Michaela Forrai is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna since April 2022, supervised by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jörg Matthes and Assoz. Prof. Dr. Florian Arendt. She is currently involved in the project Social Media Use and Adolescents' Well-Being (2020–2023), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Her research interests lie in the areas of media psychology and health communication, such as (social) media and well-being/mental health as well as suicide prevention.

Ela studied Communication Science (MSc, 2022) and Journalism and Communication Studies (BA, 2019) at the University of Vienna. During her studies, she was part of the Advertising & Media Psychology Research Group as a student research assistant (2018–2022). She also worked as a student assistant (2019–2022) and as a pre-doctoral researcher (2022–2023) in Assoz. Prof. Dr. Florian Arendt's team.