Alice Binder

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Political microtargeting practices aim at exposing social media users to political content that aligns with their preferences and interests. Hence, such exposure becomes a personal experience, dependent on individual perceptions. So far, research has rarely investigated young social media users’ personal experiences with targeted political advertis...

Background With the growing role of social media influencers (SMIs) in providing health advice, concerns arise regarding the usefulness and reliability of online health information. This exploratory research focuses on health expert content creators (HECCs), who offer a unique perspective due to their combined medical knowledge and social media exp...

p>Political microtargeting (PMT) is a popular campaign tool in elections worldwide. However, it is associated with democratic risks. Foremost, scholars and policymakers are concerned that citizens cannot cope with PMT and, thus, stand vulnerable to persuasion. To assess this risk, an in-depth understanding of how citizens make sense of and cope wit...

Dating apps have changed the way people establish contact with potential romantic partners. However, more and more dating apps use algorithms to keep their users’ engagement high. Studies suggest that trust in algorithms can shape offline dating experiences. We theorize that excessive swiping, driven by fear of missing out, predicts trust. We also...

In certain cases, children can react strongly in favor of product placements inserted in movies. Scholars therefore argue that existing disclosures might be one strategy in protecting children from any negative effects. However, disclosure research indicates that viewers should both notice disclosures and, in cases of textual cues, read them. We co...

Purpose Celebrities communicating about environmental sustainability on social media have the power to inspire young adults to engage in pro-environmental behavior, such as reducing their consumption behavior or only buying local and organic food. However, at the same time, celebrities’ carbon-rich and luxurious lifestyles might generate skepticism...

Background Entertainment media content is often mentioned as one of the roots of children’s unhealthy food consumption. This might be due to the high quantity of unhealthy foods presented in children’s media environments. However, less is known about the role of the centrality of food placement, that is, whether foods are interacted with, consumed,...

The availability of online data has altered the role of social media. By offering targeted online advertising, that is, persuasive messages tailored to user groups, political parties profit from large data profiles to send fine-grained advertising appeals to susceptible voters. This between-subject experiment ( N = 421) investigates the influence o...

Cannabis is one of the most common substances consumed among adolescents and research demonstrates that exposure to cannabis-related content online is associated with cannabis consumption. However, little is known about the relationship between exposure on different social media platforms and the role of personal characteristics such as sensation s...

Swipe-based dating apps characteristically provide quantitative social feedback in the form of mattches. Surveys suggest a link between dating app success and well-being, but the nature of this correlation has yet to be examined. In an experiment with 125 undergraduate women, we manipulated dating app feedback: When accepting a profile, participant...

Targeted political advertising (TPA) on social media builds on tailoring messages to (groups of) individuals’ characteristics based on user data. Questions have been raised about the impact of TPA on recipients and society. In this study, we focus on the fit of TPA, that is, the congruence between TPA and recipients’ preferences, and draw on congru...

Background In modern audiovisual media, children are confronted with an endless stream of food advertising. Thus, companies can undermine parents' best efforts to feed their children healthy foods. Indeed, parents often describe that their children request specific foods depicted in media, most of which are high in fat, salt, and/or sugar. Objecti...

Studies showed adverse experiences related to the use of dating applications such as Tinder. However, it remains unclear by which mechanism and under which conditions dating app use has undesired effects. As a mechanism, we investigated excessive swiping, operationalized as youth’s mental preoccupation with profile browsing and swiping compulsivity...

Die Entwicklung von Kindern zu Konsumierenden stellt einen wichtigen Forschungsbereich in der Werbung und im Marketing dar. Deborah Roedder John hat 1999 mit ihren Ausführungen zu den Consumer Socialization Stages das Verständnis von Kindern als Konsumierende maßgeblich geprägt. Auf Basis der kognitiven und sozialen Entwicklungen von Kindern, welch...

Political parties increasingly rely on sophisticated targeting strategies to persuade potential voters. However, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of targeted political ads, considering that citizens frequently oppose the use of their data for political purposes. In this study, we investigate three avoidance behaviors that citizens...

Studies showed adverse psychological effects related to the use of dating applications such as Tinder. However, it remains unclear by which mechanism and in which conditions dating app use has undesired effects. As a mechanism, we investigated excessive swiping, operationalized as youth’s mental preoccupation with profile browsing and swiping compu...

With the increasing availability of big digital voter data, there are rising concerns that online political micro-targeting (PMT) may be harmful for democratic societies. However, PMT may also be beneficial to democracy because it targets voters with content that matches with their predispositions, potentially increasing political interest. For bot...

Political advertising on social media heavily capitalizes on the fact that citizens leave behind data traces through their online behaviors. Even though this allows parties to target citizens based on their age, gender, or even specific interests, there is often a mismatch between the parties and the individuals’ party preferences. This study inves...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, in early 2020, lockdowns limited the options for physical intimacy and many resorted to technology-mediated forms of intimacy such as sexting. However, it is unclear what predicted willingness to engage in sexting during the lockdown. The present study filled this gap by investigating COVID-19-related social isolat...

Due to 'stay-at-home' measures, individuals increasingly relied on smartphones for social connection and for obtaining information about the COVID-19 pandemic. In a two-wave panel survey (N T2 = 416), we investigated associations between different types of smartphone use (i.e., communicative and non-communicative), friendship satisfaction, and anxi...

