THE ROLE OF NARRATIVES, FRAMES AND VISUALS IN HEALTH BEHAVIOR PROMOTION: INCREASING PUBLIC AWARENESS IN THE ERA OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Open Access
- Author:
- Vafeiadis, Michail
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 20, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Fuyuan Shen, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Fuyuan Shen, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Frank Dardis, Committee Member
Marcia W Distaso, Committee Member
Mary Beth Oliver, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Narratives
Health
Frames
Visual - Abstract:
- Designing effective health campaigns that can break through the clutter is critical. In today’s media saturated environment, the pervasiveness of the Internet, coupled with the increasing role of social media, is changing how people find, evaluate, and process information. Previous studies have examined the effects of narratives in health campaigns in light of their ability to implicitly affect the message recipient’s cognitive and affective reactions by conveying the real life experiences of an actual person. In addition, an extensive body of research has investigated the role of framing in health communication and has suggested that different health frames (gain vs. loss) have distinct effects for different types of health behaviors (prevention, detection, and cessation). Yet, health frames have been primarily examined in the context of traditional media such as print-based or videos. Finding effective ways to deliver health information is a challenge for health communicators since people are less motivated to exert cognitive effort during information processing due to the sheer amount of available information. Thus, employing powerful visuals has become essential in order to captivate people’s attention and make them more attentive to the advocated message. An important stream of research has investigated independently the role of visuals, framing, and narratives. Yet, there is paucity of research examining their combined effects in health messages. This dissertation seeks to address this gap by examining jointly the effects of narratives, frames, and visuals in promoting health messages. An online 2 (message type: narrative vs. informational) x 2 (health frames: gained-framed vs. loss-framed) x 2 (presentation format: visual vs. non visual) between-participants factorial experiment was conducted. Message type was operationalized by presenting health information in a narrative or factual fashion. Narratives conveyed health-related information through the eyes of the story’s protagonist, whereas informational messages included generic and statistical information relevant to the featured health issue, notably, sun protection and skin cancer. Message frames were operationalized in terms of gain- or loss-framed messages. A gain-framed message emphasized the advantages of performing the advocated health behavior, whereas the loss-framed message focused on the disadvantages stemming from failing to adopt the promoted health behavior. Presentation format was operationalized by presenting textual information independently or along with images that were in concert with the information included in the message. Participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. After reading the health message, they were asked to answer questions about their attitudes toward the message and issue and to indicate their behavioral intentions both offline and online. In short, the findings showed that health narratives are overall more persuasive than informational messages. Participants who received information in a narrative format developed more positive attitudes about sun-protection behaviors and showed heightened behavioral intentions. The study also revealed several intriguing patterns in regards to the role of frames when applied in the context of narrative health messages. Compared to gain-framed narratives, it was found that loss-framed narratives led to more favorable attitudes toward sun protection as well as increased behavioral and sun protection compliance intentions. Conversely, participants reading gain-framed informational messages produced more positive attitudes toward the message than those who were exposed to gain-framed narratives. The mediation analyses showed that empathic identification with the character in a health story was a significant predictor on the outcome variables. Surprisingly, the findings revealed that visuals did not affect how participants evaluated the advocated health behavior. By empirically examining the combined effects of those three variables, the findings of this study provide useful insights for health communicators and practitioners in the fields of advertising and public relations by proposing effective ways of delivering health information. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.