Social media and health
The aim is to increase awareness, understanding and impact of social media for health, wellbeing and support.
We investigate e.g. health literacy of social media followers, how social media followers interpret and use social media messages in their own lives, how the influencers communicate health-related issues.
Post doctoral researchers:
- Virve Pekurinen: YouTubers as Peer Mental Health Educators in Adolescent’s social environments (TUBEDU)
Researchers / master students:
Ongoing projects
TUBEDU
YouTubers as peer mental health educators in adolescents’ social environments (TUBEDU)
Homepage: https://sites.utu.fi/tubedu/en/
Principal investigator (Coordinator)
Katja Joronen, Professor, PhD, RN
katja.joronen@utu.fi
+358 400 953100
Post doctoral researcher
Virve Pekurinen, PhD, RN
virve.m.pekurinen@utu.fi
The global pandemic has fueled both psychological distress and social media use among adolescents. Much research has been done on the negative consequences of social media use, but there is a gap in knowledge about how popular YouTubers communicate mental health issues in their videos and how adolescent followers respond to them. We also need to know how young people perceive and experience mental health-related videos and popular YouTubers as potential sources of peer support.
GOAL AND AIM
Our goal is to produce new knowledge of young people’s mental health literacy and to increase our understanding about the interplay between mental health literacy and peer support in social media context. Our further goal is to create methodological tools that take into account the young people’s context, utilizing collaborative research to study their well- being. Our main goal is to strengthen adolescents’ mental well-being and health literacy.
Our aim is to learn, how mental health topics are embedded, produced, interpreted and evaluated in the popular YouTube contexts and how adolescents experience YouTubers’ roles as influencers and possible sources of peer support. We also aim to capture what are the ongoing and new rising mental health themes among adolescents. On the other hand, we want to grasp the experiences and views of the young people on the peer-support potential of YouTube.
CONTENT
This four-year-consortium project is divided into four themes: 1) Adolescents’ health literacy and well-being-related peer support in the digital environment, 2) YouTubers’ ways of constructing and communicating mental health information, 3) Adolescents’ responses to YouTubers’ mental health messages, 4) YouTubers as a potential source of peer support for adolescents’ mental well-being.
IMPLICATIONS
Professionals and stakeholders in health and social care and schools as well as national centers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can apply the results when designing and implementing policies, practices, and curricula that aim at supporting adolescents’ health, wellbeing, and mental health literacy and peer support. Professional-led bodies, such as schools and public health, as well as NGOs may consider targeting, and even incentivizing, popular YouTubers in terms of mental health education and peer support.
PARTNERS
The partners of this consortium project are Tampere University and University of Helsinki. We have several collaborators, such as NGOs Nyyti ry., Yeesi ry and Asemanlapset ry. Additionally, our collaborators are University of Oulu, GameCult Centre of Excellence, University of Jyväskylä, Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Technical University Munich (TUM), Germany, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland, University of Münster, Germany.
FUNDER
Academy of Finland (Academy project; decision 348516), year 2022−2026