Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and StudiVZ are popular means of communicating personality. Recent theoretical and empirical considerations of homepages and Web 2.0 platforms show that impression management is a major motive for actively participating in social networking sites. However, the factors that determine the specific form of self-presentation and the extent of self-disclosure on the Internet have not been analyzed. In an exploratory study, we investigated the relationship between self-reported (offline) personality traits and (online) self-presentation in social networking profiles. A survey among 58 users of the German Web 2.0 site, StudiVZ.net, and a content analysis of the respondents’ profiles showed that self-efficacy with regard to impression management is strongly related to the number of virtual friends, the level of profile detail, and the style of the personal photo. The results also indicate a slight influence of extraversion, whereas there was no significant effect for self-esteem.

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This study investigated the effects of message and social cues on selective exposure to political information in a social media environment. Based on the heuristic-systematic model, we hypothesized that readers' selective consideration of specific cues can be explained by situational motivations. In an experiment (N = 137), subjects primed with motivational goals (accuracy, defense, or impression motivations, as well as a control group) were asked to search for information. Participants preferred attitude-consistent information and balanced information over attitude-inconsistent information, and also preferred highly recommended articles. Defense-motivated partisans exhibited a stronger confirmation bias, whereas impression motivation amplified the effects of social recommendations. These findings specify the conditions under which individuals engage in narrow, open-minded, or social patterns of information selection.Keywords: Selective Exposure, Online News, Social Media, Social Recommendations, Heuristic-Systematic Model. doi:10.1111/jcom.12241 The era of digital and social media can be characterized by an abundance of information from multiple sources and by increased opportunities for user participation. Compared with traditional mass media, Internet users have access to a much wider range of options and more control over the content they consume (Knobloch-Westerwick, Westerwick, & Johnson, 2015). In addition, they are easily able to observe others' recommendations and evaluations of the content that is available (Walther & Jang, 2012). These characteristics of the media environment Corresponding author: Stephan Winter; e-mail: stephan.winter@uni-due.de may have important implications for citizens' selective exposure to information on politics and public affairs.On one hand, this wealth of content offers great potential for an informed citizenry to locate relevant information with diverse viewpoints (see Dahlberg, 2011). On the other hand, people's freedom of choice may result in the selection of content that is likely to strengthen their initial viewpoints but unlikely to enhance their knowledge (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009;Stroud, 2011). Research on selective exposure online has yielded support for the notion of such attitude-consistent choices (e.g., Garrett, 2009a;Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2009), but has also demonstrated patterns of more open-minded information selection with a preference for balanced content (Winter & Krämer, 2012).Contemporary social recommendations, such as a variety of online rating mechanisms or Facebook "likes," also offer opportunities to guide users' information selection decisions (Messing & Westwood, 2014). With regard to the democratic potential of the Internet, following the opinions of others may not only be beneficial in overcoming attitude-consistent choices but also raises concerns that audience recommendations might gravitate toward tabloid or soft news content (Yang, 2016). Although most studies have looked at the effects of either information attitude-consistency or s...

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices.

This research investigates how cues describing the authors of user-generated