Mukbang, or online eating shows, have become a popular digital media practice that merges food, body, and mediated reality. Drawing on 15 indepth interviews with Chinese mukbang viewers, this study explores how audiences experience the pleasures and tensions of virtual eating. The analysis develops a sensory-authenticity-compensation (SAC) framework. First, viewers derive sensory gratification not only from the visual allure of food but also from bodily performance and auditory cues. Second, authenticity is judged less by factual eating behavior than by immersive and affective resonance. Third, mukbang serves as a compensatory practice that helps audiences regulate appetite, cope with loneliness, and symbolically substitute for eating. By integrating these dimensions, the SAC framework extends uses and gratifications theory to account for embodied, affective, and compensatory dynamics in technology-mediated food consumption. The findings highlight how digital media practices reconfigure eating into a mediated experience that resonates with broader social and psychological needs.

Podcasting is not a new vehicle, but interest and investment in advertising via this medium has been growing recently along with the growth in popularity of podcasts. Is there a relationship between an individual’s media dependency, their overall podcast use, and their engagement with advertising that appears on podcasts? If so, marketers would have a better idea of the type of ways people depend on their phones that may lend them to be better targets for advertising over podcasts, and/or ones they should avoid. Using Ubiquitous Media Dependency and Calder and Malthouse's Engagement framework as theoretical bases, globally we find that those individuals exhibiting Action and Social 1 dependencies tend to dis-engage with advertising over podcasts; moreover, the interaction of these two dependencies significantly increases perceptions of advertising's interference with podcast content. Additionally, users of specific podcast genres display other relationships between various dependency types, usage, and ad engagement. Results/implications are discussed.

By analyzing survey data collected from 2,002 participants in 5 generational cohorts in the United States, this study examines generational differences in information and communication technology (ICT) and social media use behaviors. The intersection between digital divide theory and generational cohort theory provides the theoretical foundation for this study. There are two major findings. First, there are significant differences in ICT use among 5 different generations (Generation Z, Generation Y, Generation X, Boomers, Silent Generation). In terms of ICT access and use, the silent generation is left behind other generations. Thus, the grey divide still exists. Second, different generations have different preferences for social media platforms. For example, more Generation Z participants use Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. This study brings additional insights into generational differences/divide in ICT and social media use. Practical suggestions are provided to narrow the generational divide and to foster communicative resilience among different generations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual reality (VR) technology often provides immersive experiences through which consumers can better understand how a product works or why they should invest in a product (Dennis, 2010). Consumers who use VR are often able to simulate authentic experiences that feel “real-life” (Diemer et al., 2015). VR experience has also been associated with the characteristics of immersion, presence, interactivity (Mutterlein, 2018), and vividness (Van Kerrebroeck et al., 2017). Novelty and first-time VR use have been investigated to some extent in research on education (Adams et al., 2009; Merchant et al., 2014), but VR novelty has not been studied in-depth in other disciplines. This study takes a phenomenological approach, which uses in-depth descriptions of participants’ experiences of a real-life phenomenon to understand those experiences better and lay the foundation for future studies (Cresswell & Poth, 2018). The research uses a sample of 27 participants who experienced VR for the first time and answered open-ended questions concerning that experience, in addition to demographic questions. Participants were given 30 minutes each to select from various VR games and YouTube 360 videos in their first-ever encounter with using a VR headset. In-depth field notes were taken during the experience by the researchers, and post-experience interview prompts for participants were based on previous studies on VR immersion and flow theory. This exploratory, phenomenological study provides three themes that emerged from the data: disorientation and immersion, surprise, and a gradual release on reality. Possibilities for future research and the addition of novelty to the technology acceptance model are discussed.

Her doctoral research investigates the contemporary digital labour landscape in the Canadian influencer industry, by looking at sexism, racism and precarity in feminized

The second volume of Ethics for a Digital Age edited by Bastiaan Vanacker and Don Heider (2018) highlights research presented at the fifth and sixth Annual International Symposia on Digital Ethics. The volume features ten essays organized under three banner topics that include 1) Trust, Privacy, and Corporate Responsibility; 2) Technology, Ethics, and the Shifting Role of Journalism; and 3) Ethics and Ontology. Together, the essays aim to invigorate conversations about ethical issues in professional and philosophical contexts. In this review, I first provide a synopsis of each section and its corresponding essays to give readers a sense of the depth and breadth of topics covered in the volume. I conclude the review by identifying themes that unite the essays and broadly contribute to this robust field of inquiry.

The twenty-first century can be described as a challenging time to become a media and technologically literate. Insufficient information has the effect of ruining lives, and we all have a responsibility to fight it where we see it. Research has mostly concentrated on the “bright side” of media and technology, aiming to understand and support in leveraging the multiple possibilities afforded of its usage. As the main channel of communication for a world is an inseparable duo of media and technology, it also has its dark side. The current worldwide misinformation and surrounding “information glut” (Postman, 1995), and waves of cyberbullying, addictive use, trolling, online witch hunts, fake news, and privacy abuse demonstrated the need for a new approach to this problem. In The Dark Side of Media and Technology: A 21st Century Guide To Media and Technological Literacy, editor Edward Downs bring together contributors to explore the dark side that exists in media and technology and sheds some light on the dimmer matters of human interaction with media and technology. The forty-six authors develop an understanding of four primary outcomes of the human relationship to media and technology in 25 interesting, highly readable chapters. Each chapter introduces the reader with a meticulously developed theoretical background and latest research findings, presented by a remarkable group of multi-disciplinary experts and researchers. Their work is the proof of the correctness of sentence, that “media and technology can do both great and horrible things for people” (p. 2).

Among the range of approaches and topic areas encompassed by the broad and interdisciplinary field of communication, research on the effects of communication technology is prominent and long-standing. Given the attention that research on the effects of communication technology receives from the scholars, the public, and policymakers, it is imperative that the accuracy, validity, replicability, and reproducibility of that research is a priority. This essay suggests five points, informed by research related to open science, that the community of researchers studying effects of communication technology might bear in mind to protect and promote the most accurate body of knowledge possible.