Kristen Harrison

About

Kristen Harrison is the Richard Cole Eminent Professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She runs the Family and Media Laboratory (FaMLab) and studies media content, uses and effects on children, adolescents and families, with an emphasis on body-related issues like health, the self-concept and social cognitions. Since the 1990s, she and her students have studied topics including media violence and aggression, body image and disordered eating, body mass and dietary intake, obesity, nutritional knowledge, healthy eating schemas, child feeding practices, sexual objectification, sexual behavior, AIDS stigma, media literacy and health literacy, self-esteem, problematic child media use, family media conflict, media and sleep, “empowerment” advertising, media and race, and typical and neurodivergent children’s use of media devices and content for sensory regulation. Her work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Illinois Department of Human Services and the William T. Grant Foundation, among others. Harrison was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in early adulthood and has a keen interest in working to help her colleagues at UNC, and institutions of higher education in general, better accommodate the executive function needs of neurodivergent learners.

Research topics

• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Communication
• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Digital Media and Neurodevelopmental Differences

  2024-12-05 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen access

  Abstract “Screen media” guidance is not a one-size-fits-all, and this is especially true for young people whose development occurs outside the window of “typical” development. Given the wide range of neurodevelopmental differences, the review of children’s digital media use research in this chapter focuses on those diagnosed with autism and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—conditions that differ but share many underlying cognitive and clinical characteristics. While the evidenc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Free, appropriate, public, and educational? Screen-schooling U.S. children with disabilities during the 2020 pandemic

  2022-08-08 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was a profoundly important piece of US civil rights legislation because it promised kids with disabilities the education offered to typical children. Each school has numerous students with individualized education plans, so it pays numerous full-time educational professionals to support these students. Below, author explain how screen-schooling at home during the pandemic has made it impossible for his children to receive an education that is free,…

  PublisherDOI

• Problematic Media Use Measure

  PsycTESTS Dataset · 2019-01-01 · 2 citations

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

• Measuring Gaze: Women’s Visual Processing of Empowerment and Objectification Messages in Empowerment-Themed Advertisements

  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · 2024-01-04 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Empowerment-themed advertisements (ETAs) often pair ostensibly empowering narratives with objectification imagery. Existing research demonstrates that women do not report feeling empowered after viewing ETAs but cannot confirm why. In this study, 186 female participants were randomly assigned to view captions and/or photos from ETAs while their eye movements were recorded. The empowerment-themed captions increased women’s felt empowerment when presented alone but failed to empower when paired wi…

  PublisherDOI

• “Actually an ED and not just a quirky aspect of autism”: TikTok as a forum and mediator of autistic food issues and eating disorders

  New Media & Society · 2025-06-25

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Restrictive eating disorders (EDs) have among the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. To date, little research has investigated the role of digital media in sharing ED experiences and promoting recovery for autistic individuals, despite high autism rates among those with EDs and the potential for social media (SM) to provide resources and support for adolescent girls and young women living with EDs. Given this gap, we undertook an exploratory study to assess content pertaining to…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Amelia C. Couture Bue

  13 shared

• Mericarmen Peralta

  Loma Linda University

  10 shared

• Halie Wenhold

  8 shared

• Janet M. Liechty

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7 shared

• Jessica D. Moorman

  Wayne State University

  7 shared

• Diana S. Grigsby‐Toussaint

  Brown University

  7 shared

• Barbara H. Fiese

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7 shared

• Sarah E. Domoff

  Albany State University

  6 shared

Labs

• Family and Media Laboratory (FaMLab)PI

Awards & honors

• Richard Cole Eminent Professor

Similar researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Seth M. Noarh-64
• Suman Leeh-34
• Francesca Renee Dillman Carpentierh-28