This research investigates how listening to versus reading news alters its interpretation. A proposed theory argues that because listeners (vs. readers) are less able to regulate the rate of incoming information, they selectively attend to the more emotionally arousing elements in a story, such as those that are more negative. This selective attention leads listeners to form different interpretations of news than readers, the nature of which depend on the valence of the story. Six main experiments and three supplemental ones (N = 14,744) support the predicted effects on impression formation as well as the proposed mechanism. For example, participants who listened to (vs. read) a mixed-valence news story on the risks and benefits of a product processed its negative details more selectively, and in turn formed more pessimistic impressions of its safety. Moderators are also explored, showing that negativity biases similar to those observed for listeners arose among readers when their control over information flow was restricted, and that a positivity bias arose among listeners when the positive (vs. negative) information in a story was more surprising. Theoretical contributions to previous research on reading versus listening comprehension are discussed, as are the substantive implications for media firms and consumers.

User-generated photos play an increasingly important role in online reviews, yet little is known about the process by which they are initially created. This paper develops a theory of image creation arguing that reviewers invest more creative effort in photographing products/services they feel positively (vs. negatively) about. This greater effort results in higher-quality photos that observers find to be more helpful, both because they are easier to visually process and because they engender greater trust in the reviewer. Results across six studies—including controlled experiments and an observational laboratory study (N = 4,218) as well as field analyses of Amazon and Yelp reviews (N = 669,937)—lend support to these predictions. By identifying valence as a driver of creative effort in user-generated photography, the findings advance knowledge on how visual content is produced in online marketplaces and how such content is evaluated by consumers.

This work advances and tests a theory of how news information evolves as it is successively retold by consumers. Drawing on data from over 11,000 participants across ten experiments, the authors offer evidence that when news is repeatedly retold, it undergoes a stylistic transformation termed “disagreeable personalization,” wherein original facts are increasingly supplanted by opinions and interpretations with a slant toward negativity. The central thesis is that when retellers believe they are more (vs. less) knowledgeable than their recipient about the information they are relaying, they feel more compelled to provide guidance on its meaning and to do so in a persuasive manner. This enhanced motivation to guide persuasively, in turn, leads retellers to not only select the subset of facts they deem most essential but, critically, to provide their interpretations and opinions on those facts, with negativity being used as a means of grabbing their audience’s attention. Implications of this work for research on retelling and consumer information diffusion are explored.

In this research, the authors study the process by which social media posts are created and shared during live political debates. Using data from over 9.5 million tweets posted during and shortly after four key debates leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the authors test a series of hypotheses about how tweeting evolves over time during such events. They find that (1) as the debates progressed, the content of the “Twittersphere” became increasingly decoupled from the live event, and (2) the drivers of the success of tweets during the debates differed from the drivers of success observed after the debates. During the debates, users acted akin to narrators, posting shorter tweets that commented on unfolding events, with linguistic emotionality playing a limited role in sharing. However, when the debates were over, users acted more like interpreters, with successful posts being more elaborate and visually and emotionally rich accounts of the event. Evidence for the generalizability of the findings is provided by an analysis of Barack Obama’s last State of the Union Address, where similar dynamics are observed.

User-generated content has become ubiquitous and very influential in the marketplace. Increasingly, this content is generated on smartphones rather than personal computers (PCs). This article argues that because of its physically constrained nature, smartphone (vs. PC) use leads consumers to generate briefer content, which encourages them to focus on the overall gist of their experiences. This focus on gist, in turn, tends to manifest as reviews that emphasize the emotional aspects of an experience in lieu of more specific details. Across five studies—two field studies and three controlled experiments—the authors use natural language processing tools and human assessments to analyze the linguistic characteristics of user-generated content. The findings support the thesis that smartphone use results in the creation of content that is less specific and privileges affect—especially positive affect—relative to PC-generated content. The findings also show that differences in emotional content are driven by the tendency to generate briefer content on smartphones rather than user self-selection, differences in topical content, or timing of writing. Implications for research and practice are discussed.