Pub Date : 2025-12-29DOI: 10.1177/14614448251406284
Yanqing Sun
Although AI-driven fact-checking has been extensively applied on social media, it is unclear whether presenting AI rather than humans (e.g. social media platform administrators) as a fact-checker will affect people’s credibility perceptions of misinformation. Furthermore, most studies on machine heuristics have mainly focused on the positive machine heuristic and neglected the negative machine heuristic. In this study, a between-subjects online experiment was conducted to address these gaps in knowledge. The results show that presenting AI rather than platform administrators as fact-checkers indirectly led participants to perceive false short-form health videos as more credible via the mediation of the negative machine heuristic rather than the positive machine heuristic. In addition, among participants who initially held a stronger belief in misinformation, the fact-checking provided by AI (vs administrator) generated even more negative machine heuristic, which further led them to perceive the false videos as more credible.
{"title":"When AI fact-checks false short-form health videos: Effects of AI-driven fact-checking on credibility assessment of the videos","authors":"Yanqing Sun","doi":"10.1177/14614448251406284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251406284","url":null,"abstract":"Although AI-driven fact-checking has been extensively applied on social media, it is unclear whether presenting AI rather than humans (e.g. social media platform administrators) as a fact-checker will affect people’s credibility perceptions of misinformation. Furthermore, most studies on machine heuristics have mainly focused on the positive machine heuristic and neglected the negative machine heuristic. In this study, a between-subjects online experiment was conducted to address these gaps in knowledge. The results show that presenting AI rather than platform administrators as fact-checkers indirectly led participants to perceive false short-form health videos as more credible via the mediation of the negative machine heuristic rather than the positive machine heuristic. In addition, among participants who initially held a stronger belief in misinformation, the fact-checking provided by AI (vs administrator) generated even more negative machine heuristic, which further led them to perceive the false videos as more credible.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145847169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-29DOI: 10.1177/14614448251407335
John Tapper, Carolyn Bronstein
This article theorizes how platform infrastructures produce epistemic churn—a condition in which publics remain caught in unresolved cycles of interpretation. Unlike models centered on belief accuracy or convergence, epistemic churn explains how infrastructures govern not what is believed, but whether belief stabilizes at all. We argue that churn emerges from engineered turbulence—systemic interventions that modulate epistemic friction (the difficulty of reaching interpretive closure), delaying stabilization while sustaining engagement. To render churn empirically tractable, we propose a family of methods that can both test the theory and provide qualitative nuance on its mechanics. Situating churn within a broader theory of communicative governance, the article reframes communication theory by showing how infrastructures sustain engagement by prolonging interpretive labor. Normatively, it shows how platforms govern not by silencing expression but by deferring belief formation, a subtle form of power with profound consequences for democratic life and collective agency.
{"title":"Engineering epistemic churn: A theory of prolonged meaning-making under platform conditions","authors":"John Tapper, Carolyn Bronstein","doi":"10.1177/14614448251407335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251407335","url":null,"abstract":"This article theorizes how platform infrastructures produce epistemic churn—a condition in which publics remain caught in unresolved cycles of interpretation. Unlike models centered on belief accuracy or convergence, epistemic churn explains how infrastructures govern not what is believed, but whether belief stabilizes at all. We argue that churn emerges from engineered turbulence—systemic interventions that modulate epistemic friction (the difficulty of reaching interpretive closure), delaying stabilization while sustaining engagement. To render churn empirically tractable, we propose a family of methods that can both test the theory and provide qualitative nuance on its mechanics. Situating churn within a broader theory of communicative governance, the article reframes communication theory by showing how infrastructures sustain engagement by prolonging interpretive labor. Normatively, it shows how platforms govern not by silencing expression but by deferring belief formation, a subtle form of power with profound consequences for democratic life and collective agency.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145847223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-28DOI: 10.1177/14614448251406231
Ryan McGrady
This study examines two decades of user blocking on the English Wikipedia to understand how a volunteer-run, non-profit platform has adapted its content moderation practices in response to increasing visibility amid declining participation. Analyzing more than 20 million block log entries from 2004 to 2024, the study identifies shifts in block frequency, duration, and stated rationales. A significant increase in preemptive, automated blocking of open proxies since 2020 accounts for most block activity, but excluding these reveals a broader trend toward longer blocks and vaguer rationales such as “disruption.” These patterns suggest that volunteers are scaling labor through automation and normative adjustment, trading openness for efficiency and stability. Wikipedia’s blocking trends help to contextualize governance pressures on volunteer-run knowledge platforms.
