Andreas Fahr

Prof., PhD, habil.

photo

 andreas.fahr@unifr.ch
 +41 26 300 8381
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8455-3045

Media use, media exposure, and media effects: in particular health communication, persuasion, cultivation, emotional media effects, relationships of media users to media characters, psychophysiological data collection methods to study media exposure processes.

Biography

After studying communication, psychology and economics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Andreas Fahr worked as a research assistant at the Media Institute Ludwigshafen from 1995 to 2000. From 2000 to 2012 he worked as a scientific assistant, academic council and senior advisor at the Institute for Communication Science & Media Research (IfKW) of LMU-Munich. In 2001 he received his  PhD (Dr. rer. pol), the habilitation (venia legendi for communication science) in January 2010. Andreas Fahr was, amoung others, visiting professor at the Institute for Mass Communication and Media Research of the University of Zurich (IPMZ) and represented a professorship for "Media Qualities" at the LMU Munich. From 2012 to 2013 he was a professor of communication science with a focus on social communication at the University of Erfurt. Since autumn 2013 he is Professor for Media Use and Media Effects at the University of Fribourg.

Research and publications

  • Publications
    85 publications
  • Research projects

    Excessive Media Use in Times of Netflix. “Binge watching”: Motives, Experience, and its Effects on Sleep
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.12.2018
    End 31.10.2020
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    Consuming TV content through the internet has become a common practice in western countries, and the expansion of digital TV has transformed people’s relationship with the medium. In Europe more than 43 million people had a subscription to video-on-demand services by the end of 2016, and these numbers are steadily increasing. Deciding what to watch, when, where, and for how long is completely at the discretion of viewers today. Due to the effects of intense screen use on people’s lives (e.g. sleep quality, arousal, exhaustion, stress, dependence), media addiction in general and TV addiction in particular have intrigued scholars for decades. In particular, with the advent of services such as Netflix – which release full seasons of TV series at once – the interest in dependence has increased and the concept of “binge watching” has become popular. Organizations, such as the Ericsson Consumer Lab, have begun to release data regarding how many people binge watch by generation cohorts, whilst scholars devote time to analyze viewer motivations, attitudes, and effects of binge watching. However, a literature review on the topic reveals, on the one hand, the absence of a coherent definition of the phenomenon and, on the other hand, a lack of empirical investigation that combines both subjective and objective measures to address the determinants and effects of this form of excessive behavior. The proposed project aims to fill this gap by proposing at-home and lab studies to explore excessive internet-distributed TV consumption and relate it to individual characteristics. The project proposes four studies: (1) Focus groups to define and identify the meaning, uses, and gratifications related to excessive media consumption and binge watching; (2) an at-home study to explore viewer motivations, emotional experiences, and physiological responses to this TV consumption; (3) a lab study to additionally investigate viewer levels of stress caused by long periods of TV consumption; and (4) a study to examine the effects of pre-sleep physiological and cognitive arousal induced by excessive TV consumption on sleep parameters measured in the sleep laboratory. Our methodological approach combines objective (physiological, behavioral) and subjective (self-report) measures and links quantitative and qualitative methods. Moreover, it uses digital tools developed by the project’s partners to gather physiological data (e.g. heart rate, movements, sleep architecture) in a non-intrusive manner and, in part, in the viewers’ natural environment. The project forms the first part of a research initiative that conducts experimental studies on excessive consumption of Netflix by gathering international experts from communication, media studies, psychology, and engineering. The results obtained aim to contribute both conceptually and methodologically to the humanities and social sciences disciplines, with a focus on psychology and communication. The project also aims to transfer the academic data obtained for societal utilization by informing the design of public health interventions, increasing media literacy, and creating social awareness to help viewers have more awareness and control over their media consumption. In summary, the project responds to the fundamental aims addressed in the “Digital Lives” call by bringing together specialists from the social sciences and humanities fields to (a) explore a new phenomenon that is proliferated by the increased digitalization and its effects on our everyday lives; (b) develop and validate new methodologies and digital tools that can be applied to further studies on media exposure and effects; and (c) build a network of international scholars by the aid of which larger projects in the future can be designed.

    Media, Health Communication, and Well-being in Switzerland
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.05.2017
    End 28.02.2021
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project aims to foster the understanding about the role of media use and media exposure in the formation of health-related behavior in ways such as by facilitating the willingness to improve or stabilize one’s health and well-being. Current research indicates that, in particular the common use of fear appeals in health communication can evoke maladaptive and unwanted responses, such as avoidance or denial. Hence, the beneficial potential of fear appeals in health communication has been questioned. With regard to the introduction of new, innovative, as well as more media communication-related perspectives into the processing of health-related information, one aim of the project is to integrate and further investigate a more supporting and "positive" perspective on attitude and behavior stabilization/change by means of integrating positive emotional appeals into current models of health communication. We will do this by focusing on general health and well-being (gain frames) instead of the usually deployed serious illnesses and risky behavior (loss frames). Working at the border between media psychology and communication research, we will introduce important media use and media preference constructs into the model and thereby forge links to (mass) communication research perspectives. Moreover, most of the research in persuasive health communication deals with the effects of advertising-type campaigns like PSAs. In contrast to this popular but rather blatant form of persuasive communication, this project will also explore the facilitation and hindering effects of narrative media formats (like reality TV or documentaries) on the promotion of health-related behavior. These narrative formats also provide the opportunity for individuals to establish relationships with media characters. Those parasocial relationships play an important role in stabilizing and changing affect, attitudes, and behavior. Besides employing laboratory experiments, we will also investigate the development and impact of relationship with media characters on health-related attitudes and behaviors in an externally more valid field experiment. Moreover, while most of the studies in health communication use self-reports to measure the model’s central constructs, we will also make use of psychophysiological measurement to shed light on the immediate cognitive and emotional processing of media content. Based on the results of the experimental studies, we will employ a representative survey in the German and French speaking parts of Switzerland to integrate and test the model in samples that depart from widely used student. Moreover, the comparison between the two major parts of Switzerland will shed light on cultural differences with regard to the effects of mediated health communication.

Teaching and courses

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