Kathrin Karsay

• Dr.
• Assistant Professor for Entertainment Research at University of Vienna

There is intense discussion among experts about the potential negative impact of sexually objectifying media content on young women. This article presents an experimental study in which young women were either exposed to pop music videos high in sexual objectification or to pop music videos low in sexual objectification. Women’s self-objectificatio...

Objectification theorists suggest that exposure to sexualizing media increases self-objectification among individuals. Corre- lational and experimental research examining this relation has received growing attention. The aim of this meta-analysis was to investigate the influence of sexualizing media use on self-objectification among women and men....

Exposure to carefully selected information on social networking sites (SNSs) showing a flawless self and an ideal life has been found to harm young individuals’ self-esteem and well-being. However, SNS use is no longer limited to young people. Fueled by the sharp increase of smartphone ownerships, which allow users to access information about other...

A number of studies have suggested that social media use may be negatively related to adolescents’ well-being. One explanation for this relation may lie in the internalization of various types of ideals displayed on social media; however, research supporting this reasoning is largely absent. This survey study among 1,983 Austrian, Belgian, Spanish,...

The present study investigates how excessive smartphone use predicts users' stress and loneliness while taking the moderating role of online self-disclosure into account. We conducted a two-wave panel survey with a quota sample of smartphone users (n = 461 at time 2 [T2]). We found no direct effects of excessive smartphone use on stress or loneline...

Introduction Initial evidence suggests that engaging with accepting communities on social media such as Instagram may inform sexual minority youths' sense of stigma and well‐being. However, as existing research has predominately drawn upon cross‐sectional or qualitative designs, it is currently unclear whether the positive experiences identified in...

Die Studie „Influencer-Monitor“ untersucht die Rolle von Gesundheitsinfluencerinnen als Informationsquelle für österreichische Jugendliche in sozialen Medien. Im Rahmen eines Citizen Science-Projekts beteiligten sich 326 Schülerinnen aus 19 Schulklassen im Alter von 12 bis 19 Jahren aktiv an der Datenerhebung und -analyse. Die Jugendlichen dokument...

In industrialized societies characterized by ubiquitous connectivity, many individuals disconnect from their phones or social media to break patterns of habitual use, reduce information overload, alleviate stress, and avoid distractions. Although research has predominantly focused on (young) adults, information on digital disconnection among adoles...

Influencers as a new source of health information: Insights from an Austrian youth survey

Background Social media influencers (SMI) became the dominant source of health information among adolescents, exerting influence through appealing content and para-social relationships. Personalized social media feeds of adolescents paired with latent platform algorithms result in myriads of individual information environments, which remain closed...

Background Social media influencers (SMIs) have become the dominant source of health information for youth. While some SMIs may share valuable content, critics raise concerns that they lack expertise, have commercial motives, or hold personal biases. Yet, little is known about the epidemiology of the health influencer phenomenon. This study offers...

Mental health content on social media usually highlights positive emotions, especially hope. This article presents an experimental study on the effects of hopeful social media posts on Instagram. Drawing on appraisal theory and the phenomenon of spillover effects, we developed a 2 × 2 between-subjects post-test experiment, where we manipulated the...

IntroductionInitial evidence suggests that engaging with supportive and accepting communities on social media such as Instagram may inform sexual minority youths’ sense of sexual identity stigma and well-being. However, existing research has predominately drawn upon small-scale, cross-sectional, and/or qualitative designs. It is therefore currently...

Diese Forschungsskizze stellt das Citizen Science Projekt Influencer-Monitor vor. In diesem Projekt beobachten Jugendliche Inhalte auf ihren Social Media Plattformen und sammeln Daten über gesundheitsrelevante Inhalte, die von Influencern gepostet werden. Die Jugendlichen identifizieren die prominentesten Influencer und bewerten die Inhalte nach Ge...

With the present study we investigated the role of channel characteristics in regard to gender role portrayals in television advertisements. Drawing on cultivation theory and social cognitive theory, we investigated six key variables in this line of research. We sampled a total of N = 1022 advertisements from four Austrian television channels: a pu...

