Message Source Research Articles

Application of Communication-Persuasion Theory in Destination Marketing in the Post-Pandemic Era

ABSTRACT This study aims to adopt McGuire’s communication-persuasion matrix as a theoretical lens for examining the effect of message appeal and message source on domestic tourists’ attitudes toward the message and the destination leading to their visit intention. Experimental design was applied in two studies. Study 1 examined the influences of tourist focused message appeal (self-benefit vs other-benefit) and destination focused message appeal (gain-framed vs loss-framed) on attitudes toward the message and the destination. Study 2 examined the effects of tourist focused message appeal (self-benefit vs other-benefit) and government information source (central government vs local government) on attitudes toward the message and the destination. Tourist self-benefit message appeal positively develops participants’ attitudes toward the message and the destination. Destination loss-framed message appeal has a stronger effect on participants’ attitudes toward the destination than the gain-framed message. Central government message source positively influences participants’ attitude toward the message. Finally, results show positive relationships among attitudes toward the message, the destination, and visit intention. Results also confirm attitude toward the destination mediates the relationship between attitude toward the message and visit intention. This study extends and broadens the knowledge of effective destination marketing communications in the post-pandemic era.

How do the CSR Message Content and Source Influence Employee CSR Engagement? An Experimental Study

How do the CSR Message Content and Source Influence Employee CSR Engagement? An Experimental Study

Personalized Communication as a Platform for Service Inclusion? Initial Insights Into Interpersonal and AI-Based Personalization for Stigmatized Consumers

Although calls for inclusiveness in services are becoming more vigorous, empirical research on how to design and implement service inclusion for stigmatized consumers remains scant. This paper draws on key questions of personalization (i.e., who personalizes what for whom?) to tailor the (a) source and (b) content of marketing messages in order to better include stigmatized consumers. The authors examine this idea in three experiments in healthcare/well-being settings. In terms of message source, the results show that, in interpersonal interactions, service companies can employ the principle of homophily to better engage stigmatized consumers (Study 1). In contrast, homophily-inspired personalized messages to stigmatized consumers can backfire in the context of consumer-artificial intelligence (AI)-interactions (human-to-avatar interactions; Study 2). Moreover, in terms of message content, Study 3 explores how, and under which conditions, companies can leverage thinking AI versus feeling AI for improved service inclusiveness. Finally, the studies point to anticipated consumer well-being as a crucial mediator driving effective service inclusiveness among stigmatized consumers. The results not only contribute to an emerging theory of service inclusiveness, but also provide service scholars and managers with initial empirical results on the role of AI in inclusive services.

Effectiveness of B2B social media marketing: The effect of message source and message content on social media engagement

Social media message strategy is critical in determining how customers will engage with B2B firms on social media platforms. The present study examined the role of message source (i.e., firm-generated vs. employee-generated) and message content (i.e., emojis and objective information) in determining social media engagement. Four experiments were conducted to test the proposed relationships. The study findings revealed that employee-generated content leads to higher social media engagement (i.e., intentions and behaviors) than firm-generated content. Content-based trust and engagement-based trust were found to be the underlying mechanisms by which message source impacts social media engagement. Furthermore, we observed that, for an employee-generated message, including emojis has a greater impact on customer engagement than when they are included in a firm-generated message. Finally, no evidence was found concerning the effectiveness of incorporating objective information in social media messages on customer engagement. These findings have marked implications for B2B marketers in developing effective social media message strategies.

Funny but not Credible? Why Using (Many) Emojis Decreases Message Credibility and Source Trustworthiness

Emojis are paralinguistic elements that are used in computer-mediated communication to express emotions, convey tone, or simply depict objects or statements. This study examines how the (excessive) use of emojis affects knowledge, message credibility, and source trustworthiness. To this end, we conducted three online experiments using social media posts, in which we systematically varied the number of emojis and the source of the message. The results show that displaying many emojis decreases message credibility and source trustworthiness. As a mechanism explaining this effect, we also demonstrate that displaying many emojis is perceived as a persuasive attempt, triggering affective and cognitive reactance, and ultimately reducing message credibility. Moreover, the study shows that using (a large amount of) emojis in a message negatively affects factual knowledge.

