Framing messages for vaccination supporters.

Abstract

Efficiently communicating information on vaccination is crucial to maintaining a high level of immunization coverage, but it implies finding the right content for the right audience. Provaccination individuals, who represent the majority of the population, and who have been neglected in the literature, could play an important role relaying pro-vaccination messages through informal discussions, if only these messages are (i) found plausible, (ii) remembered, and (iii) shared. We conducted seven experiments on 2761 pro-vaccination online participants (U.S. and U.K.), testing whether the valence of a statement (positive or negative) and its rhetorical orientation (pro-or anti-vaccine) affected these three steps. Participants deemed more plausible, were more willing to transmit (and actually transmitted more), but did not remember better positively framed statements. Pro-vaccination rhetorical orientation had little or no effect. Overall, the framing effects observed were dramatic: one framing made participants very eager to transmit a statement, while another made them reluctant to transmit it at all. The framing effects also influenced vaccination attitudes, with participants exposed to positively framed statements reporting more positive attitudes toward vaccination. Since messages have to be framed one way or the other, the framing effects demonstrated here should be considered when designing public health messages. 1Subtle changes in the way information about vaccination is presented can affect how people perceive it. Participants found more plausible, and were much more likely to share positively framed statements about vaccination than negatively framed statements. These framing effects should be taken into account when designing public health messages.

Internet users engage more with phatic posts than with health misinformation on Facebook

“…Second, positive content generated more interactions than negative content, and negative content was not more successful than emotionally neutral content. In line with some previous studies (Berger and Milkman, 2012;van Leeuwen et al, 2018;Stubbersfield et al, 2019;Altay and Mercier, 2020), these results mitigate the widespread success attributed to negative content in the field of cultural evolution.…”

“…More broadly, our study suggests that adopting an interdisciplinary approach and relying on real-world social media data can help to have a better grasp of the cultural dynamics happening on social media. The literature in cultural evolution might have paid too much attention to threat, disgust and negative emotions, at the expense of positive emotions and the context of information transmission-but recent research have started filling this gap (for the context of information transmission, see van Leeuwen et al, 2018;Boyer and Parren, 2015;Mercier et al, 2018; for positive emotions, see Berger and Milkman, 2012;van Leeuwen et al, 2018;Stubbersfield et al, 2019;Altay and Mercier, 2020). It could also be relevant to pay more attention to the diversity of contexts of communication offered by social media.…”

“…First, if it is broadly admitted in the literature on cultural evolution that negative information is more easily transmitted than positive information (Heath, 1996;Fessler et al, 2014;Bebbington et al, 2017;Boyer, 2018), even though some research brings these findings into question (Berger and Milkman, 2012;van Leeuwen et al, 2018;Stubbersfield et al, 2017;Altay and Mercier, 2020). For instance, it has been found that positive content is more viral than negative one (Berger and Milkman, 2012) and that morally good content is transmitted with greater fidelity compared to neutral or morally bad content (Stubbersfield et al, 2019).…”

Negativity in online news coverage of vaccination rates in Serbia: A content analysis

“…Anti-vaccine headlines tend to generate more shares, reactions, and comments online, compared to pro-vaccine headlines (Xu & Guo, 2018). There is evidence, however, that, when presented to pro-vaccination individuals, negatively framed statements relating to vaccine side-effects and the scientific consensus on vaccination were not better memorized, were deemed less plausible, and were less appealing to transmit, compared to positively framed statements (Altay & Mercier, 2020).…”

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine hesitancy among physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurses in two academic hospitals in Philadelphia

“…Selection of the appropriate messenger to deliver information about these vaccines is critical and may differ based on job category. 32 Some methods to improve HCP vaccination include providing more information about the vaccines to employees via email or town hall meetings and holding interactive information sessions for hesitant employees. It is also important to allow employees to voice their own concerns about the vaccines even though they are considered the experts.…”