Research has shown that idealized beauty presented in mass media can have a detrimental effect on body satisfaction, and these idealized images often stem from digital alterations. Consequently, countries like France and Israel employ disclaimers that inform viewers about the use of such modifications. Previous research, primarily conducted with ad...

Social media influencers (SMIs) have become an important source of health information for adolescents. However, the lack of expertise and commercial interests of SMIs pose challenges for adolescent health. To gain a better understanding of these challenges, this scoping review aimed to synthesize existing research on the role of SMIs in adolescent...

Background Social media has become the primary source of entertainment, information, and news for adolescents. Influencers play a key role in this new information environment as content providers, with a large number of followers. While they can motivate and inform young people about health topics, they may also share questionable information drive...

During early adolescence children are increasingly using their smartphones not only throughout the day, but also before or even during the nighttime. Prior research has revealed that children’s school performance might suffer because of late-night smartphone use. To gain a further understanding of the consequences of nighttime smartphone use on sch...

Reflective smartphone disengagement (i.e., deliberate actions to self-regulate when and how one should use one's smartphone) has become a necessary skill in our ever-connected lives, contributing to a healthy balance of related benefits and harms. However, disengaging from one's smartphone might compete with impulsive psychosocial motivators such a...

The current 14-day diary study among 186 adolescents (56.1% boys; Mage = 15.62 years) examined how daily exposure to positive social media content (i.e., portrayals of individuals’ best possible selves) relates to their daily well-being. The results suggest that exposure to uncommon positive content (i.e., vacations and relationships) positively re...

Temporary and permanent disconnection from digital devices, platforms, or tools has gained traction from users and, subsequently, in academic discourse. A rapidly growing body of research focuses on so-called digital disconnection practices. However, the literature is highly scattered, with limited comprehensive work and consensus on essential foun...

Given that new digital technologies and the Internet have substantially influenced the media and communication landscape in recent years, research on digital health divides is of utmost importance to health communication scholarship. Individuals in today's media environments might benefit through facilitated access to health‐related information. Ho...

Mobile social media have become a widespread means to participate in everyday social and professional life. These platforms encourage the disclosure and exchange of personal information, which comes with privacy risks. While past scholarship has listed various predictors and consequences of online privacy concerns, there has been to date no empiric...

This article seeks to explain the longitudinal associations of taking the smartphone to bed on adolescents’ daytime tiredness and physical well-being. We examined whether parents’: (a) active mediation; and (b) restrictive mediation determines whether children and adolescents have their phones within reach in bed or not. We used longitudinal data f...

Employing a mobile experience sampling design, we investigated in the present study how different types of mobile social media use relate to young individuals’ momentary affective well-being and momentary loneliness. We differentiated between three types of social media use: Messaging, posting, and browsing. Moreover, we studied fear of missing out...

The ubiquity of mobile media devices provides an abundance of new challenges and opportunities relevant to mass communication research. In an ever-connected and “always-on” society, it seems as if the users have become an inseparable entity with their mobile devices, leading to novel online/offline social norms dynamics, demands for disconnecting a...

The present paper develops a new concept, called Reflective Smartphone Disengagement (RSD), defined as individuals’ deliberate efforts to control and restrict smartphone use. Based on the reflective-impulsive model, we examined the RSD concept in four studies, using cross-sectional data of adolescents (Study 1, n = 453, Study 3, n = 760) and adults...

Research has shown that idealized beauty presented in mass media can have a detrimental effect on body satisfaction, and these idealized images often stem from digital alterations. Consequently, countries like France and Israel employ disclaimers that inform viewers about the use of such modifications. Previous research, primarily conducted with ad...

As a consequence of children’s nearly ubiquitous smartphone use, many parents experience resignation or frustration due to a perceived loss of control over their child’s excessive smartphone activities. This perceived lack of control may not only increase children’s risk of exposure to online harassment but also affect the relationship between pare...

This cross-national survey among Austrian, Belgian, Spanish, and South Korean boys and girls (N = 1,983; M age = 14.41, SD = 1.08) investigated the association between mass media use, self-objectification, and positive body image. In doing so, we (a) extended existing research on the link between media use and positive body image by including diffe...

