Exploring the Effects of Interactive Narratives in Promoting Health Behaviors
Open Access
- Author:
- Wei, Lewen
- Graduate Program:
- Media Studies
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- May 03, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Fuyuan Shen, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Michael Grant Schmierbach, Committee Member
Mary Beth Oliver, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Identification
Embodiment
Parasocial interaction
Narrative perspective
Transportation
Empathy
Health communication
Interactive narratives - Abstract:
- Narratives are commonly employed in health communication. Prior research on the effects of narratives have mostly used traditional narratives where readers or viewers had little participation in the storytelling or interaction with characters. In contrast, interactive narratives are those that enable readers to control the progressions of story plots and characters’ outcomes. This paper contributes to the existing body of research on narrative persuasion by exploring the effects of interactive narratives in changing health-related attitudes and behavioral intention as well as the mechanisms underlying these effects. To do that, the study uses a 2 (message format: interactive vs. non interactive narrative) x 3 (narrator perspective: first-person vs. second-person vs. third-person) between-subjects experiment, along with an additional control group where participants read a message of the same topic in the format of statistical evidence. After subjects read one of the seven versions of the article, they completed a questionnaire probing their attitude, behavioral intention, identification, embodiment, parasocial interaction, and message effects. The results indicated that persuasive outcomes greatly hinged upon types of narratives, narrative perspectives, and readers’ perceived engagement with stories and in-story characters. More specifically, second-person interactive narratives performed better in transporting readers into stories, whereas embodiment mediated the relationship between reading second-person traditional narrative and persuasive outcomes. These findings will both theoretically and empirically further our understanding of interactive narratives and their impact.