Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking.
J Appl Res Mem Cogn
; 13(1): 124-135, 2024 Mar.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38655203
ABSTRACT
Communicating information about health risks empowers individuals to make informed decisions. To identify effective communication strategies, we manipulated the specificity, self-relevance, and emotional framing of messages designed to motivate information seeking about COVID-19 exposure risk. In Study 1 (N=221,829), we conducted a large-scale social media field study. Using Facebook advertisements, we targeted users by age and political attitudes. Episodic specificity drove engagement Advertisements that contextualized risk in specific scenarios produced the highest click-through rates, across all demographic groups. In Study 2, we replicated and extended our findings in an online experiment (N=4,233). Message specificity (but not self-relevance or emotional valence) drove interest in learning about COVID-19 risks. Across both studies, we found that older adults and liberals were more interested in learning about COVID-19 risks. However, message specificity increased engagement across demographic groups. Overall, evoking specific scenarios motivated information seeking about COVID-19, facilitating risk communication to a broad audience.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
J Appl Res Mem Cogn
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States