5. Effective Health Messages
• Aim to alert people to the risk
• Convince them to behave in a recommended
way
• Discussed mainly in traditional media
context
6. Social Media
• Important channel for health risk communication
• Speed
• Affordance
• Openness
• Connectedness
9. Impersonal Impact Hypothesis
• Risk information from various channels
• Mass media sources Society at risk
• Interpersonal sources I am at risk
• Identification with the source is the key
factor
• “Person like me” thinks it’s risky I am also at risk
10. Message Context
• Social Media: Quasi-interpersonal nature
• Heightens social intimacies
• Increases interpersonal level of communication
• Two people on FB are distanced only by 3.74 friendship links
• Who’s sharing the information?
• News organization’s FB vs. Friend’s FB
• In-group vs. Out-group
14. Findings
• In-group member’s FB is the most effective
• Greatest identification with the source
• Increased identification greater severity & response
efficacy
• Strongest intention to adopt recommended behavior
• No difference between news site/news organization
FB/out-group member FB
15. Discussion
• Strategic use of message contexts
• Identification with source can be an important component
of health risk communication
• Social media can be an effective channel
• Social media do not in and of itself enhance identification
with source