RATIONAL AND EMOTIONAL APPROACH IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION IN THE TIMES OF PANDEMICS: A CALL-TO-ACTION MESSAGE RESEARCH

Abstract

For over a decade, a number of scholars and scientific papers emphasized the continual decline of trust in public institutions, mainly in the democracies of “the West”. Some associated the observed phenomenon with the rise of social media and digital environments, while others attributed it to the rise of economic and political power of less democratic regimes of “the East”, such as China and Russia. In times of crisis, trust in government institutions could be of crucial importance for the appropriateness of the institutional response to the problems facing the nation. Across the EU, it is obvious that citizens of certain member states express higher trust in government and state institutions than others. This division has been even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when vaccination rates of particular EU countries are compared. In Croatia, the Government’s main message concerning COVID- 19 vaccination was modeled to appeal to the receivers’ empathy towards others. However, emotional appeal is just one of the possible courses of action. Theories of rational choices and exchange theories emphasize other, often ulterior motives, such as selfishness and revenge, as equally effective purposes to undertake certain actions. In this paper, we have examined four different types of messages, based on selfishness, revenge, honesty and empathy, and their power to persuade research subjects to get vaccinated. Message reception results are compared to other socio-demographic and behavioral factors to define which message type would be most appealing to different demographic groups.