What Messages Help Address Period Poverty? Testing the Effectiveness of Individual and Collective Narratives Combined With Visuals of Menstrual Blood
Open Access
- Author:
- Yang, Yin
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 22, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Anthony Olorunnisola, Program Head/Chair
Jes Matsick, Outside Unit & Field Member
Mary Oliver, Major Field Member
Christofer Skurka, Major Field Member
Jessica Myrick, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- Narrative Persuasion
Emotions
Period Poverty
Menstrual Justice
Message Effects
Gender
Health Communication - Abstract:
- Narrative (or, telling a story) and using negative, arousing visuals can enhance message effectiveness. Yet, inconclusive findings in the literature indicate the importance and necessity to investigate these messaging strategies in different contexts and examine the boundary conditions under which they may lead to greater message effectiveness. Recruiting a sample of U.S. adults (N = 1229), I conducted a 3 (nonnarrative vs. individual narrative vs. collective narrative) × 3 (no visual vs. visual before text vs. visual after text) + 1 (control) between-subjects, online experiment in the context of period poverty, which is inadequate access to menstrual products and other resources. I also tested the moderating role of audience gender identity in processing period poverty messaging. Findings indicated that relative to the nonnarrative condition, the narrative conditions led to greater anger, which, in turn, positively predicted prosocial outcomes. Within narrative conditions, the individual narrative outperformed the collective narrative, in that the former evoked greater compassion and anger, which positively predicted the outcomes that would help address period poverty. Moreover, findings revealed that perceived narrativity (the degree to which a story is perceived to be narrative) helped explain the effects of individual (versus collective) narrative on narrative engagement and emotions, which were positively associated with prosocial outcomes. Additionally, the inclusion of a visual of menstrual blood in the period poverty message strengthened the effect of individual narrative on several persuasive outcomes via anger (but not via the hypothesized emotion: disgust). Findings also demonstrated the greater impact of the message manipulations on non-women participants than on women. The present study contributes to the narrative persuasion literature by identifying underlying mechanisms of effectiveness of narrative (versus nonnarrative) messages, in general, and individual (versus collective) narratives, in particular. Further, this study identifies the potential role of a negative, arousing visual in motivating deeper information processing, as well as the moderating role of audience gender identity in message processing. From a practical perspective, these findings provide important guidance for women’s health advocates and policy makers on ways to design effective messages to combat period poverty.