Dr. Junhan Chen

CHRC Alumna and Staff Propose a Framework of Moderators of Social norm-based Messages based on a Systematic Review

Social norm-based messages have been widely used for persuasion. However, the current trend that research focuses on using social norm theories rather than theorizing about social norms may hinder theory advancement. Although there are efforts theorizing moderators in norm–behavior relationship, the empirical studies testing the theories have yielded mixed findings, and the unclear focus on social norm-based messages versus perceived norms may impede theorizing the communication process regarding social norm-based persuasion. To bridge this gap, our study takes an inductive approach based on 85 studies to create a framework of moderators in social norm-based message persuasiveness. The framework identifies five factors moderating the effect of descriptive norm messages on behavioral intentions and two factors for injunctive norm messages. This framework lays a foundation for theorizing the mechanism of social norm-based message persuasiveness, highlights empirically supported conditions for message persuasiveness, and offers practical implications for designing targeted social norm-based messages.

Chen, J., Xia S., & Lin, T. (2023). A framework of moderators in social norm-based message persuasiveness based on a systematic review. Human Communication Research, hqad043,
https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad043

Yuan Wang

CHRC Students and Faculty Publish Study on Americans Support for Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination

This study sets out to understand the role of cultural worldviews, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists in impacting U.S. participants’ support for COVID-19 mandatory vaccination. Results from an online survey (“N” = 594) suggest that stronger individualistic and hierarchical worldviews are associated with more perceived COVID-19 vaccination risks, less perceived COVID-19 vaccination benefits, and lower support for COVID-19 mandatory vaccination. Perceived benefits mediate the impact of cultural worldviews on support for COVID-19 mandatory vaccination. Trust in scientists moderates the relationship between cultural worldviews and perceived benefits of COVID-19 vaccination. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Wang, Y., Leach, J., Kim, J., & Lee, S. (2023). Support for COVID-19 mandatory vaccination in the United States: examining the role of cultural worldviews, risk-benefit perceptions, and trust in scientists. Journal of Science Communication, 22(2), A03.https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22020203

Yuan Wang

New CHRC Research About Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Beliefs Among Unvaccinated Black Americans

Health-related misinformation is a major threat to public health and particularly worrisome for populations experiencing health disparities. This study sets out to examine the prevalence, socio-psychological predictors, and consequences of beliefs in COVID-19 vaccine misinformation among unvaccinated Black Americans. We conducted an online national survey with Black Americans who had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 (N = 800) between February and March 2021. Results showed that beliefs in COVID-19 vaccine misinformation were prevalent among unvaccinated Black Americans with 13–19% of partici-pants agreeing or strongly agreeing with various false claims about COVID-19 vaccines and 35–55% unsure about the veracity of these claims. Conservative ideology, conspiracy thinking mindset, religiosity, and racial consciousness in health care settings predicted greater beliefs in COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, which were associated with lower vaccine confidence and acceptance. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Wang, Y., Thier, K., Nitri, S. O., Quinn, S. C., Abedemowo, C., & Nan, X. (2023). Beliefs in COVID-19 Vaccine misinformation among unvaccinated Black Americans: Prevalence, socio-psychological predictors, and consequences. Health Communication, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2179711

Yuan Wang

CHRC Researchers Publish Meta-Analysis on Persuasive Effects of Temporal Framing in Health Messaging

This meta-analysis investigated the persuasive effects of temporal framing in health messaging. Our analysis included 39 message pairs from 22 studies in 20 articles (N = 4,998) that examined the effects of temporal framing (i.e. present-oriented messages vs. future-oriented messages) on attitudes, inten-tions, and behaviors in health contexts. We found that present-oriented messages were significantly more persuasive than future-oriented messages in terms of intentions and integrated persuasive outcomes. Effects of temporal framing on attitudes and behaviors were not statistically significant. We tested six moderators of temporal framing effects (gain vs. loss framing, temporal framing operationalization, behavior type, timing of effect assessment, age, CFC levels) but none of them was statistically significant. Implications for future temporal framing research are discussed.

Wang, Y., Thier, K., Lee, S., Nan, X. (2023). Persuasive effects of temporal framing in health messaging: a meta-analysis. Health Communication, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2175407

New Student Research on How News Affects Support for Climate Adaptation

News media are the public’s primary source about risks such as climate change, but traditional journalistic approaches to climate change have failed to build support for collective social responses. Solutions journalism, an emerging practice focused on credible stories about responses to societal problems, may offer an alternate approach. From an online experiment with a convenience sample of U.S. undergraduates (N = 348), we found that solutions journalism stories were positively associated with perceived behavioral control, which mediated support for collective action for climate change adaptation. Additionally, attribution of responsibility to individuals and government, participant hope, and eco-anxiety were associated with support for collective action. Findings extend our understanding of how risk communication affects policy support for climate change adaptation and suggest that solutions journalism may allow journalists to communicate climate change’s danger without depressing support for social action to mitigate its effects.

