Organizations pursuing multiple, often competing goals typically struggle to build the resilience needed to sustain such hybridity. Drawing on the hybrid organizing literature, this study examines how organizations’ symbolic emphasis on dual social-business logics (i.e., high logic centrality) in their social media communication predicts their representational ties on social media and the subsequent communication of resilience enactment. Employing a multi-sourced research design, this study analyzed data from an online survey of 260 social enterprises (SEs) in Taiwan, alongside 3 years of their Facebook data during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings showed that the display of high logic centrality on social media predicted the communication of resilience enactment both directly and indirectly through greater engagement in representational ties with other organizations. Moreover, the strength of the indirect relationship varied based on SEs’ perceived logic centrality in their overall operations. The researchers drew theoretical and methodological implications from the key findings.

The proliferation of misinformation has stimulated research into games and videos to reduce susceptibility to misinformation via psychological inoculation. This research field applies several recent extensions of inoculation theory in novel ways, posing the question of whether such interventions are indeed producing inoculation effects. We conducted a systematic review ( k = 72) to establish the strength of the links between inoculation theory and the outcomes of the tests. We found that the studies did not pose hypotheses relating to the core factors of inoculation theory: threat conferral and counterarguing. Moreover, empirical designs and analyses have introduced confounding factors. Therefore, links between psychological inoculation theory and the tests are weak, and the question of whether the interventions inoculate remains unbroached. We recommend that future research include theoretically relevant variables in improved empirical tests and that researchers exercise caution in interpreting the results of existing studies as representative of psychological inoculation effects.

This research examines how counter-stereotypical portrayals influence prosocial behavior across racial groups within the context of medical crowdfunding. Drawing on the stereotype content model and expectancy violation theory, we investigate how messages that contradict stereotypes of racial groups perceived as having low warmth violate expectations about these groups and influence campaign donations. Across two studies—an analysis of over 17,000 crowdfunding campaigns (Studies 1a-c) and an online experiment ( N = 688; Study 2)—counter-stereotypical portrayals of warmth were associated with higher donations for Asian and White beneficiaries but with lower donations for Black beneficiaries. Expectancy violations mediated these effects, with Black beneficiaries experiencing smaller positive expectancy shifts than other groups. The findings highlight the differential effects of warm-based portrayals across racial groups when used to challenge stereotypes. The study advances theoretical frameworks on stereotypes and expectancy violations while offering practical guidance for more effective and equitable messaging strategies.

This study examines how face-to-face (FtF) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) contribute to relationship maintenance and resilience in dual-earning families, a largely overlooked area in family communication research. Guided by the theory of resilience and relational load (TRRL), we test how ongoing FtF and CMC maintenance behaviors predicted well-being across a week among 62 families (i.e., two parents and one adolescent). Using a week-long daily diary and physiological measures (cortisol and IL-6 assays), we assess perceived stress, mental health, and loneliness. Findings suggest that both FtF and CMC maintenance are associated with lower stress and better well-being, with FtF showing somewhat stronger associations on certain outcomes such as loneliness. Additionally, perceived gaps between desired and received maintenance predicted higher and more erratic stress and diminished mental health, underscoring the importance of meeting relational needs. These results highlight how families balance FtF and digital maintenance in everyday life and extend the TRRL by incorporating mixed-media contexts and perceived maintenance gaps.

Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) posits that integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN), which refers to individuals’ access to community communication resources and opportunities, positively affects civic engagement. We meta-analyzed this relationship with 23 studies ( k = 28, N = 17,792) and found that the overall effect of ICSN on civic engagement was moderate ( r = .38), with slightly different effect sizes for different types of civic engagement, including neighborhood belonging ( r = .42), collective efficacy ( r = .28), and civic participation ( r = .41). The relationship was largely unaffected by moderators. Among ICSN components, interpersonal neighborhood storytelling was particularly influential in fostering neighborhood belonging and civic participation, while the three components (i.e., interpersonal neighborhood storytelling, local media connectedness, and participation in community organizations) contributed similarly to collective efficacy. We discuss the importance of neighborhood storytelling in fostering civic engagement and offer implications for theoretical advancement and practical applications.

