences for television shows featuring disparaging, slapstick, and coping humor and aggression from age 10 to 17. Results showed that at the onset of adolescence, especially boys had a higher preference for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor than with coping humor. However, over the course of adolescence, boys' and girls' preferences for shows with coping humor increased, while especially girls' preferences for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor decreased. These preferences were unrelated to adolescents' aggression. Our findings provide an important addition to the ongoing media effects debate. Taken together, they offer room for optimism and point toward an increased focus on the potential positive rather than the negative sides of humor in the lives of young people.

In 203 (mean age = 38.04 years, =12.05) participants, we tested the association between valenced news and affect using a 14-day, smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment protocol consisting of two components: 1) a once-per-day experimental protocol in which participants were exposed to good news and bad news stories and 2) a four-times-per-day protocol capturing ecological fluctuations in news consumption. Across both protocols, we replicate findings that consumption of positively valenced news is associated with increased positive affect and decreased negative affect while consumption of negatively valenced news is associated with increased negative affect and decreased positive affect. By integrating the ecological momentary assessment data with network science methodologies, news selection and news effects were modeled simultaneously, uncovering selection processes whereby current positive affect, but not negative affect, predicted future valenced news consumption. Altogether, findings indicate that everyday news consumption influences positive and negative affect and may serve mood management functions for positive but not negative affect.