{"title":"The block log: 20 years of content moderation on Wikipedia","authors":"Ryan McGrady","doi":"10.1177/14614448251406231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251406231","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines two decades of user blocking on the English Wikipedia to understand how a volunteer-run, non-profit platform has adapted its content moderation practices in response to increasing visibility amid declining participation. Analyzing more than 20 million block log entries from 2004 to 2024, the study identifies shifts in block frequency, duration, and stated rationales. A significant increase in preemptive, automated blocking of open proxies since 2020 accounts for most block activity, but excluding these reveals a broader trend toward longer blocks and vaguer rationales such as “disruption.” These patterns suggest that volunteers are scaling labor through automation and normative adjustment, trading openness for efficiency and stability. Wikipedia’s blocking trends help to contextualize governance pressures on volunteer-run knowledge platforms.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145844745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1177/14614448251396951
Yukun Yang, Robin Lange, Yidi Zhang, Joseph B Walther
This study explored competing predictions about how social interactions among social media hate posters affect the sequential level of hatefulness as toxicity. Analyses involve a thousand original hateful posts and the subsequent posts by the same posters ( N = 1,227,756 posts) on Gab—a platform particularly hospitable to hate messaging—and Likes, Dislikes, and written replies from other users that affirmed or negated the initial hate posts. Likes and affirming replies were commonplace, whereas Dislikes and negation replies were rare. Getting Likes and affirming replies decreased subsequent toxicity in the short term, as did getting no responses whatsoever. Getting Dislikes increased the hatefulness of users’ next original post and their posts over the next 3 months. Results challenge both the social approval theory of online hate and the need-threat approach to effects of responses to social media hate posting.
{"title":"How social responses to online hate messages affect hatefulness","authors":"Yukun Yang, Robin Lange, Yidi Zhang, Joseph B Walther","doi":"10.1177/14614448251396951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251396951","url":null,"abstract":"This study explored competing predictions about how social interactions among social media hate posters affect the sequential level of hatefulness as toxicity. Analyses involve a thousand original hateful posts and the subsequent posts by the same posters ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 1,227,756 posts) on Gab—a platform particularly hospitable to hate messaging—and Likes, Dislikes, and written replies from other users that affirmed or negated the initial hate posts. Likes and affirming replies were commonplace, whereas Dislikes and negation replies were rare. Getting Likes and affirming replies decreased subsequent toxicity in the short term, as did getting no responses whatsoever. Getting Dislikes increased the hatefulness of users’ next original post and their posts over the next 3 months. Results challenge both the social approval theory of online hate and the need-threat approach to effects of responses to social media hate posting.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145836080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1177/14614448251406282
Shagun Jhaver
Autocomplete is a popular search feature that automatically generates query suggestions for any keywords entered in the search bar. In this research, I examine regular end-users’ folk theories of how general-purpose search engines produce such suggestions. Drawing on interviews with 20 search engine users, I found that users conceptualize Autocomplete as an automated agent that is influenced by three main factors: (1) searcher’s personal search history and profile, (2) aggregate population-wide queries, and (3) commercial advertising. Users’ assumption of these influences raises for them critical concerns about privacy, transparency, information insularity, targeted data manipulation, and the reproduction of societal biases in Autocomplete’s outputs. My analysis also shows that users view explanations as a promising mechanism to enhance accountability in Autocomplete systems. I highlight the factors that shape users’ mental models of Autocomplete and discuss how their algorithmic imaginaries stabilize platforms’ revenue models.
