Journal of Health Communication

Nurses are particularly influential to others as it relates to COVID-19 vaccination decision-making and are at higher risk of COVID-19 themselves. Yet, nurses' COVID-19 vaccination remains suboptimal. This study combines communication science frameworks with a novel conceptualize of identity-identity fusion-to explore why nurses may not vaccinate and what strategies might encourage them to protect themselves from COVID-19. Practicing nurses recruited from the West Virginia Nurses Association ( N  = 328) were asked about their nursing identity, COVID-19 threat perceptions, vaccination efficacy perceptions, vaccination social norms, and both vaccination and information seeking plans...

Weight stigma is a pervasive form of discrimination worldwide. News media, and news images in particular, can reinforce weight stigma by portraying persons with obesity in a negative, stereotypical manner. Informed by the model of stigma communication, this study conducted a content analysis of images accompanying obesity-related news articles from the U.S. and U.K. to determine and compare the prevalence of stigmatizing images. Images ( N  = 445) in obesity-focused news articles obtained from the top four most viewed online news in the U...

More than 6 million people have died due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to slow down the spread of COVID-19, health authorities have created numerous guidelines. In the current study, we use survey data from the U.S. and social cognitive theory (SCT) to examine the associations among self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, and willingness to perform recommended COVID-19 related health behavior. Considering the misinformation-filled information ecology during the pandemic, we also examine the moderating role of misperceptions in these relationships...

Dissemination of public health information plays an essential role in communicable disease control and prevention. However, widespread and repeated messaging could become counterproductive if it leads to avoidance and disengagement due to message fatigue. Americans have been inundated with accurate and inaccurate COVID-19 information from myriad sources since the start of the pandemic. Using the health belief model (HBM) as a guiding framework, this study examines COVID-19-related message fatigue among adults in the United States who have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and the association between message fatigue and COVID-19 booster uptake and intentions...

The present study investigated the latent topics and language styles present in mental health organizational discourse on Twitter. The researchers sought to analyze identifying the prevalence of and language used in social support messaging in tweets about mental health care, the overarching topics regarding mental health care, and predicted that tweets with higher engagement will have increased frequency of words with positively valenced emotion and cognitive processing. A GSDMM was run to uncover latent themes that emerged in a data set of 326...

Linguistically diverse communities face barriers to receiving appropriate health information. COVID-19 exacerbated these health-communication inequities. University of Washington researchers surveyed bilingual staff, students, and medical interpreters - desiring training to become effective communicators of COVID-19 information to their social networks and language communities. In response, the COVID-19 Information Navigator Training was developed and pre-tested with professional networks and members of the target audience...

Public distrust in official sources of health information and uncertainty about novel guidelines may discourage engagement in recommended disease prevention practices. The current study tests the hypothesis that building confidence in positive behavioral outcomes may support recommendation following even in the context of low trust in recommendation sources. This set of longitudinal studies examines the main and interaction effects of trust in official sources and behavioral beliefs in their prediction of recommended COVID-19 prevention behaviors (facemask wearing, social distancing, vaccination)...

This study focuses on measuring the effects of COVID-19 on mental health both at cultural and individual levels. Although many COVID-19 studies used previous COVID-19 measurements such as FCV-19S, GAD-7, PHQ-9, DASS-21, CSS, CAS, or CSI, these clinical psychology measurements did not include cultural aspects as suggested by pathogen prevalence hypothesis : Pathogen prevalence argues that psychological responses of collectivists involve clinical response as well as cultural group response, driven by strong collectivism...

This study aims to generate evidence-based guidelines for researchers regarding how to effectively disseminate mental health research via Twitter. Three hundred mental health research Tweets posted from September 2018 to September 2019 were sampled from two large Australian organizations. Twenty-seven predictor variables were coded for each Tweet across five thematic categories: messaging; research area; mental health area; external networks; and media features. Regression analyses were conducted to determine associations with engagement outcomes of Favourites, Retweets, and Comments...

This article applies a network approach to better understand the often-demonstrated link between adolescents' drinking behavior and their exposure to alcohol-related content on social media. Focusing on social dynamics among adolescents and their peers, we investigate the causes and consequences of exposure to individual peers who share alcohol-related content online. Drawing on social network literature and the perspective of networked communication online, we distinguish between exposure effects and selective exposure as the two core dynamics that can explain the association between drinking behavior and exposure to alcohol-related content online...

