Immunization communication in ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’: Inoculation theory, health messaging, and children’s entertainment television

Entertainment education research has shown that television programs can communicate important health information to television viewers. Much of this research focuses on mass media effects (e.g., behavioral intention of viewers, post-viewing; attitudinal change, post-viewing). Less is known about the rhetorical strategies employed in such messaging. We review para-social and para-proxemics literature to describe the viewing context and then offer a detailed rhetorical analysis of immunization messaging on the children’s television program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” arguing that, aptly, Fred Rogers’ rhetorical framing mirrored that of the inoculation theory of resistance to influence, presenting “weak” challenges to his young viewers to help them to build resistance to stronger challenges encountered later. We conclude that, in a sense, the episode inoculated against inoculation fears

Persuading others to avoid persuasion: inoculation theory and resistant health attitudes

Inoculation theory, a theory of conferring resistance to persuasive influence, has established efficacy as a messaging strategy in the health domain. In fact, the earliest research on the theory in the 1960s involved health issues to build empirical support for tenets in the inoculation framework. Over the ensuing decades, scholars have further examined the effectiveness of inoculation-based messages at creating robust positive health attitudes. We overview these efforts, highlight the structure of typical inoculation-based health messages, and describe the similarities and differences between this method of counter-persuasion and other preparatory techniques commonly employed by health researchers and practitioners. Finally, we consider contexts in which inoculation-oriented health messages could be most useful, and describe how the health domain could offer a useful scaffold to study conceptual issues of the theory

Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19.

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. In this article, we explore the coronavirus "infodemic" and how behavioral scientists may seek to address this problem. We detail the scope of the problem and discuss the negative influence that COVID-19 misinformation can have on the widespread adoption of health protective behaviors in the population. In response, we explore how insights from the behavioral sciences can be leveraged to manage an effective societal response to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. In particular, we discuss the theory of psychological inoculation (or prebunking) as an efficient vehicle for conferring large-scale psychological resistance against fake news

Outbreak Communication: Exploring the Relationships between Health Information Seeking Behaviors, Vested Interests, and COVID-19 Knowledge in U.S. Midwest Populations

On February 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated at a Munich Security Conference, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676). The term ‘infodemic’ refers to the onslaught of both accurate and inaccurate health information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of an ‘infodemic’ was quickly integrated into mass media, popular culture (i.e., documentaries, podcasts), and eventually scholarly literature. In response to COVID-19, health communication scholars have centered on understanding specific messaging strategies such as the use of fear appeals (Stolow et al., 2020), nature of advertising narratives (Deng et al., 2022), the impact of visual health communication messages such as comics (Kearns & Kearns, 2020), the inclusiveness and accessibility of COVID-related health information (e.g., readability ) (Basch et al., 2020; Goggin & Ellis, 2020), as well as other message features and content attributes. Scholarly efforts have also explored the impacts of the specific sources of COVID-19 messages (Carico et al., 2021; Ju et al., 2023) and popular distribution channels such as social and mass media (Lwin, 2020; Meppelink, 2022). The effects of these messages and sources about COVID-19 have been studied in relation to a variety of health-related attitudes (i.e., public trust, vaccine hesitation, vaccine confidence) (Chou, & Budenz, 2020; Paek & Hove, 2020; Thaker, 2021) and health related-behaviors (i.e., vaccine uptake) (MacPherson, 2020)

Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. In this article, we explore the coronavirus “infodemic” and how behavioral scientists may seek to address this problem. We detail the scope of the problem and discuss the negative influence that COVID-19 misinformation can have on the widespread adoption of health protective behaviors in the population. In response, we explore how insights from the behavioral sciences can be leveraged to manage an effective societal response to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. In particular, we discuss the theory of psychological inoculation (or prebunking) as an efficient vehicle for conferring large-scale psychological resistance against fake news

Analyzing the Prophylactic and Therapeutic Role of Inoculation to Facilitate Resistance to Conspiracy Theory Beliefs

Conspiracy theories pose a variety of social and psychological consequences for individuals and society, and research suggests that around half of the U.S. population believes at least one. A two-phase inoculation experiment was conducted. Inoculated participants reported more negative general attitudes toward conspiracy theories and lower Phase II generic conspiracist beliefs, which are both indicators of harm-reduction and the beneficial healing impacts of therapeutic inoculation. The addition of therapeutic inoculation as a harm-reduction or healing technique in practitioners’ stakeholder response toolkit is a valuable contribution to both theory and practice

Surveilling the web, mobile, and language accessibility of Communication’s digital presence within institutions of higher education globally

This study aims to understand the general web accessibility of digital information networks which may serve as barriers for access to the global discipline of Communication through institutional and departmental websites, specifically for persons with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency (LEP). Our exploratory content analysis relies on computer-aided software to systematically analyze the departmental home pages of websites of institutional members of the International Communication Association (ICA), N = 77, representing 26 countries, globally. Findings from this study help us to: (1) better understand the general web, language, and mobile accessibility of discipline-related online information; (2) identify strengths and opportunities for improvement; and, (3) to reflect upon the anticipated barriers impacting persons with disabilities when accessing higher education information online

Engagement Effects of Player Rating System-Based Matchmaking for Level Ordering in Human Computation Games

Human computation games lack established ways of balancing the difficulty of tasks or levels served to players, potentially contributing to their low engagement rates. Traditional player rating systems have been suggested as a potential solution: using them to rate both players and tasks could estimate player skill and task difficulty and fuel player-task matchmaking. However, neither the effect of difficulty balancing on engagement in human computation games nor the use of player rating systems for this purpose has been empirically tested. We therefore examined the engagement effects of using the Glicko-2 player rating system to order tasks in the human computation game Paradox. An online experiment (n=294) found that both matchmaking-based and pure difficulty-based ordering of tasks led to significantly more attempted and completed levels than random ordering. Additionally, both matchmaking and random ordering led to significantly more di cult tasks being completed than pure difficulty-based ordering. We conclude that poor balancing contributes to poor engagement in human computation games, and that player rating system-based difficulty rating may be a viable and efficient way of improving both

Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration.

How predictable are life trajectories? We investigated this question with a scientific mass collaboration using the common task method; 160 teams built predictive models for six life outcomes using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a high-quality birth cohort study. Despite using a rich dataset and applying machine-learning methods optimized for prediction, the best predictions were not very accurate and were only slightly better than those from a simple benchmark model. Within each outcome, prediction error was strongly associated with the family being predicted and weakly associated with the technique used to generate the prediction. Overall, these results suggest practical limits to the predictability of life outcomes in some settings and illustrate the value of mass collaborations in the social sciences

How do inoculation messages work? A two-study mixed-method investigation into inoculation mechanisms

The central principle of inoculation theory is that when individuals are presented with a weakened form of a persuasive attack against an existing attitude, they become inoculated against future attacks to that attitude. To address a gap in the literature regarding inoculation mechanisms, we used focus groups (Study 1) to allow participants to describe resistance processes following inoculation. Guided by processing pathways that mirror those in established persuasion frameworks, participants described some of the variables that influence, occur during, and result from, their processing of inoculation material. We applied these findings by presenting a separate group of participants (Study 2) with a healthy nutrition inoculation message and studying their processing responses on the basis of variables identified in Study 1 and through related research. Analyses revealed that participants varied in their elaborative processing of the message and that elaboration was positively associated with desirable resistance processes (e.g. post-inoculation planning, talk, and information searching). By advancing our understanding of the ways through which inoculation messages prepare individuals for attitudinal attacks, these findings provide important future research directions and may inform effective inoculation message design