Memorable Diet and Exercise Messages Recalled by Black Women

ABSTRACT The current project, guided by the memorable messages framework and Self -Determinism Theory, sought to uncover information regarding messages Black women encounter that may influence their health-related behavior. More specifically, the project focused on learning more about the diet and exercise related messages these individuals have received. Participants completed an online survey. Analysis of 122 participant responses from Black women (M = 37.04; SD = 9.10), primarily living in the United States, revealed many generic messages as well as communication specifically focused on diet and exercise practices. Messages focusing on the bodily appearance of the message recipient were also identified. Results indicate future research should investigate the influence of message source, content, and valence on the diet and exercise habits of Black women.

“You Think This is Hard? Just Wait…”: Memorable Messages in Motherhood

This study explores the hurtful and helpful memorable messages said to mothers. Ninety-seven mothers completed an open-ended questionnaire, providing examples of their most memorable hurtful and helpful messages related to motherhood. Messages labeled as hurtful critiqued parenting-related decisions or the child’s behavior, typically leading to a strain on the relationship or relationship termination. Helpful memorable messages were recognized as directly supporting parenting decisions or complimenting participants’ children. These messages maintained or improved the relationship with the message source. When talking with mothers, people should engage in high person-centered messages, provide encouragement, and avoid giving unsolicited parenting advice.

Motivating COVID-19 Vaccination through Persuasive Communication: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

ABSTRACT Vaccination is a vital defense against COVID-19 infections and outbreaks, yet vaccine hesitancy poses a significant threat to pandemic response and recovery. We conducted a systematic review of published randomized controlled trials (N = 47) assessing the persuasive effects of COVID-19 communication on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Individual vs. collective appeals and gain vs. loss frames are among the most frequently assessed message features, but they generally do not make a difference in persuasion. Normative messages that highlight higher (vs. lower) prevalence of vaccine acceptance are more persuasive. Message sources overall have limited impact on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, but sources that have a shared identity with the message receivers tend to be persuasive. More engaging message channels such as interactive chatbots and videos are promising communication tools but are generally under-utilized and under-studied. Compared to no communication or irrelevant communication, COVID-19 vaccine messages generally have a small advantage in increasing COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Messages that include 1) vaccine safety and/or efficacy information; 2) collective appeals combined with embarrassment appeals; and 3) political leaders’ vaccine endorsement are among the most effective messaging strategies. There is no evidence of any backfire effects of COVID-19 vaccine messages. We discuss the implications of our findings for persuasive message design in pandemic vaccine communication.

COMPRESSION IN SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETING IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF DISCOURSE

In modern translation studies, compression has come to be regarded as a linguistic operation, as a translation strategy. However, the cognitive process that underlies compression has not been taken into consideration. The authors believe that compression is based on selecting a functional equivalent to the source message, provided that the cultural concepts in both languages overlap. Th e article aims at studying compression pragmatically in various types of discourse in the process of simultaneous interpretation. To reach this goal the authors provide an overview of the previous research that facilitates the analysis of compression from the point of view of discourse; study the linguistic basis of compression; and analyze compression from pragmatic and cognitive perspectives. As a result, a model is proposed which presupposes a cognitive selection of a functional equivalent to the source message based on overlapping cultural concepts in two languages. Two principles of interpretation are analyzed: the principle of reproduction is based on a thorough reproduction of all the elements that make up the source message, while the principle of replacement involves selecting a communicatively adequate variant of interpretation that would perform similar functions in the given context. In order to establish correlations between cultural concepts an interpreter has to be well-versed in cultural coordinates system of both languages within a certain discourse. On a lower level of understanding compression is limited to omitting redundant elements and replacing them with more concise versions, lexically and/or syntactically, while preserving the informative components of the message. On a higher level of understanding that appeals to the cultural concepts and the language of thought (mentalese), compression involves selecting a ready-made functional equivalent that already exists in the target language and is normally more concise in form.