Thier, K. & Lin, T. (2022). How solutions journalism shapes support for collective climate change adaption. Environmental Communication. https://doi.org//10.1080/17524032.2022.2143842

CHRC Assistants, Director, and Affiliate Faculty Publish Research on Black Americans’ COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance

Yuan Wang

CHRC Assistants and Director Author Chapter Defining Health Misinformation

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), we are entering an age of “infodemics,” with misinformation leading to mistrust in health authorities, increasing risk-taking behaviors, and undermining public health responses (WHO 2020). While concerns are rapidly growing about the prevalence and harmful impact of health misinformation (Nan, Wang, and Thier 2021), scholars have not clearly defined health misinformation or its components. Without a clear definition and shared agreement on what constitutes health misinformation, comparisons across studies purportedly about health misinformation will remain challenging, hampering our efforts to understand this phenomenon, assess its effects, and design effective interventions. However, defining misinformation in the first place is exceedingly difficult, partly because the benchmarks we often use to diagnose misinformation (e.g., scientific evidence, expert consensus) are sometimes moving targets (Vraga and Bode 2020). In light of the ongoing debate about the nature of misinformation and the urgent need for a clear definition of health misinformation, this chapter aims to critically review current definitions of health misinformation, identify key challenges in defining health misinformation, and finally propose a tentative, unifying definition of health misinformation to guide future research. We conclude by discussing directions for future efforts in refining the definition for health misinformation.

Wang, Y., Thier, K., & Nan, X. (2022). Defining health misinformation. In A. Keselman, C. A. Smith & A. Wilson (Eds.), Combating Online Health Misinformation: A Professional’s Guide to Helping the Public (pp.3-16). Rowman & Littlefield.

Scoping Review of COVID-19 Health Communication Research Authored by CHRC Student and Director

This article reports a scoping review of emerging research on COVID-19 health communication. We reviewed and analyzed 206 articles published in 40 peer-reviewed communication journals between January 2020 to April 2021. Our review identified key study characteristics and overall themes and trends in this rapidly expanding field of research. Our review of health communication scholarship during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that health communication scholars have risen to the challenges and interrogated important issues in COVID-19 communication at the individual, group, organizational, and societal levels. We identified important gaps that warrant future research attention including experimental research that seeks to test the causal effects of communication, studies that evaluate communication interventions in under-served populations, research on mental health challenges imposed by the pandemic, and investigations on the promise of emerging communication technologies for supporting pandemic mitigation efforts.

Lin, T., & Nan, X. (2022). A Scoping Review of Emerging COVID-19 Health Communication Research in Communication and Media Journals. Health Communication, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2091916

Yuan Wang

CHRC Assistant Co-Authors Study About COVID-19 Vaccine Twitter Discourse

Wang, Y., & Chen, Y. (2022). Characterizing discourses about COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter: a topic modeling and sentiment analysis approach. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538068.2022.2054196

Evidence-based health communication is crucial for facilitating vaccine-related knowledge and addressing vaccine hesitancy. To that end, it is important to understand the discourses about COVID-19 vaccination and attend to the publics’ emotions underlying those discourses. We collect tweets related to COVID-19 vaccines from March 2020 to March 2021. In total, 304,292 tweets from 134,015 users are collected. We conduct a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) modeling analysis and a sentiment analysis to analyze the discourse themes and sentiments. This study identifies seven themes of COVID-19 vaccine-related discourses. Vaccine advocacy (24.82%) is the most widely discussed topic about COVID-19 vaccines, followed by vaccine hesitancy (22.29%), vaccine rollout (12.99%), vaccine facts (12.61%), recognition for healthcare workers (12.47%), vaccine side effects (10.07%), and vaccine policies (4.75%). Trust is the most salient emotion associated with COVID-19 vaccine discourses, followed by anticipation, fear, joy, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust. Among the seven topics, vaccine advocacy tweets are most likely to receive likes and comments, and vaccine fact tweets are most likely to receive retweets. When talking about vaccines, publics’ emotions are dominated by trust and anticipation, yet mixed with fear and sadness. Although tweets about vaccine hesitancy are prevalent on Twitter, those messages receive fewer likes and comments than vaccine advocacy messages. Over time, tweets about vaccine advocacy and vaccine facts become more dominant whereas tweets about vaccine hesitancy become less dominant among COVID-19 vaccine discourses, suggesting that publics become more confident about COVID-19 vaccines as they obtain more information.

A Man Is Using A Smartphone

Social Support and Social Media

cell phone image

A man is using a smartphone with social media network notification icons in the city

Lead Researcher: Yuan Wang

Summary: This project explores how people obtain social support from social media usage, and how the process affects their subjective well-being.