Promoting Health Behaviors in the New Media Era
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 19832
Special Issue Editor
Interests: health education and promotion; health information acquisition and professing; new media and technology; substance use
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
New media is revolutionizing not only human communication in almost every context (e.g., interpersonal, health care, organizational, intercultural, etc.), but also how health education and promotion are performed. For instance, the Internet, social media, and generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, have become the primary health information sources for the public. Conversational AI, which involves software capable of engaging in human-like interaction, has been increasingly employed as part of interventions to address a wide range of health conditions. With new media playing an increasingly important role in individuals’ acquisition, processing, and sharing of health information, it is complex but imperative to understand how new media can be leveraged in health education and promotion. Example research questions to be answered in this Special Issue include (but are not limited to) (a) how our health education and promotion are predictably similar or fundamentally different because of new media and technology, (b) how new media is reshaping health information acquisition, processing, and retransmission, (c) the content, dynamism, and cognitive and behavioral outcomes of health information on new media, (d) the opportunities and challenges of new media and technology in reshaping our health behaviors, and (e) how health researchers and professionals could leverage the advantages of new media and minimize the disadvantages.
This Special Issue welcomes all submissions that attempt to answer these questions and anticipates including papers that cover a diverse set of countries and disciplines and employ a variety of research methods (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods). Authors should note that “new media” is broadly defined, which includes but is not limited to social media, digital media, algorithms, mobile devices, AI, virtual reality, etc. Scholars employing new cutting-edge methods in their inquiries, such as social network analysis, computational textual analysis, eye tracking, neuroimaging, etc., are particularly encouraged to submit their research.
Dr. Qinghua Yang
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- new media
- social media
- artificial intelligence
- health behaviors
- social scientific approach
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