Research on objectification and dehumanization deals with the question: Under what conditions is a person perceived as human? Following on from this, researchers have examined to what extent one's perception of a person differs from one's perception of an object. Additionally, researchers studied the denial of human nature and human uniqueness. Thi...

Mobile social networking sites (SNS) are frequently theorized to lead to perceived information overload, which may affect the well-being of individuals in negative ways. However, the available body of research is mainly based on cross-sectional data. Based on the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (Lang, 2002), we teste...

Communicative and passive online use have been shown to affect individuals’ well-being in opposite ways. While communicative use is often associated with beneficial effects, passive use may even harm individuals’ well-being. However, existing studies have paid insufficient attention to the influence of age on these associations. Additionally, littl...

Weight loss reality TV shows, which portray obese individuals and their struggle to lose weight, are highly popular. However, the shows often contain negative and stereotypical portrayals of obese individuals that can contribute to the formation of weight bias among viewers. In particular, adolescents might be highly susceptible to such portrayals,...

We conducted a longitudinal visual content analysis of 462 popular music videos from 1995 to 2016 analyzing the depictions of sexuality, sexual objectification, and ambiguous sexual expression. Our analysis paid attention to the gender and race of the musical artist in each video, as well as the video’s music genre. Regression analyses revealed tha...

We investigated the effects of exposure to sexually objectifying music videos on viewers’ subsequent gazing behavior. We exposed participants (N = 129; 68 women, 61 men) either to music videos high in sexual objectification or low in sexual objectification. Next, we measured participants’ eye movements as they viewed photographs of 36 women models...

Although media exposure has been related to cognitive preoccupation with appearance, research rarely investigated adolescents’ behavioral self-sexualization. To address this gap, the present study among 12- to 16-year-olds (N = 1527; 50.2% girls) in Austria, Belgium, Spain, and South-Korea (1) investigates whether different types of media use relat...

A significant amount of previous research has examined media usage patterns among American and European adolescents. However, a recent update on adolescents’ daily media habits in the changed media environment is missing. Moreover, little is known about differences between countries. The current cross-sectional study among Austrian, Belgian, Spanis...

Based on cue reactivity theory, food cues embedded in media content can lead to physiological and psychological responses in children. Research suggests that unhealthy food cues are represented more extensively and interactively in children's media environments than healthy ones. However, it is not clear to this date whether children react differen...

With the present study we investigated the role of channel characteristics in regard to gender role portrayals in television advertisements. Drawing on cultivation theory and social cognitive theory, we investigated six key variables in this line of research. We sampled a total of N = 1022 advertisements from four Austrian television channels: a pu...

Basierend auf der objectification theory wurden in der vorliegenden Studie die Effekte sexualisierter Musikvideos auf die Selbstwahrnehmung junger Frauen untersucht. Insbesondere wurden Effekte auf die Selbst-Objektifizierung und die Selbst-Sexualisierung erforscht. Zu diesem Zweck wurde ein 1x2 Laborexperiment durchgeführt, an dem 126 Frauen (24,0...

A construct in social science describes a theoretical idea, entity, or concept. The entry differentiates between two types of constructs: empirical and hypothetical constructs. When the construct is derived from empirical data, it is called an empirical construct. In contrast, a hypothetical construct is based on an a priori formulated theoretical...

Ausgehend von dem Stellenwert, den Werbung in der Gesellschaft nicht nur als ökonomischer Impulsgeber besitzt, werden Zusammenhänge von Werbung, Ethik und Moral dargestellt und anhand aktueller Forschungsbeispiele exemplarisch diskutiert. Werbeethik kann im Spannungsfeld von Konsum und Regulierung verortet werden und sich sowohl auf Fremd- als auch...

Objectification theory postulates that watching idealized body images in the media can lead to a shift in perspectives towards oneself where one’s own body is valued primarily along current standards of sexual desirability. Altered self-perceptions can be internalized to a narcissistic form of self-control, namely self-objectification. Based on thi...