Mental Health Portrayals on Social Media (AWARE)
Funded by: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Duration: 2024-2027
PI: Kathrin Karsay
Collaboration: Alina Danilkow
Mental health, particularly depression and anxiety, is a prevalent topic on social media. While it raises awareness and promotes help-seeking behaviors, it can also lead to overinterpretation and self-diagnosis. Social media play a crucial role in shaping beliefs, opinions, and values, especially among adolescent users. Yet, little is known about how and by whom mental illnesses like depression and anxiety are portrayed on social media and which implications the portrayal has on the perceptions, beliefs, and well-being of adolescent users.
The three-year project uses a mixed-methods approach, including a focus group study, a content analysis of social media posts, a validation study adapting a previously developed Social Media Algorithm Literacy Scale, and a three-wave longitudinal school survey. The research will focus on adolescents aged 12 to 19 as social media use intensifies and peaks during this life stage.
The AWARE project will be co-coordinated by three applicants from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. An international advisory board with experts from the UK, the USA, and Germany supports the project. The project’s results can be used to derive policy recommendations and to develop targeted prevention strategies to consolidate and improve adolescents’ (perceptions of) mental health in today’s digital societies.
Generative AI, Health Literacy and Well-Being of Citizens
Funded by: Circle U. – European University Alliance
Duration: 2023-2024
PI: Jörg Matthes
Collaboration: Alice Binder • Anne Reinhardt • Andreas Nanz
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, refers to a technology, which delivers fast and comprehensive information about all aspects of human life, including health. People may use generative AI to inform themselves about health topics, to get advice or interact with AI about their concerns, or to diagnose/treat diseases. Generative AI is considered to have large disruptive potential, necessitating new understandings of potential risks and benefits. Drawing on humanities, business, social sciences, and public health research, our aim is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the health-related risks and benefits of generative AI. We particularly focus on implications for inequality, with respect to gender, age, and minority status, looking at variations by country.
Concept für Marketing/Communication for the Disease Management Program Chronic Heart Failure
Funded by: Competence Center Integrierte Versorgung (CCIV) • Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK)
Duration: December 2020 – December 2021
PI: Jörg Matthes
Co-PI: Alice Binder
Collaboration: Ariadne Neureiter • Mira Mayrhofer
Status: Completed
Reporting on Suicide in the Nineteenth Century: Large-Scale Content Analysis and an Investigation of Long-Term Imitative Werther Effects
Funded by: Austrian Science Fund (FWF – Der Wissenschaftsfonds)
Duration: March 2020 – February 2024
PI: Florian Arendt
Collaboration: Manina Mestas
Suicide rates dramatically increased in many countries during the nineteenth century, also in the geographic region of the present state of Austria. Previous research has repeatedly assumed that the press may have contributed to the establishment of suicide as a mass phenomenon back then. This project has two aims: First, a large-scale content analysis of suicide reporting of Austrian newspapers in the nineteenth century will be conducted. This will be the first study of its kind globally, aiming to enrich our historical knowledge of suicide reporting. Second, there will be a thorough investigation of the question whether the press had an influence on the suicide rate in Austria (imitative Werther effects).
Men's Health: Usage and Effects of Health Information Online
Funded by: Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (BZgA)
Duration: October 2015 – September 2016
PI: Christian von Sikorski • Thomas Schierl
Status: Completed
The project analyzed recipients' information acquisition on health information using eye-tracking methodology.