Black Lives Matter protests shift public discourse.

SignificanceThis study uses large-scale news media and social media data to show that nationwide Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests occur concurrently with sharp increases in public attention to components of the BLM agenda. We also show that attention to BLM and related concepts is not limited to these brief periods of protest but is sustained after protest has ceased. This suggests that protest events incited a change in public awareness of BLM's vision of social change and the dissemination of antiracist ideas into popular discourse.

Viewing violent policing videos contributes to trauma symptoms for Black Americans.

OBJECTIVE: This research investigates how watching videos of police violence and experiences with police contributes to health disparities in well-being that disproportionately negatively affect Black Americans. METHOD: A large-scale survey of Americans (n = 1,240; nBlack American = 286, nWhite American = 954) examined the impact of negative experiences with police and watching violent policing videos as distal (i.e., external) stressors that contribute to symptoms of trauma. The proximal (i.e., internal) stressor of worrying about being stereotyped as criminal by police was also examined. RESULTS: Those who identified as Black were more likely to report negative experiences with police, exposure to violent policing videos, and greater worry about being stereotyped as criminal by police than those who identified as White. The three stressors were, in turn, associated with experiencing trauma symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to violent policing videos is disproportionately associated with well-being for Black Americans, even when accounting for direct experiences with police. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering vicarious trauma in therapeutic settings and have implications for dissemination of these videos through media channels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Pornography Use, Two Forms of Dehumanization, and Sexual Aggression: Attitudes vs. Behaviors.

Sexual objectification is a common pornographic theme. Research shows that sexual objectification leads to the expression of aggressive attitudes and behaviors toward women. Based on a survey study of 320 male participants, this study re-conceptualizes sexual objectification in terms of two forms of dehumanization. Evidence suggests men's pornography use is positively associated with both forms, but mechanistic dehumanization of women is more associated with aggressive attitudes while animalistic dehumanization is more associated with aggressive behaviors. Findings indicate how objectifying pornography use may relate to aggressive attitudes and behaviors and inform the future education campaigns and interventions to reduce sexual aggression.

It takes guts to be a rebel! A dynamic coordination account of the relationship between motivational reactivity, social morality, and political ideology.

This study tests two sets of competing hypotheses about the relationship between trait reactivity to positive and negative stimuli (i.e., motivational reactivity), moral stances on social principles (i.e., social morality), and political ideology. The classic view contends that a specific political ideology or social morality results from a specific motivational reactivity pattern, whereas the dynamic coordination account suggests that trait motivational reactivity modulates an individual's political ideology and social morality as a result of the majority political beliefs in their immediate social context. A survey using subjects recruited from a liberal-leaning social context was conducted to test these hypotheses. Results support the dynamic coordination account. Reactivity to negativity (indexed by defensive system activation scores) is associated with the adoption of the dominant social morality and political ideology. Reactivity to positivity (indexed by appetitive system activation scores) is associated with the adoption of nondominant social moral and political stances.

Exposure to social bots amplifies perceptual biases and regulation propensity.

Automated accounts on social media that impersonate real users, often called "social bots," have received a great deal of attention from academia and the public. Here we present experiments designed to investigate public perceptions and policy preferences about social bots, in particular how they are affected by exposure to bots. We find that before exposure, participants have some biases: they tend to overestimate the prevalence of bots and see others as more vulnerable to bot influence than themselves. These biases are amplified after bot exposure. Furthermore, exposure tends to impair judgment of bot-recognition self-efficacy and increase propensity toward stricter bot-regulation policies among participants. Decreased self-efficacy and increased perceptions of bot influence on others are significantly associated with these policy preference changes. We discuss the relationship between perceptions about social bots and growing dissatisfaction with the polluted social media environment.