Altercast framing with assertive sustainability messages: how dominant brands can motivate non-green consumers

Advertisers often use assertive messages because they minimize ambiguity, are attention-grabbing, and encourage behavioural compliance, making them a popular message design strategy in sustainability advertising. However, assertive messages often backfire for ‘non-green’ or lower environmental concern (LEC) consumers, generating more negative attitudes toward the ad sponsor and entrenching existing behaviours. Advertisers employ subtle phrasing to mitigate this adverse effect, reducing the message’s assertiveness. While research has investigated different variations of subtler message designs, no research has yet to explore how to maintain an assertive message toward achieving more favourable source attitudes and greater behavioural compliance intentions. The current research draws on message framing and altercasting theory to create a new concept – altercast framing – that preserves the core assertive message. Three experimental studies reveal that altercast framing can enhance brand attitudes and behavioural intentions for LEC consumers but only when the message source is a high (versus low) market share brand. This research contributes to advertising theory and practice by (a) developing a novel message framing concept that preserves the core message, (b) expanding on message assertiveness research by integrating both message sender and message receiver characteristics toward maximizing ad effectiveness, (c) identifying the differential effect of a specific message sender characteristic – market share – on assertive messages, and (d) outlining an advertising strategy that enhances behavioural compliance intentions for LEC consumers.

Optimized distributed Goppa codes based on spatial modulation

AbstractThe distributed Goppa coded spatial modulation (DGC‐SM) scheme is proposed in cooperative scenarios. In the proposed DGC‐SM scheme, the relay chooses the partial information from the source by using the idea of information selection, and then re‐encodes the selected information. At the destination, a distributed Goppa code is obtained corresponding to each selection. In order to get the best possible code, an optimal information selection algorithm is proposed at the relay. In the proposed optimal algorithm, all selections and source message sequences are considered, which results in high complexity. Thus, another optimized information selection algorithm with low complexity is proposed at the relay. To further enhance the capability to get the source information, two efficient joint decoding algorithms called smart decoding algorithm and improved smart decoding algorithm are proposed. Moreover, the bit error rate (BER) performance bound of the proposed DGC‐SM scheme is derived. Through the simulations, the effectiveness of the proposed two optimized information selection algorithms is confirmed. Also, it is observed that the simulation and analytical results closely match at high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR).

Life values represented by the Eight Anthologies

Love is an expression of the inner feelings of the people who have been living continuously since the Sangam period and the purpose of philosophy is to express men's bravery and to live and prosper through them. The people of the Sangam period were divided into two groups as internal and external. The ancient Tamil suppressed the love life internally and divided the inner life into two types: theft and chastity. Tholkkappiyar and iraiyanar have explained the theft and chastity through poems. The excellence of Mens love the theft and womens love the chastity are explained thoroug it. The internal messages of folk songs are similar as the sangam poems. which are oral songs that have been performed in Tamil Nadu since time immemorial. Oral songs appeared long before writing. So it can be said that oral songs are the source of internal messages found in literature.

International Communication through the Mind of an Interpreter

Interpretation as a form of intercultural communication plays an important role in modern geopolitical conditions, hence the role of the interpreter as a mediator between languages and mentalities acquires even greater significance as high-quality interpretation ensures successful international communication. The authors focus on studying simultaneous interpreting as a cognitive process and set the goal of analyzing how the incoming message is perceived and processed in the mind of the interpreter and then transformed into a target language message. Applying the method of comparative cognitive transformation, the authors arrive at the conclusion that, since the interpreter operates on the cognitive level, the process of deverbalizing the source message is a transformation of the ordinary language into a language of thought, thus rendering the gist of the original can be achieved through identifying the underlying concepts in the source language message and finding correlations in the target language. Before attempting to formulate the target message, the interpreter should first deverbalize the original and get rid of its linguistic form, that is, cognitively imagine the sense of the message as a certain space of connections. Effective international communication with the target language recipients means that the interpreter needs to account for the pragmatics of the speech act and find a ready-made concise variant expressing a similar idea in the target language.

