PhD position in Communication Science: Explaining Susceptibility to Health Hacks

Social media are full of "health hacks": short, practical tips promising quick improvements in health, wellbeing, or appearance. While many are harmless, others are misleading or even hazardous, ranging from extreme detox regimens and homemade sunscreen recipes to unproven remedies promoted as alternatives to medical treatment.

This PhD position is part of Hooked by the Health Hack, a four-year research project funded by NWO (Open Competition SSH) and carried out by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam. The project examines how young adults encounter and evaluate health hacks, and why some hacks are so persuasive, focusing on the interplay between individual characteristics, features of the online context, and cognitive processing during exposure.

The project focuses on young adults aged 18–25. In this life stage of growing independence and identity exploration, health beliefs, routines, and self-perceptions are actively taking shape. This makes young adults a particularly relevant group for understanding both the appeal and the consequences of online health hacks.

The project will generate knowledge to inform user-centred strategies that strengthen resilience to misleading and harmful health advice online. These strategies aim to support critical evaluation while respecting people's autonomy in making their own health decisions.

The project brings together communication science, health psychology, and behavioural and cognitive science in an integrated mixed-methods design. Two closely aligned PhD tracks follow a shared three-stage research route: (1) identifying key individual and contextual factors, (2) examining the cognitive processes through which these factors shape evaluations during exposure, and (3) translating these insights into intervention strategies.

Track A uses participatory research methods; Track B uses survey and experimental research. The two PhD candidates work closely together to develop a shared conceptual model and co-create interventions. This vacancy concerns Track B, based at the Communication Science department of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Your duties

Your project: Track B — Survey and experimental research
Track B provides the explanatory, mechanism-testing perspective within the project: it examines how and why individual and contextual factors make people susceptible to hazardous health hacks, by testing the cognitive processes at work during actual exposure to these hacks. Your work draws on dual-process theories of reasoning, distinguishing fast, intuitive processing from slower, reflective evaluation.

Your work will include:

• Conducting a multimodal content analysis of hazardous online health hacks.
• Designing and fielding a large-scale panel survey on individual and contextual susceptibility factors.
• Conducting controlled online and/or laboratory experiments on intuitive and reflective processing during exposure to health hacks.
• Experimentally evaluating intervention strategies co-developed with Track A.
• Integrating quantitative findings with Track A’s participatory research in a joint mixed-methods synthesis.
• Publishing research, presenting at conferences, and contributing to knowledge exchange with practice partners.