APA
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Sinclair, A. H., Taylor, M. K., Davidson, A., Weitz, J. S., Beckett, S., & Samanez-Larkin, G. R. (2023). Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 13(1), 124–135. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1037/mac0000114
Chicago/Turabian
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Sinclair, Alyssa H., Morgan K. Taylor, Audra Davidson, Joshua S. Weitz, Stephen Beckett, and Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin. “Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking.” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 13, no. 1 (2023): 124–135.
MLA
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Sinclair, Alyssa H., et al. “Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking.” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, vol. 13, no. 1, 2023, pp. 124–35, doi:doi.org/10.1037/mac0000114.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{alyssa2023a,
title = {Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking},
year = {2023},
issue = {1},
journal = {Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition},
pages = {124-135},
volume = {13},
doi = {doi.org/10.1037/mac0000114},
author = {Sinclair, Alyssa H. and Taylor, Morgan K. and Davidson, Audra and Weitz, Joshua S. and Beckett, Stephen and Samanez-Larkin, Gregory R.}
}
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.