Analysis of a Persuasive Video on YouTube: A Collaboration between the Indonesian Ministry of Health and the Nahdlatul Ulama to Promote COVID-19 Vaccination in Indonesia

The COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia led to the collapse of national health facilities and the economy, which resulted in the acceleration of the invention of COVID-19 vaccines. However, only 54.9% of the population is willing to be vaccinated due to fake news or hoaxes. The government urges the public to obey regulations, especially in public spaces, and intensifies socialization through various media, such as YouTube. This study aims to determine the critical elements that compose the video on the YouTube channel so that it can be used as a medium to persuade the wider community. This study used qualitative methods to collect visual and textual data from purposively selected videos and screenshots, which were analyzed using communication theory for persuasion and a constructionist approach to interpret the data and identify variables such as the message's source, characteristics of the recipient, and purpose of the message. The Indonesian Ministry of Health and the Nahdlatul Ulama Executive Board collaborated to create a 2-minute, 53-second video on the importance of vaccination in Indonesia, particularly for Muslims. The video features PBNU's Health Head, dr. Syahrizal Syarif effectively educates the public on vaccination's significance and emphasizes community unity to support the government's vaccination program. The communicator in the video successfully positioned himself as a religious leader and doctor. The video is effective in communicating three key messages. It uses persuasive communication theory, using YouTube's power to influence people's opinions, suggesting that the government should use digital platforms to deliver more messages to the citizens in the future.

Deep Learning for Waveform Level Receiver Design With Natural Redundancy

High-speed information transmission system demands more powerful communication receivers. In this paper, we integrate deep learning algorithms into constructing waveform level receiver, which is capable of harnessing natural redundancy (NR) in raw message sources. Owing to end-to-end learning paradigm of neural network (NN), the proposed NN receiver can accomplish joint symbol timing synchronization and demodulation based on oversampled waveform sequences directly. The prevalent bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM) and Transformer structures, suitable for excavating sequential correlation of complex sources and waveform sequences, are considered as the backbone of NN receivers. Under the cases of clean label and noisy label, we conceive two novel training algorithms and interpret their principles in theory. The clean label bits are accessible from original source encoding schemes, while noisy label bits are available from the decision results of canonical receivers with independently noised waveform sequences. When noisy labels possess sufficiently small error rates, optimized NN receiver is competitive with that adopting the accurate labels. As for Markov sources and natural language text sources, simulation results show that the proposed NN receivers’ performances are superior to the classical receivers without a priori knowledge, especially when high spectral efficiency modulation schemes are encountered and random noise is significant.

On the Strength of Trust: The Moderating Role of Certainty in Judgments of Authorities

Communication studies often measure trust in or credibility of message sources as if their effects on critical consequences such as behavior are uniform across individuals and contexts. Drawing on the literature of attitude strength, this paper argues that considering the certainty of trust judgments enables researchers to better understand when trust is likely to induce desired behavior such as cooperating with a judged authority. Using two studies in different contexts, one from a local environmental dispute and another from the national-level COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., the current paper shows that communication practices (e.g., personal interaction, news media use, interpersonal discussion) reinforce people’s certainty in their judgment of authorities. This certainty, in turn, interacts with the effect of trust such that trust judgments greater in certainty are more likely to lead to behavioral intentions.

Promoting COVID-19 vaccine confidence through public responses to misinformation: The joint influence of message source and message content

ObjectiveDuring the pandemic healthcare professionals and political leaders routinely used traditional and new media outlets to publicly respond to COVID-19 myths and inaccuracies. We examine how variations in the sources and messaging strategies of these public statements affect respondents’ beliefs about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. MethodsWe analyzed the results of an experiment embedded within a multi-wave survey deployed to US and UK respondents in January–February 2022 to examine these effects. We employ a test-retest between-subjects experimental protocol with a control group. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions reflecting discrete pairings of message source (political authorities vs. healthcare professionals) and messaging strategy (debunking misinformation vs. discrediting mis-informants) or a control condition. We use linear regression to compare the effects of exposure to treatment conditions on changes in respondent beliefs about the potential risks associated with COVID-19 vaccination. ResultsIn the UK sample, we observe a statistically significant decrease in beliefs about the risks of COVID-19 vaccines among respondents exposed to debunking messages by healthcare professionals. We observe a similar relationship in the US sample, but the effect was weaker and not significant. Identical messages from political authorities had no effect on respondents’ beliefs about vaccine risks in either sample. Discrediting messages critical of mis-informants likewise had no influence on respondent beliefs, regardless of the actor to which they were attributed. Political ideology moderated the influence of debunking statements by healthcare professionals on respondent vaccine attitudes in the US sample, such that the treatment was more effective among liberals and moderates than among conservatives. ConclusionsBrief exposure to public statements refuting anti-vaccine misinformation can help promote vaccine confidence among some populations. The results underscore the joint importance of message source and messaging strategy in determining the effectiveness of responses to misinformation.

