Persuasion, Risk, and Health Behavior in Contemporary Media
A Special Issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X) belonging to the section "Social Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 177
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Media environments increasingly shape how people understand, evaluate, and enact health-related behaviors. From social media feeds and mobile games to televised sport, entertainment narratives, and creator-driven health content, persuasive messages often blur the boundaries between information, advertising, entertainment, and design. This Special Issue, ‘Persuasion, Risk, and Health Behavior in Contemporary Media,’ invites interdisciplinary work examining how mediated messages, platforms, and persuasive architectures influence health beliefs, risk perceptions, decision-making, and behavioral intentions.
This issue particularly invites research that considers persuasion across both explicit health communication and less obvious contexts where health consequences emerge indirectly, including, but not limited to, gambling behaviors and media promotion, mobile experiences, beauty- and body-related social media, social media based creator health content, and climate change narratives in entertainment media. Contributions may employ various methodological strategies, including quantitative, qualitative, experimental, computational, and/or critical approaches to examine message features, audience characteristics, psychological mechanisms, platform nuances, and industry practices.
By bringing together studies discussing advertising, social media, entertainment, mobile design, and health communication, this Special Issue aims to advance our understanding of how media persuasion can encourage, normalize, discourage, or complicate health behavior change in contemporary media and digital cultures. Submissions that address vulnerable or highly targeted audiences, emerging media formats, regulatory implications, and ethical questions surrounding persuasive communication are particularly encouraged.
Dr. Erika Katherine Johnson
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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-anonymized 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 2400 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
- persuasion
- mass media
- health communication
- health behavior
- advertising
- social media
- creator content
- entertainment media
- digital media
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