arXiv subjects

Julie A. Vera

Publications and source records attributed to Julie A. Vera.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Popularity Without Legitimacy? Comparing Trust in Television Meteorologists and YouTube Weatherfluencers

During severe weather events, people must interpret rapidly evolving information to make time-sensitive safety decisions. Broadcast meteorologists have traditionally served as credentialed intermediaries within established media organizations, while independent "weatherfluencers" on YouTube have emerged as prominent real-time interpreters for large and growing audiences. This mixed-methods study provides one of the first empirical comparisons of how viewers evaluate broadcast meteorologists against YouTube weatherfluencers across credibility, legitimacy, objectivity, and practical utility. Broadcast meteorologists were consistently rated higher on credibility, legitimacy, and safety utility, while weatherfluencers achieved parity on objectivity. Yet weatherfluencer audiences continue to grow, revealing a critical decoupling between audience attention and official or professional authorization that existing crisis communication models do not fully account for. Qualitative findings illuminate the mechanisms underlying these judgments and their implications for emergency communication in hybrid information ecosystems.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Making Sense of the Weather, Together: Collaborative Sensemaking in Severe Weather Livestreams

This paper examines collaborative sensemaking during severe weather events through the emerging phenomenon of "weatherfluencers" or content creators who livestream meteorological interpretation on platforms like YouTube. Drawing from sensemaking theory, crisis informatics, and platform studies, we analyze how these creators navigate the sociotechnical dynamics of interpreting severe weather in real time with distributed audiences. Through critical incident analysis of 13 Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) storm warnings across three prominent weatherfluencers, we identify three key practices: multi-source information triangulation, temporal bridging techniques, and platform-specific adaptations that transform entertainment interfaces into safety-critical communication channels. Our analysis shows how these practices challenge existing models of crisis communication by integrating distributed expertise, collapsing temporal frames, and reconfiguring platform affordances. This research contributes to understanding how informal emergency communicators mediate between institutional alerting systems and public needs, and how visual, multimodal crisis communication differs from text-centered approaches.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

"They've Over-Emphasized That One Search": Controlling Unwanted Content on TikTok's For You Page

Modern algorithmic recommendation systems seek to engage users through behavioral content-interest matching. While many platforms recommend content based on engagement metrics, others like TikTok deliver interest-based content, resulting in recommendations perceived to be hyper-personalized compared to other platforms. TikTok's robust recommendation engine has led some users to suspect that the algorithm knows users "better than they know themselves," but this is not always true. In this paper, we explore TikTok users' perceptions of recommended content on their For You Page (FYP), specifically calling attention to unwanted recommendations. Through qualitative interviews of 14 current and former TikTok users, we find themes of frustration with recommended content, attempts to rid themselves of unwanted content, and various degrees of success in eschewing such content. We discuss implications in the larger context of folk theorization and contribute concrete tactical and behavioral examples of algorithmic persistence.

cs.HC↗