News by Subject Social & Behavior

Walking simulation games signal a new literary genre Research from the University of Kent has revealed that walking simulations are blurring the boundaries of different art forms to create a new literary genre. Walking simulations -- video games where there are no winners and no one is shot at or killed -- have become increasingly popular in the last few years.

A new study looked at whether time-shift television, a technology that allows people to watch TV shows they missed without presetting devices to record content, has affected how people watch TV. The study found that people with time-shift TV watched slightly more TV overall than they did before having the technology; they did not watch less live TV, and they did not watch fewer advertisements.

A historian at the University of New Hampshire takes a closer look at the beloved show 'Downton Abbey' to reveal that it may have been preserving history not as it actually was but as fans believe it ought to have been.

Health communicators should carefully choose interactive features for their websites because tools that can make some websites more engaging for some audiences could actually discourage other users from adopting healthy behaviors, according to researchers.

Hyperlinks slow down reading speed only when the linked word is unfamiliar, an effect that is independent of link color, according to new research published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gemma Fitzsimmons, Mark Weal, and Dennis Drieghe of the University of Southampton in the UK. The effect is likely due to the reader's perception that the unfamiliar word may carry special importance in the sentence when formatted as a hyperlink.

A new study in JNCI Cancer Spectrum has identified a connection between prolonged time spent sitting while watching TV and increased risk of colorectal cancer for younger Americans.

As different forms of media infuse everyday life, several organizations and associations have issued public statements about the effects of media exposure. However, a scholarly review suggests that many of these statements do not accurately reflect the available evidence, offering overly simplified or one-sided accounts of the scientific research. The findings are published in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

New work from MIT researchers peers under the hood of an automated fake-news detection system, revealing how machine-learning models catch subtle but consistent differences in the language of factual and false stories. The research also underscores how fake-news detectors should undergo more rigorous testing to be effective for real-world applications.