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Open research questions in Media Influence and Health

91 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 2,904 Media Influence and Health papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Fourth, future research could consider age differences, particularly by comparing adolescents, young adults, and older adults, as the development of psychological identity in each age group may influence how they respond to face filter technology. Thus, future research should focus not only on understanding the impact of face filters but also on creating a safer, more inclusive digital space that supports users' mental health.

    The Impact of Face Filter Use on Self-Image and Narcissistic Communication on TikTok · 2026 · DOI

  • (2014) demonstrated that secondary trauma is widely recognised as a significant, common, and potentially impairing response among those working with clients or recipients exposed to traumatic stressors, the specific chal- lenges and impacts faced by researchers across a range of academic disciplines and topics remain unclear.

    The Positive and Negative Impacts of Researching Emotionally Challenging Topics · 2026 · DOI

  • • Reliance on secondary data limits empirical validation • Absence of primary research (e.g., surveys or interviews) • Limited scope of case studies may not represent all media content IRE 1718119 ICONIC RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING JOURNALS 4087 © MAY 2026 | IRE Journals | Volume 9 Issue 11 | ISSN: 2456-8880 DOI: https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I11-1718119 Rideout, V. J., & Hamel, E. (2006). The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and Their Parents. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation. Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2013). The differential susceptibility to media effects model. Journal of Communication, 63(2), 221– 243. Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., & Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation.

    Influence of Television Series on Youth Behaviour and Cultural Trends: A Socio-Psychological Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • The arguments developed throughout this article converge on a central hypothesis: the preventive potential of culture against gendered violence lies primarily in its ability to retrain emotional and predictive mechanisms. Ethically and emotionally complex aesthetic experiences, which amplify the contradiction rather than resolve it, train the predictive mind to endure dissonance and ambiguity. In feminist terms, empathic resonance erodes the illusion of separateness and domination, while emotional regulation teaches tolerance of vulnerability, a capacity systematically suppressed by patriarchal systems. At the same time, the framework’s level of claim must be clearly delimited. Although it is oriented toward prevention, at this stage the model does not argue that engagement with fiction directly prevents feminicide; rather, it is a hypothesis-generating proposal targeting intermediate variables empirically associated with IPV risk. The systematic operationalization of these constructs into validated indicators, experimental paradigms, and intervention protocols remains an essential next step and will require dedicated ad hoc empirical research. For instance, predictive rigidity may be assessed via established measures of intolerance of uncertainty and cognitive inflexibility; distress tolerance through validated self-report instruments and behavioral frustration paradigms; hostile masculinity through standardized attitudinal scales; and narrative training effects through pre-post experimental designs examining changes in empathy, emotion regulation strategies, and responses to simulated rejection or relational threat. Neurocognitive correlates could also be explored using emotion-regulation tasks indexing prefrontal control and interoceptive processing. In this sense, the present paper functions as a conceptual scaffold for future empirical testing and translational development, rather than as evidence of direct preventive efficacy. Moving from conceptual work to implementation, however, requires enabling cultural and institutional conditions. Before translating insights and results into practice, a feminist cultural policy ecosystem is required, that recognizes the arts as resources for emotional literacy and social prevention. This means supporting creative environments that cultivate empathy, ambiguity, and interdependence rather than competition or closure.

    Cultural fiction as predictive-affective simulation: a neurocognitive model of male emotional regulation and gender violence prevention · 2026 · DOI

  • Our sample was sampled from the general population, avoiding reliance on student samples. Yet, the cultural and religious contexts specific to Brazil may limit the applica- bility of our findings to other regions. A constructivist per- spective suggests caution in extending our context-bound findings to other cultural settings (Mesquita et al., 2016). For example, themes such as religious awe, prominent in our Brazilian sample, may not appear with the same salience in less religious contexts, yet they demonstrate how cultural context influences the experience of STEs. However, rather than broadly generalizing specific themes, our dataset illus- trates general principles of how context shapes emotional expression. These situated insights thus inform broader emotion models by highlighting the need to incorporate cultural and situational factors. Moreover, our online data collection method inherently excludes individuals lacking internet access or with lower literacy levels, underrepresent- ing lower socioeconomic and educational strata. Relying on participants’ self-reported narratives of their most impactful emotional experiences introduces a bias toward memorable rather than everyday experiences. While narratives richly described situational contexts and elicitors, we were unable to consistently code appraisal dimensions (e.g., certainty, control, responsibility), which we flag as a valuable direc- tion for future work.

    Mapping the Content Landscape of Self-transcendent Emotional Experiences with Thematic Analysis and Hierarchical Clustering · 2026 · DOI

  • Albeit there are several studies invoking CAT as a framework, there are still limited studies wherein analyses the motives through the accommodation’s forms.

    Forms of Accommodation in 8 Mile Movie: How the Characters Implement Communication Accommodation Theory as an Affective Function · 2025 · DOI

  • According to affective disposition theory (ADT) the outcomes that characters experience will predict audience gratifications; however, little is known about what other factors may affect responses to finales.

    How It Ends: Exploring How Narrative Closure and Character Outcomes in Series Finales Relate to Viewer Responses and Coping Behaviors · 2024 · DOI

  • In this relationship, due to the lack of nonverbal social cues in face-to-face interactions, instant emotional interactions between users and platforms mediated by affective AI may lead users to overinterpret limited information (Walther et al.