{"title":"Examining how search engine users understand the production of Autocomplete suggestions","authors":"Shagun Jhaver","doi":"10.1177/14614448251406282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251406282","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Autocomplete</jats:italic> is a popular search feature that automatically generates query suggestions for any keywords entered in the search bar. In this research, I examine regular end-users’ folk theories of how general-purpose search engines produce such suggestions. Drawing on interviews with 20 search engine users, I found that users conceptualize Autocomplete as an automated agent that is influenced by three main factors: (1) searcher’s personal search history and profile, (2) aggregate population-wide queries, and (3) commercial advertising. Users’ assumption of these influences raises for them critical concerns about privacy, transparency, information insularity, targeted data manipulation, and the reproduction of societal biases in Autocomplete’s outputs. My analysis also shows that users view <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">explanations</jats:italic> as a promising mechanism to enhance accountability in Autocomplete systems. I highlight the factors that shape users’ mental models of Autocomplete and discuss how their algorithmic imaginaries stabilize platforms’ revenue models.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145836079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1177/14614448251406245
Fiona Scott, Liz Chesworth, Stavroula Kontovourki, Karen Murcia, Karin Murris, Kim Balnaves, Cath Bannister, Anna Maria Christofi, Daniel Kuria, Kwakwadi Maditsi, Soern Finn Menning, Theoni Neokleous, Joanne Peers, Shabana Roscoe, Vanessa Samuels, Carole Scott, Giovanna Caetano-Silva, Anastasia Tsoukka, Yao Wang, Nadia Woodward, Cat Trzebiatowski
The relationship between children’s digital play and well-being remains under-researched, with debates often polarised and limited by a lack of holistic studies in diverse global contexts. This article draws on empirical data from an ecoculturally informed study of children’s (6–12) digital play in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Cyprus to examine how individual and contextual circumstances influence children’s self-led digital play choices and practices. To do so, we theorise ‘contextualised digital play drivers’, understood as children’s own accounts, or adults’ interpretations, of the deep interests, needs and desires their play appears to fulfil. This approach moves beyond dominant lenses focused on individual autonomy, offering a more situated reading acknowledging the individual and contextual circumstances shaping digital play. Eleven contextualised digital play drivers are identified and discussed in relation to children’s well-being. The article concludes with implications for game designers, educators, families, policy and research methodology.
{"title":"‘I just go headbutt a tree or something’: Children’s contextualised digital play drivers and subjective well-being in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Cyprus","authors":"Fiona Scott, Liz Chesworth, Stavroula Kontovourki, Karen Murcia, Karin Murris, Kim Balnaves, Cath Bannister, Anna Maria Christofi, Daniel Kuria, Kwakwadi Maditsi, Soern Finn Menning, Theoni Neokleous, Joanne Peers, Shabana Roscoe, Vanessa Samuels, Carole Scott, Giovanna Caetano-Silva, Anastasia Tsoukka, Yao Wang, Nadia Woodward, Cat Trzebiatowski","doi":"10.1177/14614448251406245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251406245","url":null,"abstract":"The relationship between children’s digital play and well-being remains under-researched, with debates often polarised and limited by a lack of holistic studies in diverse global contexts. This article draws on empirical data from an ecoculturally informed study of children’s (6–12) digital play in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Cyprus to examine how individual and contextual circumstances influence children’s self-led digital play choices and practices. To do so, we theorise ‘contextualised digital play drivers’, understood as children’s own accounts, or adults’ interpretations, of the deep interests, needs and desires their play appears to fulfil. This approach moves beyond dominant lenses focused on individual autonomy, offering a more situated reading acknowledging the individual and contextual circumstances shaping digital play. Eleven contextualised digital play drivers are identified and discussed in relation to children’s well-being. The article concludes with implications for game designers, educators, families, policy and research methodology.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145836078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-26DOI: 10.1177/14614448251400345
Emily Lapan, Yotam Ophir, Rui Wang, Alexander Semenov, Katherine Kountz, Dror Walter
This study examines thematic and engagement dynamics within r/PurplePillDebate, a Reddit community for deliberation between supporters and critics of anti-feminist “red pill” ideology. We utilize the Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN) and Content Engagement Capacity (CEC) frameworks to analyze 330,008 posts and comments, identifying 37 topics grouped into themes— Gender Dynamics and Socioeconomic Issues, Relationships and Gender Norms , and Attraction: An Exact Science Versus a Social Construct. We examine themes’ ability to sustain engagement, showing that sexual behavior and market-value topics generate the most replies, while attraction-focused content and deliberative topics generate the fewest. Gender- and norm-related discussions tend to self-reinforce, whereas attraction-related threads diffuse into broader debates. Findings inform the potential and limits of deliberative online spaces to foster cross-cutting engagement, with theoretical and practical implications for facilitating digital conversations and interventions aimed at countering extremist narratives and selective exposure.