The news media in Portugal played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing people with important and up-to-date health information. However, the number of news reports did not always correspond to the severity of the pandemic. There was significant media attention at the beginning of the pandemic (in early 2020), but media coverage soon declined, and the Portuguese media began to report on a greater diversity of topics. The present study assessed the evolution of news reports in Portugal during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic by analysis of epidemiological data (cases, deaths, and hospitalizations) and television news lineups from the three major generalist television channels, RTP1, SIC, TVI...

Misinformation can decrease public confidence in vaccines, and reduce vaccination intent and uptake. One strategy for countering these negative impacts comes from inoculation theory. Similar to biological vaccination, inoculation theory posits that exposure to a weakened form of misinformation can develop cognitive immunity, reducing the likelihood of being misled. Online games offer an interactive, technology-driven, and scalable solution using an active form of inoculation that engages and incentivizes players to build resilience against misinformation...

The rapidly increasing prevalence of obesity in South Africa, intertwined with extensive changes in diet, life expectancy, and nutritional status has led to a complex framing of obesity on social media. This has prompted the prioritization of media-based social and behavior change communication interventions leveraging social media for obesity prevention. This study was conducted to understand how obesity is constructed and represented on social media in South Africa. A media review of Facebook and Twitter platforms in South Africa was conducted over a six-month period using Meltwater software for data collection...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

This study employs a modified cognitive mediation model to investigate the role of health valuation and fear in shaping media attention, factual knowledge, and perceived familiarity with COVID-19 contact tracing apps. Data were collected from a national survey of 906 Singaporeans, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the results. Findings indicated that both fear of COVID-19 and health valuation were positively associated with newspapers, television, and social media attention, with health valuation demonstrating a stronger association with each media type...

This study discusses an undergraduate elective university course as a notable case for youth mobilization in combatting misinformation during COVID-19 with positive social and behavior change outcomes of an indicative nature. Remote modality of the civic engagement course entailed students' voluntary work at partnering with society organizations specialized in new media technologies. Students' engagement with the civil society organizations' three different research and implementation projects as a form of voluntary work enabled them to mobilize in accordance with a vital dimension of infodemic management, namely engagement of communities to take positive action...

In early 2022, as the vaccination rate in South Africa slowed, there was a strong need for COVID-19 communications to evolve from mass information and education campaigns targeting the general population, to more targeted approaches to motivate uptake amongst population segments facing convenience, complacency, and confidence barriers.Project Last Mile (PLM) and Ipsos conducted a representative study of the population of South Africa to: (1) understand population segments with regards to their likelihood of getting the COVID-19 vaccine, (2) understand the drivers and barriers around getting the COVID-19 vaccine for each segment; and (3) test the likelihood of adoption of a range of enabling, incentivizing, and mandating behavioral interventions ("nudges and shoves")...

While prior scholarship on preventive health behaviors has focused on identifying their cognitive predictors, emerging literature suggests that emotion may also be an important determinant of health behaviors. Drawing from appraisal theory and the discrete-emotions models of affect, the current study establishes emotional pathways to support for COVID-19 policies and social distancing behavior. Analyses of survey data collected in the U.S. and South Korea demonstrate that negative emotion experienced following partisan media use increases support for COVID-19 policies and social distancing behavior...

Handwashing with soap at critical moments is one of the most important factors in controlling the spread of germs and preventing the spread of infection. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a low-cost, school-based intervention that simulated germs and their spread on hand hygiene knowledge, attitude and practice of primary school children. Five hundred and sixty-two students from 28 rural schools were enrolled in this pre-posttest study. Endline data was collected 4 weeks after conducting the intervention at baseline...

Innovative social behavior change communication (SBCC) can help improve child nutrition, but little is known about the process of implementing innovative nutrition SBCC strategies in resource-poor settings and associated challenges. This research study examines emotional demonstrations (Emo-Demos), interactive game-like group activities that aim to spark behavior change by pulling emotional levers. It seeks to determine whether they are feasible and acceptable for implementers and targeted community members in rural Mozambique, aiming to draw lessons for the application of similar highly interactive SBCC approaches in resource-poor settings-a key equity issue...