Young Min Baek

With the advent of social network sites (SNSs), people can efficiently maintain preexisting social relationships and make online friendships without offline encounters. While such technological features of SNSs hold a variety of potential for individual and collective benefits, some scholars warn that use of SNSs might lead to socially negative consequences, such as social isolation, erosion of social cohesion, or SNS addiction. This study distinguishes types of SNS relationships, and investigat

Although there has been much speculation regarding the strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face versus online deliberative settings, no studies have systematically compared the two. Drawing on a national sample of Americans who reported deliberating face-to-face and/or online, we examine these two deliberative settings with regard to the participants, the motivations, the process, and the effects. Our findings, although tentative, suggest that the two settings are distinct in several important w

Public health officials (PHOs) are responsible for providing trustworthy information during a public health crisis; however, there is little research on how the public behaves when their expectations for such information are violated. Drawing on media dependency theory and source credibility research as our primary theoretical framework, we tested how credibility of information from PHOs is associated with people's reliance on a particular communication channel in the context of the 2015 Middle

Political consumerism has recently generated academic interest among political participation researchers. While some scholars underscore political consumerism as an emerging civic and political engagement, others discredit its democratic potentials. Drawing on two national survey samples in 2002 that measured both boycotting and ‘buycotting’, this study examines political consumers' demographic backgrounds, socio-political attitudes, issue orientations and their status of civic and political par

The debate on late night comedy has been inconclusive, with some scholars arguing that this genre increases political knowledge, and others seeing late night comedy as harmful to effective citizenry. We add to the debate and to the research on media effects more generally, by proposing a model that measures political knowledge. The model utilizes item response theory (IRT) to account for individual characteristics, knowledge item difficulty, and response format that influences the likelihood of

We argue that the influence of presumed influence (IPI) model (Gunther & Storey, 2003) should be extended through an additional interaction term between the presumed effects of media on “others” (PME3) and the “self” (PME1). Doing so would enable testing of whether individuals who perceive a mutually shared influence of the media show stronger support for censorship. The IPI model does not suffer from the methodological limitations of the conventional third-person effect literature relying on ot

Ambivalence is a widely experienced psychological state, but inter-disciplinary studies, to a certain extent, define and conceptualize ambivalence independently. In spite of its lack of clarity, ambivalence has become an increasingly popular concept, utilized in hypotheses concerning a variety of social phenomena. This study provides an overview of extant studies on ambivalence, and summarizes the similarities and differences in how practitioners of social psychology, political science, and soci

This study employs a uses and gratifications approach to explore how social network sites (SNS) users' attachment style influences SNS motives, SNS use, and related psychological outcomes, as well as the interrelationships of these factors. By modifying preexisting attachment styles, users were classified into four styles: (1) fearful-avoidant, (2) dismissive-avoidant, (3) secure, and (4) anxious-ambivalent. Findings show SNS use and SNS-related outcomes differ across attachment style groups, al

With the wide diffusion of social media like YouTube in the world, it becomes much easier to access foreign cultural products, which facilitates cross-cultural consumption of media content. Despite the rapid growth of cross-cultural consumption online, there is a dearth of large-scale studies examining how cultural products originated from certain culture are consumed and enjoyed among users of different cultures. Three data sets are used in the study, namely, (1) users’ online activities on Kor

Video-sharing social media like YouTube provide access to diverse cultural products from all over the world, making it possible to test theories that the Web facilitates global cultural convergence. Drawing on a daily listing of YouTube's most popular videos across 58 countries, we investigate the consumption of popular videos in countries that differ in cultural values, language, gross domestic product, and Internet penetration rate. Although online social media facilitate global access to cult

Numerous organization scholars point out that trust is crucial for well-functioning organizations. However, trust in organizational settings could differ according to the objects of trust. This study compares two conceptually different models: main-effect model and mediation-effect model. The main-effect model assumes that both interpersonal trust and institutional trust promote organizational commitment independently, but the mediation-effect model assumes that institutional trust is cultivated