Pirjo Lindfors
Research topics
YouTubers as Peer Mental Health Educators in Adolescent's social environments (TUBEDU) is a four-year research project funded by the Academy of Finland and is is implemented in cooperation with the Universities of Turku, Tampere and Helsinki. I'm the leader of WP 2A: YouTubers’ ways of constructing and communicating mental health information. In WP 2A, multimodal qualitative video analysis of national and international vlogs will be conducted. We will describe how and from what viewpoints YouTubers talk about mental health and what content is most relevant. We will look at YouTubers’ ways of constructing their role as influencers and sources of peer support, as well as their ways of telling about and describing their own experiences of mental health. We will also analyze what kind of instructions or advice YouTubers give in their vlogs. Further, we will describe whether there are differences between YouTubers’ mental health messages according to their gender. At the center of our analysis is the role of individual, social, and cultural contexts and responsibility connected to them, constructed in YouTubers’ mental health communication.
Link to project's website https://sites.utu.fi/tubedu/en/
My previous research topics and interests are located at the intersection of health and society: earlier more at institutional and interactional practices and processes in health care organizations and recently on adolescent health, health inequalities, health behaviors and well-being. My current research focuses on implementation of health promotion policies and strategies in different levels and contexts, especially in the school contexts, and on the intertwined mechanisms between adolescent learning, educational outcomes and health and well-being.
I am a member of the research group NEDIS (Research on Health and Health Promotion of Children and Adolescents), which is an established part of the School of Health Sciences research structure. NEDIS belongs to a strategic research unit PERLA – Tampere Centre for Childhood, Youth and Family Research and I'm a deputy board member of PERLA.
Projects in which I am involved at the moment:
• RELE – Redefining Adolescent Learning: A Multi-level Longitudinal Cohort Study of Adolescent Learning, Health, and Well-being in Educational Transitions in Finland. Consortium with University of Helsinki Centre for Educational Assessment. http://blogs.helsinki.fi/metlo-fin/
• SILNE-R (Horizon 2020, 2015–2018) Enhancing the Effectiveness of Programs and Strategies to Prevent Youth Smoking – A Comparative Realist Evaluation of 7 European Countries. http://silne-r.ensp.org/
• Adolescent Health and Lifestyle Survey