There is an abundance of evidence that the presentation of unhealthy foods (UHFs) in different media has the power to shape eating habits in children. Compared to this rich body of work with regard to the effects of UHF presentations, studies testing the effects of healthy foods (HFs) are less conclusive. In particular, while the persuasive mechani...

Dating apps advertise with high availability of potential partners because users seem to prefer extensive choice. However, on the basis of consumer decision making research, we theorized that such excessive choice could have adverse effects, specifically on fear of being single, self-esteem, and partner choice overload. In Study 1, a survey with 66...

Promoting health-related behaviors such as healthy eating or doing sports are important to counteract the problem of obesity, which is on the rise. In this regard, initial studies suggest that appearance compared to health framing can lead to negative body-related outcomes in young women. This study aimed to extend these findings by investigating t...

Kinder werden mit einer Vielzahl von Ernährungsbotschaften in den Medien konfrontiert, sowohl anhand von klassischen Werbungen als auch in redaktionellen Kontexten. Da für Kinder das Fernsehen im Alltag das präsenteste Medium darstellt, ist das Wissen über die Wirkung von TV-Ernährungsbotschaften auf ihr Ernährungsverhalten besonders wichtig. Kommu...

One of the most critical arenas for conflicts between parents and their children relates to food. Although parent-child conflicts about food are a real occurrence, this form of parent-child interaction has been rarely examined. Given the special role of parents in shaping children's diet, we especially focus on the impact of parental measures. This...

This study investigates whether the source providing nutritional information matters for children's choice of fruit over candy. We conducted a between-subject experimental study with children (6–11 years; Mage = 8.20; N = 340). Children watched an audiovisual cartoon with nutritional messages provided by experts (expert condition), by celebrities (...

Nutritional knowledge is an important cognitive facilitator that potentially helps children to follow a healthy diet. Two main information agents influence children’s development of nutritional knowledge: the media and their parents. While a high amount of media consumption potentially decreases children’s nutritional knowledge, parents may shape t...

Objective Despite extensive research on framing effects in public health communication, there is still a lack of knowledge on how gain frames v . loss frames can encourage healthy eating behaviour among children. Design Drawing on the Prospect Theory as well as on the Reactivity of Embedded Food Cues in Advertising Model, an experiment exposed chi...

Obesity in children is an international health concern. Against this background, there is an increasing interest in understanding how healthy and unhealthy food marketing in narrative media can affect children. In particular, children’s implicit reactions, such as visual attention and emotional arousal, are far from being sufficiently understood. W...

Research on persuasive cues of food placements in entertainment media targeted at children is still scarce. We investigated whether healthy food placements (i.e., fruit) connected to different persuasive cues (i.e., cognitive, affective, and combined) can enhance children’s (age 6-11 years old) healthy food choice. A pretest (N = 154) confirmed tha...

Existing research on youth political engagement indicates that adolescents have become dealigned from politics. However, according to cognitive mobilization theories, adolescents may not have turned away from politics per se, but found new avenues for political engagement. We involved adolescents in a citizen science project and investigated the ro...

BACKGROUND Food presentations within media content are often made responsible for todays' obesity epidemic. This assessment is based on the assumption that food presentations create cue reactivity, which in turn affects the amount of food intake. OBJECTIVE This study investigates children's implicit reactions (cue reactivity) toward healthy, unhea...

Dem Bild fällt als treibende Kraft im Persuasionsprozess eine besondere Rolle in der Werbung zu. Wie im ersten Teil dieses Beitrages aufgezeigt wird, setzen Werbetreibende gezielt außergewöhnliche Ästhetik im Bild ein, um Aufmerksamkeit zu erregen und sie nutzen visuelle Rhetorik, um Produkte mit Assoziationen und Emotionen aufzuladen. Doch auch Wi...

We analyzed comedy series for food and beverage references, with particular attention to their type of presentation, along with the characteristics of actors associated with the references. Because the generally positive tone of comedy series can exert affective influence over audiences, the result that clearly unhealthy products appeared more ofte...

Rationale: Studies show that the presentation of healthy foods within media does not lead to healthier food choices in children. A persuasive strategy is needed. We investigated how healthy peer cues shown in an audiovisual cartoon influence children's food choice. Method: In an experiment, we showed children a cartoon presenting no food (i.e.,...

In this book, 30 contributions provide a comprehensive overview of theories and findings from research on political attitudes and political behaviour, subdivided into the fields of ‘political communication’, ‘political attitudes’, ‘political participation’, ‘voting behaviour’ and ‘methods’.

Dem Bild fällt als treibende Kraft im Persuasionsprozess eine besondere Rolle in der Werbung zu. Wie im ersten Teil dieses Beitrages aufgezeigt wird, setzen Werbetreibende gezielt außergewöhnliche Ästhetik im Bild ein, um Aufmerksamkeit zu erregen und sie nutzen visuelle Rhetorik, um Produkte mit Assoziationen und Emotionen aufzuladen. Doch auch Wi...

Research on media induced food choices of children has not sufficiently investigated whether food placements of snacks high in nutritional value can strengthen children's healthy eating behavior. Furthermore, we lack knowledge about the moderating role of children's individual characteristics such as parental food-related mediation or BMI. The curr...

Previous research shows that news about Islamist terrorism can seriously affect citizens’ fear reactions and influence non-Muslims’ out-group perceptions of Muslims. We argue that news coverage that explicitly links Islam to terrorism or terrorists of the Islamic State (IS) may trigger fears in non-Muslim individuals. In contrast, news differentiat...