Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Appl Res Mem Cogn
• Personal Author:
  Sinclair, Alyssa H. ; Taylor, Morgan K. ; Davidson, Audra ; Weitz, Joshua S. ; Beckett, Stephen J. ; Samanez- Larkin, Gregory R.
• Description:
  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.
• Keywords:
  COVID-19 Episodic Specificity Information Seeking Public Health Risk Communication Social Media
• Source:
  J Appl Res Mem Cogn. 13(1):124-135
• Pubmed ID:
  38655203
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC11034827
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  75D30121P10600/CC/CDC HHSUnited States/ ; 75D30121P10600/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  13
• Issue:
  1
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:4a1322f60ca471b4637893317542f2b46fe0f88a9f4a1fb3135d1c67d51d1481692c403d66869c1b1389d4c5adf977d99b987d021558c998fe3f69c4a065e0d3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/154823/cdc_154823_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.23 MB ]