What motivates adults to accept influenza vaccine? An assessment of incentives, ease of access, messaging, and sources of information using a discrete choice experiment

Seasonal influenza vaccination rates remain low, and contribute to preventable influenza cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the US. While numerous interventions have been implemented to increase vaccine uptake, there is a need to determine which interventions contribute most to vaccine willingness, particularly among age groups with vaccination rates that have plateaued at suboptimal levels. This study aimed to quantify the relative effect of multiple interventions on vaccine willingness to receive influenza vaccine in three age groups using a series of hypothetical situations with different behavioral interventions.We assessed the relative impact of four categories of interventions: source of vaccine messages, type of vaccination messages, vaccination incentives, and ease of vaccine access using a discrete choice experiment. Within each category, we investigated the role of four different attributes to measure their relative contribution to willingness to be vaccinated by removing one option from each of the intervention categories. Among the 1,763 Minnesota residents who volunteered for our study, participants expressed vaccine willingness in over 80% of the scenarios presented. Easy access to drop-in vaccination sites had the greatest impact on vaccine willingness in all age groups. Among the younger age group, small financial incentives also contributed to high vaccine willingness.Our results suggest that public health programs and vaccination campaigns may improve their chances of successfully increasing vaccine willingness if they offer interventions preferred by adults, including facilitating convenient access to vaccination and offering small monetary incentives, particularly for young adults.

PRINCIPLES OF FORMATION OF LISTENING SKILLS OF STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The article views listening comprehension as a type of speech activity and an important aspect of teaching a foreign language, allowing students to communicate with native speakers successfully. The formation of auditory skills makes significant difficulties for students, since complex psychophysiological processes are involved in the process of perceiving speech, and the listening process itself is accompanied by difficulties associated with both the language form of the message and the various characteristics of the message source and the conditions of its presentation. The author of the article analyzes the features of listening comprehension as a type of speech activity and the aspect of studying, considers difficulties of developing the students’ auditory competence and suggests the principles of auditory competence formation based on the specifics of the development of language and speech skills in the natural environment: principles of communication, activity, interaction of the main types of speech activity, accessibility, intensity, visibility, systematic and consistent studies, individualization.

DPGNN: Dual-perception graph neural network for representation learning

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have drawn increasing attention in recent years and achieved remarkable performance in many graph-based tasks, especially in semi-supervised learning on graphs. However, most existing GNNs are based on the message-passing paradigm to iteratively aggregate neighborhood information in a single topology space. Despite their success, the expressive power of GNNs is limited by some drawbacks, such as inflexibility of message source expansion, negligence of node-level message output discrepancy, and restriction of single message space. To address these drawbacks, we present a novel message-passing paradigm, based on the properties of multi-step message source, node-specific message output, and multi-space message interaction. To verify its validity, we instantiate the new message-passing paradigm as a Dual-Perception Graph Neural Network (DPGNN), which applies a node-to-step attention mechanism to aggregate node-specific multi-step neighborhood information adaptively. Our proposed DPGNN can capture the structural neighborhood information and the feature-related information simultaneously for graph representation learning. Experimental results on six benchmark datasets with different topological structures demonstrate that our method outperforms the latest state-of-the-art models, which proves the superiority and versatility of our method. To our knowledge, we are the first to consider node-specific message passing in the GNNs.