Abstract
BackgroundAdolescents and young adults demonstrate the highest rate of unrestrained motor vehicle fatalities, making the promotion of seat belt restraint a priority for public health practitioners. Because social media use among adolescents and young adults has proliferated in recent years, it is critical to explore how to use this tool to promote seat belt use among this population. Social media posts can contain various types of information within each post and this information can be communicated using different modalities.ObjectiveIn this study, based on the elaboration likelihood model, we aimed to examine how adolescents and young adults reacted to different appeals in various components of posts in the pilot of a promotion intervention on the Instagram BuckleUp4Life account.MethodsUsing thematic analysis, we examined different appeals in 3 components (photo, text, and caption) of 199 posts in BuckleUp4Life and compared the number of likes for different appeals.ResultsWe found that 6 appeals were used in the posts: rational, ego, social, fun, positive emotional, and fear appeals. The results of our study showed that in photos, fun appeals were the most popular. Rational and positive emotional appeals were the most appealing in text and captions. Regardless of the location of the components (photo, text, or captions), rational appeal was the most popular appeal.ConclusionsBased on the findings of our study, we recommend that public health practitioners utilize fun photos with rational and positive emotional appeals in text and captions rather than fear or social appeals, when promoting seat belt use through social media, especially Instagram.
Highlights
Despite improvements in vehicle safety, motor vehicle crashes remain a major public health concern and a leading cause of death in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) [1]
We found that 6 appeals were used in the posts: rational, ego, social, fun, positive emotional, and fear appeals
Our research examined the types of persuasive appeals used by the BuckleUp4Life Instagram account and how those appeals were received by the audience
Summary
Background Despite improvements in vehicle safety, motor vehicle crashes remain a major public health concern and a leading cause of death in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) [1]. Most teenagers in the United States between the ages of 13 years and 17 years report using social media sites such as YouTube (85%), Instagram (72%), Snapchat (69%), Facebook (32%), and Twitter (32%) [4]. These levels of social media use among teenagers have led health organizations and health care professionals to recognize that social media sites are viable platforms for public health communication and for adopting new communication channels for health promotion interventions [5,6]. Adolescents and young adults demonstrate the highest rate of unrestrained motor vehicle fatalities, making the promotion of seat belt restraint a priority for public health practitioners. Social media posts can contain various types of information within each post and this information can be communicated using different modalities
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