Using narratives to correct politically charged health misinformation and address affective belief echoes.
J Public Health (Oxf)
; 46(3): 430-436, 2024 Aug 25.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38632889
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
In May 2020, news outlets reported misinformation about the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) related to COVID-19. Correcting misinformation about outbreaks and politics is particularly challenging. Affective belief echoes continue to influence audiences even after successful correction. Narrative and emotional flow scholarship suggest that a narrative corrective with a positive ending could reduce belief echoes. Therefore, this study investigated the efficacy of a narrative corrective with a relief ending for correcting misinformation about the CDC.METHODS:
Between 29 May and 4 June 2020, we tested the effectiveness of a narrative to correct this misinformation. Participants in the United States (N = 469) were enrolled via Qualtrics panels in an online message experiment and randomized to receive a narrative corrective, a didactic corrective or no corrective.RESULTS:
The narrative corrective resulted in lower endorsement of the misinformation compared with the control and the didactic corrective. The narrative corrective had a positive indirect effect on perceived CDC competence and mask wearing intentions for politically moderate and conservative participants via relief.CONCLUSIONS:
Public health institutions, such as the CDC, should consider utilizing narrative messaging with positive emotion endings to correct misinformation. Narratives better address affective belief echoes, particularly for counter-attitudinal audiences.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Politics
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Communication
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Narration
/
COVID-19
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
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Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
America do norte
Language:
En
Journal:
J Public Health (Oxf)
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States
Country of publication:
United kingdom