This study contributes to theory in persuasion and humor by hypothesizing distinct audience segments that determine how people respond to humor appeals. Across two studies, using a multiple message design and two different humor appeals, we specify and validate four discrete audience segments, referred to here as audience receptivity profiles, that align with previous theorizing and are differentially related to persuasion. Findings suggest that those with different audience receptivity profiles vary in whether they find humor appeals humorous, resulting in increased perceptions of humor and message-consistent persuasive effects among audiences who belong to supportive audience receptivity profiles, and decreased humor as well as increased likelihood of unintended effects among audiences who belong to non-supportive audience receptivity profiles. These findings align with previous theorizing in this area, and highlight when humor may have deleterious effects on audiences whose attitudes and values suggest they are most open to persuasive attempts.

Amid growing concerns about employee misconduct within private WhatsApp groups, this study captures the dual nature of work-related group chats on external instant messaging platforms. We distinguish between employees’ prosocial (e.g., information sharing) and antisocial (e.g., bullying) work-related instant messaging use. In addition, we examine the positive (i.e., resources) and negative (i.e., demands) consequences of this use for employee well-being, operationalized as work engagement and exhaustion. Data were collected from 383 Belgian and 375 U.S. employees via an online survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that antisocial work-related instant messaging is relatively rare. Yet, it is associated with reduced communication efficiency, increased co-worker conflicts and work-life tensions, which in turn relate to lower work engagement and higher exhaustion. Prosocial work-related instant messaging use is generally linked to better co-worker communication and relationships, which enhance work engagement and reduce exhaustion. However, these findings proved to be partially culture-bound.

Publicly visible women in political news are often met with sexist backlash in social media’s comment sections. We take a social norms perspective to argue that the presence of politically active women in the news sets a descriptive norm to increase female social media users’ participation in online discussions (role model hypothesis). However, sexist comments against visible women function as signals of injunctive norms and decrease participation (sexist backlash hypothesis). A preregistered nested-stimuli experiment with a sample of German women provided no support for the role model hypothesis but some support for the adverse effects of sexist attacks. The findings indicate that the increase of women in prominent public positions might harm, instead of nourish, women’s discursive participation intention as long as the sexist backlash against women in public roles prevails.

Drawing on Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT), we predict that news content that is inconsistent with out-party media’s ideological stance forms a positive expectancy violation and thus leads partisans to view these outlets more favorably. To test this prediction, we conducted two online experiments where participants viewed source-consistent or source-inconsistent news headlines from in-party (CNN for Democrats, Fox News for Republicans) or out-party (Fox News for Democrats, CNN for Republicans) media. Study 1 showed that exposure to source-inconsistent news headlines from out-party media led to more favorable feeling thermometers through unexpectedness and positive valence. Study 2 further showed that these indirect effects through unexpectedness and positive valence were larger with a high dose of exposure, but still significant even with a low dose of exposure. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

When using social media, adolescents encounter various types of appearance-related content. Yet, no research has explored how daily exposure to such types of content, including idealized content, body positivity (BoPo) content, and a mixture of both, links to adolescents’ body image states. With the present 14-day daily diary study among French adolescents ( N = 108, 1,434 daily assessments, M age = 15.99, 64.8% girls), we examined how exposure to idealized appearance content and BoPo content predicts adolescents’ state body satisfaction and surveillance on the same day and the next day. More so, we explored how the relationships may vary depending on a co-occurrence of exposure to both content types (i.e., mixed exposure). At a between-person level, exposure to idealized appearance and BoPo content was linked to higher body surveillance. At the within-level, BoPo content was associated with higher body satisfaction, meaning that on days that adolescents saw more BoPo content than usual (compared to their own means), they were also more satisfied with their bodies. However, these relations did not last until the following day. No other within-person level relations emerged. Also, when exploring the impact of the interaction between exposure to BoPo and idealized content, non-significant results emerged. The findings highlight the complexity of adolescents’ interactions with social media and emphasize the importance of future research adopting an ecological approach. This should involve considering both intra-individual and inter-individual factors, as well as the diverse types of social media exposure.