Steffi De Jans

Biography

Steffi De Jans is a senior postdoctoral researcher (FWO fellow) at the Department of Communication Sciences at Ghent University. She obtained her PhD in 2020 on how minors can be empowered to cope with digital advertising by examining different intervention tools to improve their advertising literacy. Now, she conducts research on how consumers (both minors and adults) are persuaded and can be empowered to cope with advertising (such as social media advertising, sponsoring, influencer marketing) for dark consumption behavior (i.e., advertising for harmful products or behavior such as gambling, alcohol, and unhealthy eating behavior). She investigates the development and testing of digital communication intervention tools (e.g., social media influencers, alertness labels) to change behavior. She investigates these topics by using both quantitative (experimental design and eye-tracking) and qualitative methods (focus groups, in-depth interviews). Her research has been published in highly ranked academic journals and has been awarded with several scientific awards.