Sociodemographics and Transdiagnostic Mental Health Symptoms in SOCIAL (Studies of Online Cohorts for Internalizing Symptoms and Language) I and II: Cross-sectional Survey and Botometer Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Internalizing, externalizing, and somatoform disorders are the most common and disabling forms of psychopathology. Our understanding of these clinical problems is limited by a reliance on self-report along with research using small samples. Social media has emerged as an exciting channel for collecting a large sample of longitudinal data from individuals to study psychopathology. OBJECTIVE: This study reported the results of 2 large ongoing studies in which we collected data from Twitter and self-reported clinical screening scales, the Studies of Online Cohorts for Internalizing Symptoms and Language (SOCIAL) I and II. METHODS: The participants were a sample of Twitter-using adults (SOCIAL I: N=1123) targeted to be nationally representative in terms of age, sex assigned at birth, race, and ethnicity, as well as a sample of college students in the Midwest (SOCIAL II: N=1988), of which 61.78% (1228/1988) were Twitter users. For all participants who were Twitter users, we asked for access to their Twitter handle, which we analyzed using Botometer, which rates the likelihood of an account belonging to a bot. We divided participants into 4 groups: Twitter users who did not give us their handle or gave us invalid handles (invalid), those who denied being Twitter users (no Twitter, only available for SOCIAL II), Twitter users who gave their handles but whose accounts had high bot scores (bot-like), and Twitter users who provided their handles and had low bot scores (valid). We explored whether there were significant differences among these groups in terms of their sociodemographic features, clinical symptoms, and aspects of social media use (ie, platforms used and time). RESULTS: In SOCIAL I, most individuals were classified as valid (580/1123, 51.65%), and a few were deemed bot-like (190/1123, 16.91%). A total of 31.43% (353/1123) gave no handle or gave an invalid handle (eg, entered "N/A"). In SOCIAL II, many individuals were not Twitter users (760/1988, 38.23%). Of the Twitter users in SOCIAL II (1228/1988, 61.78%), most were classified as either invalid (515/1228, 41.94%) or valid (484/1228, 39.41%), with a smaller fraction deemed bot-like (229/1228, 18.65%). Participants reported high rates of mental health diagnoses as well as high levels of symptoms, especially in SOCIAL II. In general, the differences between individuals who provided or did not provide their social media handles were small and not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Triangulating passively acquired social media data and self-reported questionnaires offers new possibilities for large-scale assessment and evaluation of vulnerability to mental disorders. The propensity of participants to share social media handles is likely not a source of sample bias in subsequent social media analytics.

Constitutive endocytosis of the chemokine CX3CL1 prevents its degradation by cell surface metalloproteases.

CX(3)CL1, a chemokine with transmembrane and soluble species, plays a key role in inflammation by acting as both chemoattractant and adhesion molecule. CX(3)CL1 is the only chemokine known to undergo constitutive internalization, raising the possibility that dynamic equilibrium between the endocytic compartment and the plasma membrane critically regulates the availability and processing of CX(3)CL1 at the cell surface. We therefore investigated how transmembrane CX(3)CL1 is internalized. Inhibition of dynamin using a nonfunctional allele or of clathrin using specific small interfering RNA prevented endocytosis of the chemokine in CX(3)CL1-expressing human ECV-304 cells. Perusal of the cytoplasmic domain of CX(3)CL1 revealed two putative adaptor protein-2 (AP-2)-binding motifs. Accordingly, CX(3)CL1 co-localized with AP-2 at the plasma membrane. We generated a mutant allele of CX(3)CL1 lacking the cytoplasmic tail. Deletion of the cytosolic tail precluded internalization of the chemokine. We used site-directed mutagenesis to disrupt AP-2-binding motifs, singly or in combination, which resulted in diminished internalization of CX(3)CL1. Although CX(3)CL1 was present in both superficial and endomembrane compartments, ADAM10 (a disintegrin and metalloprotease 10) and tumor necrosis factor-converting enzyme, the two metalloproteases that cleave CX(3)CL1, localized predominantly to the plasmalemma. Inhibition of endocytosis using the dynamin inhibitor, Dynasore, promoted rapid metalloprotease-dependent shedding of CX(3)CL1 from the cell surface into the surrounding medium. These findings indicate that the cytoplasmic tail of CX(3)CL1 facilitates its constitutive clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Such regulation enables intracellular storage of a sizable pool of presynthesized CX(3)CL1 that protects the chemokine from degradation by metalloproteases at the plasma membrane.