The effect of spokesperson attribution on public health message sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abu‐Akel, Ahmad; Spitz, Andreas; West, Robert

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245100

Cited by 44 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Finally, since we wanted to ensure comparability of the findings for the expert condition across topics (which we expected to perform well in softening extreme opinions), we used the same fictitious expert for all topics. In contrast to our results, a known medical expert spokesperson was found to increase the engagement of social media users for the topic of physical distancing during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic [2]. Thus, an investigation into the performance of different experts (including gender and ethnicity) and of real, known experts would be of interest to determine the factors that might make experts more convincing.…”

Section: Limitationscontrasting

confidence: 99%

Interventions for Softening Can Lead to Hardening of Opinions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Spitz

Abu‐Akel

West

2021

Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

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Motivated by the goal of designing interventions for softening polarized opinions on the Web, and building on results from psychology, we hypothesized that people would be moved more easily towards opposing opinions when the latter were voiced by a celebrity they like, rather than by a celebrity they dislike. We tested this hypothesis in a survey-based randomized controlled trial in which we exposed respondents to opinions that were randomly assigned to one of four spokespersons each: a disagreeing but liked celebrity, a disagreeing and disliked celebrity, a disagreeing expert, and an agreeing but disliked celebrity. After the treatment, we measured changes in the respondents' opinions, empathy towards the spokespersons, and use of affective language.Unlike hypothesized, no softening of opinions was observed regardless of the respondents' attitudes towards the celebrity. Instead, we found strong evidence of a hardening of pre-treatment opinions when a disagreeing opinion was attributed to an expert or when an agreeing opinion was attributed to a disliked celebrity. We also observed a pronounced reduction in empathy for disagreeing spokespersons, indicating a punitive response. The only celebrity for whom, on average, empathy remained unchanged was the one who agreed, even though they were disliked.Our results could be explained as a reaction to violated expectations towards experts and as a perceived breach of trust by liked celebrities. They confirm that naïve strategies at mediation may not yield intended results, and how difficult it is to depolarize-and how easy it is to further polarize or provoke emotional responses.

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Section: Limitationscontrasting

confidence: 99%

Interventions for Softening Can Lead to Hardening of Opinions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Spitz

Abu‐Akel

West

2021

Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

Self Cite

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“…A large-scale survey found that "across countries and demographic strata, immunology expert Dr. Anthony Fauci achieved the highest level of respondents' willingness to reshare a call to social distancing, followed by a government spokesperson. Celebrity spokespersons were least effective" [4]. Similar results have also found independent confirmation [50].…”

Section: Scientists and The Publicsupporting

confidence: 61%

“…This sifting was done using Dimensions [67]. 4 In the case of megajournals, the author used Field of Research 5 categories to only sift through contributions not included in the Biological Sciences (division 06), Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences (division 07) or Medical and Health Sciences (division 11). At all stages, manifestly opinionated pieces which assume or strongly support personal, political or ideological views, even when published as research contributions, have not been included.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meta-research on COVID-19: An overview of the early trends

Colavizza

2021

Preprint

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COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on research and researchers. The pandemic has underlined the severity of known challenges in research and surfaced new ones, but also accelerated the adoption of innovations and manifested new opportunities. This review considers early trends emerging from meta-research on COVID-19. In particular, it focuses on the following topics: i) mapping COVID-19 research; ii) data and machine learning; iii) research practices including open access and open data, reviewing, publishing and funding; iv) communicating research to the public; v) the impact of COVID-19 on researchers, in particular with respect to gender and career trajectories. This overview finds that most early meta-research on COVID-19 has been reactive and focused on short-term questions, while more recently a shift to consider the long-term consequences of COVID-19 is taking place. Based on these findings, the author speculates that some aspects of doing research during COVID-19 are more likely to persist than others. These include: the shift to virtual for academic events such as conferences; the use of openly accessible pre-prints; the 'datafication' of scholarly literature and consequent broader adoption of machine learning in science communication; the public visibility of research and researchers on social and online media.

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“…Negative opinions expressed by public figures about a vaccine could impact a large population of people, especially those who do not hold an unswayable opinion [ 48 ]. People tend to believe public figures’ opinions, as they are elected officials who can influence health care systems and are perceived to have more information about a vaccine [ 50 , 51 ]. Thus, public figures have a responsibility to disseminate accurate health information and should be cautious in expressing their opinions in public.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing Public Opinion Towards COVID-19 Vaccines With Twitter Data in the United States: Spatiotemporal Perspective

Hu¹,

Wang²,

Luo³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

122

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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the United States and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance. Objective The aim of this study was to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. We investigated the spatiotemporal trends of public sentiment and emotion towards COVID-19 vaccines and analyzed how such trends relate to popular topics found on Twitter. Methods We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the United States from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified 3 phases along the pandemic timeline with sharp changes in public sentiment and emotion. Using sentiment analysis, emotion analysis (with cloud mapping of keywords), and topic modeling, we further identified 11 key events and major topics as the potential drivers to such changes. Results An increasing trend in positive sentiment in conjunction with a decrease in negative sentiment were generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the 8 types of emotion implies that the public trusts and anticipates the vaccine. This is accompanied by a mixture of fear, sadness, and anger. Critical social or international events or announcements by political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on public opinion towards vaccines. These factors help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis. Conclusions The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics, and promote the confidence that individuals within a certain region or community have towards vaccines.

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The effect of spokesperson attribution on public health message sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cited by 44 publications

References 44 publications

Interventions for Softening Can Lead to Hardening of Opinions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Interventions for Softening Can Lead to Hardening of Opinions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Meta-research on COVID-19: An overview of the early trends

Revealing Public Opinion Towards COVID-19 Vaccines With Twitter Data in the United States: Spatiotemporal Perspective

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