{"title":"Negotiating extremism: Thematic engagement capacity for red pill conversations on Reddit","authors":"Emily Lapan, Yotam Ophir, Rui Wang, Alexander Semenov, Katherine Kountz, Dror Walter","doi":"10.1177/14614448251400345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251400345","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines thematic and engagement dynamics within r/PurplePillDebate, a Reddit community for deliberation between supporters and critics of anti-feminist “red pill” ideology. We utilize the Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN) and Content Engagement Capacity (CEC) frameworks to analyze 330,008 posts and comments, identifying 37 topics grouped into themes— <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Gender Dynamics and Socioeconomic Issues, Relationships and Gender Norms</jats:italic> , and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Attraction: An Exact Science Versus a Social Construct.</jats:italic> We examine themes’ ability to sustain engagement, showing that sexual behavior and market-value topics generate the most replies, while attraction-focused content and deliberative topics generate the fewest. Gender- and norm-related discussions tend to self-reinforce, whereas attraction-related threads diffuse into broader debates. Findings inform the potential and limits of deliberative online spaces to foster cross-cutting engagement, with theoretical and practical implications for facilitating digital conversations and interventions aimed at countering extremist narratives and selective exposure.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145830247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-24DOI: 10.1177/14614448251404427
Richard Frenneaux
This paper examines the contemporary revival of Sony’s MiniDisc format through the lens of ‘speculative nostalgia’, a mode of engagement with obsolete technologies that activates unfinished or ‘lost’ futures rather than recreating past experiences. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with music industry professionals and analysis of online communities, the research demonstrates how MiniDisc users frame engagement with this ‘failed’ technology as symbolic resistance to frictionless consumption in an algorithmic culture. Unlike vinyl’s commercial resurgence or cassette culture’s established nostalgia markets, the MiniDisc occupies a marginal space at the fringes of market logics, enabling practices that imagine alternative pathways for media engagement. Its hybrid materiality–both physical and digital–produces productive friction that interrupts the continuous flow of streaming. The paper contributes to format theory and nostalgia studies by arguing that technological failure offers alternative cultural possibilities through embodied, material and ritualistic music practices that challenge the logics of platform capitalism.
{"title":"Dead formats, living futures: Speculative nostalgia and the MiniDisc","authors":"Richard Frenneaux","doi":"10.1177/14614448251404427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251404427","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the contemporary revival of Sony’s MiniDisc format through the lens of ‘speculative nostalgia’, a mode of engagement with obsolete technologies that activates unfinished or ‘lost’ futures rather than recreating past experiences. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with music industry professionals and analysis of online communities, the research demonstrates how MiniDisc users frame engagement with this ‘failed’ technology as symbolic resistance to frictionless consumption in an algorithmic culture. Unlike vinyl’s commercial resurgence or cassette culture’s established nostalgia markets, the MiniDisc occupies a marginal space at the fringes of market logics, enabling practices that imagine alternative pathways for media engagement. Its hybrid materiality–both physical and digital–produces productive friction that interrupts the continuous flow of streaming. The paper contributes to format theory and nostalgia studies by arguing that technological failure offers alternative cultural possibilities through embodied, material and ritualistic music practices that challenge the logics of platform capitalism.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145812884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-24DOI: 10.1177/14614448251403091
Tingting Hu, Liang Ge
This study explores how VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, redefine digital intimacy by blending human performance with digital artifice. Through a 9-month digital ethnography and 21 interviews with VTuber fans, we identified two key processes. First, the affective liquidity of VTuber personas, facilitated by vocal modulation, avatar aesthetics, and technology, blurs ontological lines between human/non-human and real/virtual. Second, the screen acts as both an immersive portal and a protective buffer, allowing fans to explore non-normative desires and subvert heteronormative gender performativity. We argue that VTubers, as embodiments of posthuman becoming, cultivate synthetic relationships that prioritize fluid belonging over biological essentialism, challenging traditional intimacy models. While acknowledging their transgressive possibilities, we caution against techno-utopianism, highlighting the ethical risks of platformed intimacies. This study advocates a critical posthumanist lens to map the contradictions of digitally mediated relationality, balancing optimism with scrutiny as human-technological assemblages redefine intimacy in the (post-)digital age.
