If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the key role of digital media in disseminating science and health-related information. This raises the need and challenge of equipping people with skills to distinguish accurate reporting from fake news. In the process, exciting psychological research questions arise, such as:

• How effective are EduTubers (e.g. maiLab or MrWissen2Go) in communicating scientific evidence?
• How can sex education via social media and influencers best succeed?
• How and why can emerging forms of communication online (e.g., daily reports via Instagram stories) influence the health behavior of recipients?
• Under what circumstances are which groups of people susceptible to misinformation, e.g., in the form of conspiracy myths?
• To what extent are there clusters with a one-sided science- and health-related information landscape in online networks?

Will YouTube soon replace our teachers? - MaiLab, Mr. Wissen2go & Co. scientifically scrutinized (practical research project in summer semester 2022)

Sex Education via Instagram: Successful Sex Education Strategies of Health Influencers (practical research project in winter semester 2022/23)

Röchert, D., Shahi, G. K., Neubaum, G., Ross, B., & Stieglitz, S. (2021). The networked context of COVID-19 misinformation: Informational homogeneity on YouTube at the beginning of the pandemic. Online Social Networks and Media, 26, 100164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2021.100164

Neubaum, G., & Krämer, N. C. (2015). Let’s blog about health! Exploring the persuasiveness of a personal HIV blog compared to an institutional HIV website. Health Communication, 30, 872–883. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2013.856742