    Social and ethical impact of emotional AI advancement: the rise of pseudo-intimacy relationships and challenges in human interactions · 2024 · DOI

  • The author illustrates this hypothesis while reading two family memoirs that deal with the inheritance of the Second World War, and the URSS, respectively, Martin Pollack’s Der Tote im Bunker ( The Dead Man in the Bunker , 2004) and Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther ( Maybe Esther , 2014), but also suggests that this mechanism is not limited to the use of photographs in memoirs.

    Media Representation and Affective Intermediality in <i>Der Tote im Bunker</i> and <i>Vielleicht Esther</i> · 2023 · DOI

  • This material culture, the inanimate objects that lurk around the scene of spectatorship, have the potential to influence one’s experience of the text, to create distinct meanings, in ways that have not yet been fully explored in studies that attend to either the imagined transcendental subject of apparatus theory or the presumed individualized viewer of reception studies.

    Spectatorship’s Scenes beside the Screen · 2023 · DOI

  • Recognizing the need to monitor the television depictions of older adults (OAs) we used social cognitive theory to study OA representations, stereotypes, and appearances in the understudied genre of Christmas television, specifically Hallmark Christmas movies (N = 50).

    Older Adult Representations, Stereotypes, and Interpersonal Competence in Christmas Television · 2023 · DOI

  • Despite implications for improving measures of empathy used by practitioners interested in reading behavior and their applications to teaching empathic skills through literature, extensions to the ability to express empathic inference of interpersonal encounters, or empathic accuracy, remains an understudied area.

    Fantasy Component of Interpersonal Reactivity is Associated with Empathic Accuracy: Findings from Behavioral Experiments with Implications for Applied Settings · 2021 · DOI

  • Even though alcohol consumption is frequently shown on popular TV shows, research on the impact of TV characters as models of drinking behaviour remains scarce.

    Observational learning of the televised consequences of drinking alcohol: Exploring the role of perceived similarity · 2020 · DOI

  • Although competition for viewers’ attention to sponsorship signage in sport telecasts has become a growing issue in sponsorship-linked marketing, sport management research has not yet investigated how to create eyecatching sponsorship signage in the cluttered visual surroundings of sport events without negatively affecting the viewers’ first objective: watching sports.

    The Impact of Color and Animation on Sports Viewers’ Attention to Televised Sponsorship Signage · 2014 · DOI

  • Purpose Though not new to online gamers, griefing – an act of play intended to cause grief to game players – is fairly understudied in LIS scholarship.

    Deception in video games: examining varieties of griefing · 2013 · DOI

  • A number of key issues have not been addressed: firstly, how PSI might, as its originators put it, be "integrated into the matrix of usual social activity" (Horton & Wohl, 1956); secondly, how PSI might vary according to different types of media figure; and thirdly, what processes over time and media use bind user and figure into a "parasocial relationship.

    Parasocial Interaction: A Review of the Literature and a Model for Future Research · 2002 · DOI

  • Another variable which needs to be studied in future research is the amount of delay between the recording and the self-viewing. Various time delays should be studied for self-viewing in order to determine the most beneficial impact on the student. One of the more important variables which needs to be explored in the fu- ture is related to the self analysis which accompanies self-viewing.

    Repeated self‐viewings on closed‐circuit television as it affects changes in the self‐concept and personality needs of student speakers · 1971 · DOI

  • In this report, then, our vantage point was limited to a level of controls in which neither the major creative factors nor the principal market functions governing mass communications could be viewed directly. However, we see our present slice of the control process as one which has rarely been studied, and which both reflects and effects the pressures and policies governing the mass communication of ideas and images.

    Regulation of Mental Illness Content in Motion Pictures and Television · 1960 · DOI

  • distant) experiment did not evidence main effects of envy (both benign and malicious) or main or moderating effect of relational closeness; but did provide mixed findings for the main effect of selective self-presentation.

    Finding Freudenfreude: Deriving Subjective Well-Being From Passive Observation of a Relational Tie’s Happiness via Social Media Post · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite their growing presence, little is known about whether and how emotional expressivity differs across performer modalities and content formats, or how these differences influence viewer engagement.

    Emotion and Engagement Across the Idol Spectrum: Comparing Virtual and Human Idols · 2026 · DOI

  • In sum, this study introduces a new research direction within information science, illustrates how understudied awe elicitors pique curiosity, and provides a nuanced, qualitative report on the phenomenon of technology‐induced awe.

    Exploring enigmas: Information seeking after exposure to virtual reality awe elicitors · 2024 · DOI

  • However, there is a surprising lack of agreement and of recommendations regarding what level of fantasy of the storyline one should choose for the storification from the perspective of applicant reactions.

    It's just a game! Effects of fantasy in a storified test on applicant reactions · 2024 · DOI

  • With research on the construct of shared reality burgeoning in various domains, we examined a fundamental, yet understudied topic: the role of experiencing shared reality about a target in real‐time conversations and real‐world contexts.

    The role of target‐specific shared reality in interpersonal interactions and protective health behaviours · 2024 · DOI

  • Thus, the emotional and empathic relationship is lacking, not in an absolute sense but is manifested in its worst sense, that is, one that allows the other person to “put himself in the other person’s shoes” for the sole purpose of figuring out what is the best way to hurt him.

    Digitization of empathy · 2023 · DOI

  • Yet, not much is known about how friends and family can navigate the social exchange using various beneficial impression management tactics to successfully aid a loved one in securing a date with a suitor.

    Family Aid in Finding Love Through Beneficial Impression Management on Reality TV: The Case for Representational Social Exchange · 2023 · DOI

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91 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 2,904 Media Influence and Health papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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