Informing the public matters: A field experiment during an ongoing health crisis in Belgium

Abstract

During an ongoing outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Belgium, residents of the affected area took part in an online field experiment. The impact of four distinct crisis messages used by the Belgian authorities was tested on uncertainty, fear and trust. After receiving any of these messages, participants felt less insecure, less

Enhancing the efficacy of instructing and adjusting information: An exploration of interactivity and vividness

“…However, the participants were less likely to share infographics than text‐based stories. Claeys et al's (2021) field experiment during an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in Belgium showed including infographics made no significant difference in participants' level of uncertainty, fear, or perceived trustworthiness. The authors argued that the effect would be more salient if the visual information was tested among publics with lower levels of health literacy.…”

“…Among various types of visual communication tools, infographics are a popular storytelling technique among public relations practitioners (Gallicano et al, 2014) to present information through points, lines, symbols, words, shading, and color (Tufte, 2001). Infographics are characterized by high vividness (Reynolds et al, 2018; Zheng, 2017); still, their effectiveness in crisis communication has produced mixed results and they have only been examined in a limited way (e.g., Claeys et al, 2021; Stewart, 2014).…”

Mobile Alert and Warning in the United States and Japan: Confronting the Challenges of International Harmonization

“…Optimized and non-optimized messages could then be issued to study participants to track whether any meaningful differences in behavior and safety outcomes occurred between the two groups of recipients (measured via mobile device tracking, self-report, and official after-action reports). If mobile alert and warning stakeholders aim to do more than merely improve the accuracy of risk perception, then such field-based, side-by-side comparisons of warning message types may ultimately be needed (Claeys et al 2021 ). However, a field-based approach during an actual emergency could potentially increase risk for some participants and is therefore untenable unless steps could be taken to fully protect research participants.…”

Ethical public typology: How does moral foundation theory and anticorporatism predict changes in public perceptions during a crisis?

“…So far, the most prominent segmentation has been developed by Grunig (1997) who identified four types of publics: aware publics, latent publics, active publics, and non‐publics. Using this framework, scholars continuously have acknowledged the importance of targeting a specific public in crisis communication (Campiranon & Arcodia, 2008; Claeys et al, 2021; Fediuk et al, 2010; Jin & Liu, 2010; Wen et al, 2021). Oh et al (2021) underscored the importance of recipient centred messages.…”