{"title":"Affective liquidity, synthetic bonds: VTubers as posthuman mediators of digital intimacies","authors":"Tingting Hu, Liang Ge","doi":"10.1177/14614448251403091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251403091","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores how VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, redefine digital intimacy by blending human performance with digital artifice. Through a 9-month digital ethnography and 21 interviews with VTuber fans, we identified two key processes. First, the affective liquidity of VTuber personas, facilitated by vocal modulation, avatar aesthetics, and technology, blurs ontological lines between human/non-human and real/virtual. Second, the screen acts as both an immersive portal and a protective buffer, allowing fans to explore non-normative desires and subvert heteronormative gender performativity. We argue that VTubers, as embodiments of posthuman becoming, cultivate synthetic relationships that prioritize fluid belonging over biological essentialism, challenging traditional intimacy models. While acknowledging their transgressive possibilities, we caution against techno-utopianism, highlighting the ethical risks of platformed intimacies. This study advocates a critical posthumanist lens to map the contradictions of digitally mediated relationality, balancing optimism with scrutiny as human-technological assemblages redefine intimacy in the (post-)digital age.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145812886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-24DOI: 10.1177/14614448251400684
Ta’Les Love, Sonya Dal Cin, Apryl Williams
Skin tone discrimination—or colorism—is an additional marginalization barrier that People of Color must navigate. Black women, especially those with darker complexions, are often discursively constructed as the antithesis to Western beauty standards—standards that commonly prioritize White femininity as the beauty benchmark. Studies on the beauty influencer economy reveal that Black women remain at a disadvantage in the beauty hierarchy. This study uses a survey experiment to explore how skin tone impacts perceptions of attractiveness and competence among viewers of digital beauty content. Surveying African Americans ( N = 576), primarily Black Women ( n = 524), we found that beauty influencers with darker skin tones are rated as less attractive and less competent. Participants also revealed that they would be less likely to click on the videos of darker skinned beauty influencers in comparison to influencers with lighter brown and medium brown skin tones. These results suggest that, among Black women viewers, preferences for beauty content is skin tone dependent. Because view counts are a significant metric in influencer marketability, viewing disparities along the lines of skin tone have the potential to widen the gap among Black influencers, creating disproportionate opportunities for success within an already marginalized population.
{"title":"Shade visibility: Assessing the algorithmic role of colorism in the perception of Black beauty influencers","authors":"Ta’Les Love, Sonya Dal Cin, Apryl Williams","doi":"10.1177/14614448251400684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251400684","url":null,"abstract":"Skin tone discrimination—or colorism—is an additional marginalization barrier that People of Color must navigate. Black women, especially those with darker complexions, are often discursively constructed as the antithesis to Western beauty standards—standards that commonly prioritize White femininity as the beauty benchmark. Studies on the beauty influencer economy reveal that Black women remain at a disadvantage in the beauty hierarchy. This study uses a survey experiment to explore how skin tone impacts perceptions of attractiveness and competence among viewers of digital beauty content. Surveying African Americans ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 576), primarily Black Women ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">n</jats:italic> = 524), we found that beauty influencers with darker skin tones are rated as less attractive and less competent. Participants also revealed that they would be less likely to click on the videos of darker skinned beauty influencers in comparison to influencers with lighter brown and medium brown skin tones. These results suggest that, among Black women viewers, preferences for beauty content is skin tone dependent. Because view counts are a significant metric in influencer marketability, viewing disparities along the lines of skin tone have the potential to widen the gap among Black influencers, creating disproportionate opportunities for success within an already marginalized population.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145812885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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