Heleen Dekoninck

Biography

Heleen Dekoninck is a postdoctoral researcher at the Media, Information and Persuasion Lab at KU Leuven and a Guest Professor at Ghent University. Her research examines social media influencers’ socio-political and environmental communication and its effects on predominantly young audiences. She has contributed to multiple FWO-funded projects, including research on influencer (mis)information and its societal impact, as well as studies on adolescents’ exposure to political and environmental content on social media. Methodologically, her work combines longitudinal surveys, citizen science approaches, multiple-exposure experiments, and digital go-along interviews. She has presented at leading international conferences such as ICA, ECREA, and Etmaal, and has published in peer-reviewed journals across media psychology, environmental communication, youth studies, and advertising.