The HRCC’s Throwback Thursday social media series premiered in May 2020. The mission of the series is to highlight older research published by HRCC faculty that could be applied to health communication work during the global COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
This week’s #TBT comes from HRCC Faculty Feature of the month Dr. Monique Mitchell Turner, Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. The article focuses on why not all people engage in health information seeking behavior.
Last week's #TBT comes from HRCC Faculty Feature of the Month and Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising and PR, Dr. Saleem Alhabash and Dr. Nora Rifon, HRCC affiliated faculty member and Professor in the Department of Advertising and PR and focuses on the emotional appeal and virality on the persuasiveness of anti-cyberbullying messages on Facebook.
This Throwback Thursday article is from Dr. Franklin J. Boster, former professor in the Michigan State University Department of Communication and Dr. Paul Mongeau, alum of the Michigan State University Communication PhD program. Their study focuses on the effect of incorporating fear-arousing material into a persuasive message and highlights major explanations of fear appeal effects.
Scholars warn that avoidance of attitude-discrepant political information is becoming increasingly common due in part to an ideologically fragmented online news environment that allows individuals to systematically eschew contact with ideas that differ from their own.
The first issue of Public Understanding of Science in 1992 included a suggestion that science com-munication scholars “supplement our studies and activities on the understanding of science by the public, with studies and activities on the understanding of the public by scientists” (Levy-Leblond, 1992: 20). In the last decade, a number of scholars have taken up this call using in-depth interviews, case studies and surveys with small samples to highlight common elements of scientists’ views about the public. Bauer, Allum and Miller (2007) argue that this phase of research largely began in the mid-1990s as a critique of “scientific institutions and experts who harbor prejudices about an ignorant public” (p. 85).
In recent years, there has been a growing discussion about the importance of evidence-based practice (EBP) in the field of speech–language pathology. Although the changes associated with implementing EBP affect many aspects of the field, the need for clinicians to document the results of their intervention and to select treatment approaches based on a meaningful body of literature has been particularly apparent in the field of fluency disorders.
Influencing health behavior through informational campaigns, followed by the expectation of attitude change and subsequent desired behavior changes, is examined is this article by Erv Bettinghaus.
High-risk alcohol consumption is a significant problem on college campuses that many students see as a rite of passage in their development into adulthood. Developing effective prevention campaigns designed to lessen or avert the risks associated with alcohol consumption entails understanding how students perceive harmful consequences as well as the ways they protect themselves while drinking.
‘‘Fear appeal’’ campaigns, as they typically are called by academics, have been derided by American AIDS professionals as ‘‘amateurish,’’ ‘‘misguided,’’ and even unethical because they are seen as limiting one’s ability to consider dispassionately a range of responses to a perceived health threat. Yet, many African professionals have embraced fear-based campaigns and claim they are at least one of the reasons HIV infection rates dropped significantly in certain areas.
September is National Preparedness Month which promotes family and community disaster planning now and throughout the year. Social media in crisis situations, such as natural disasters, has been recognized by scholars and practitioners as key communication channels that can complement traditional channels. This study from Bruno Takahashi, Edson C. Tandoc Jr. and Christine Carmichael examines Twitter use during and after Typhoon Haiyan pummeled the Philippines.
As health organizations increasingly use the Internet to communicate medical information and advice (Shortliffe et al., 2000; World Health Organization, 2013), studying factors that affect health information processing and health-protective behaviors becomes extremely important.