Specific Messages Research Articles

Engagement in perinatal depression treatment: a qualitative study of barriers across and within racial/ethnic groups

BackgroundTo better understand previously observed racial/ethnic disparities in perinatal depression treatment rates we examined care engagement factors across and within race/ethnicity.MethodsObstetric patients and women’s health clinician experts from a large healthcare system participated in this qualitative study. We conducted focus groups with 30 pregnant or postpartum women of Asian, Black, Latina, and White race/ethnicity with positive depression screens. Nine clinician experts in perinatal depression (obstetric, mental health, and primary care providers) were interviewed. A semi-structured format elicited treatment barriers, cultural factors, and helpful strategies. Discussion transcripts were coded using a general inductive approach with themes mapped to the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavior (COM-B) theoretical framework.ResultsTreatment barriers included social stigma, difficulties recognizing one’s own depression, low understanding of treatment options, and lack of time for treatment. Distinct factors emerged for non-White women including culturally specific messages discouraging treatment, low social support, trauma history, and difficulty taking time off from work for treatment. Clinician factors included knowledge and skill handling perinatal depression, cultural competencies, and language barriers. Participants recommended better integration of mental health treatment with obstetric care, greater treatment convenience (e.g., telemedicine), and programmatic attention to cultural factors and social determinants of health.ConclusionsWomen from diverse backgrounds with perinatal depression encounter individual-level, social, and clinician-related barriers to treatment engagement, necessitating care strategies that reduce stigma, offer convenience, and attend to cultural and economic factors. Our findings suggest the importance of intervention and policy approaches effecting change at multiple levels to increase perinatal depression treatment engagement.

Forceful or Funny? Audience Interpretations of Narrative Persuasion in Satirical Entertainment Media

ABSTRACT It has been established that narrative entertainment messages have the power to produce persuasive outcomes in audiences, but the specific message components that influence audience responses are not well understood. The current study uses focus groups to explore audience interpretations of meaning, perceptions of persuasive intent, and perceptions of the source of a persuasive message in response to a satirical narrative with an environmental theme. The results indicated that audiences define persuasive intent much more narrowly than researchers. Audiences also inferred meaning based on which characters espoused certain messages, but struggled to form conceptions of the creators behind the show or discern an overall persuasive intent. Furthermore, humor acted both as a factor in enjoyment of the narrative and as a discounting cue.

Shock and awe: Loudness and unpredictability in Twitter messages and crowdfunding campaign success

Although recent evidence has found support for the importance of social media in communicating specific messages between venture founders and their target audience, there remains a relative paucity of research regarding how specific temporal elements of social media activity are related to key venture development outcomes. In this context, the current study draws on the conceptual framework of shock advertising to understand how louder (i.e., an increasing number of tweets) and unpredictable (i.e., tweets at non-standard times) Twitter activity can improve the odds of crowdfunding success. Using a sample of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and 2018 and cross-sectional regressions (ordinary least squares and the logit model), we find that the odds of meeting goals increase 1.24 times with each percentage increase in tweets, relative to tweets in the project-category-year. The odds of success increase further with an increase in the unpredictability and number of project-category-year adjusted tweets. In an era when standing out in the social media is increasingly challenging, our findings have implications for managing social media messages during crowdfunding campaigns.

Neuromarketing: some remarks by an economic experiment on food consumer perception and ethic sustainability

It is well recognized that decisions are taken by consumers on a wider basis than the rational itself. Neuromarketing is a field of studies that merges brain science with marketing knowledge. Methods based on neuroscience and technology can be used to better understand the way consumers react and process information from marketing stimuli. Mostly, neuromarketing techniques are used by agri-food firms in order to encourage specific types of food consumption, not always on the purpose of enhancing consumers' well being, healthy eating habits and public health. Among various kind of neuroscience techniques, neuroimaging has been used in order to reveal information about consumer preferences, since they pro-vide knowledge about the way consumers process marketing stimulus, and the consequent decision making. The number of studies dealing with neuromarketing is constantly growing althought it suffers for some limits that many researchers identify with sustainable ethical issues. For the purpose of the present study, we are interested mainly in the way specific marketing messages can generate an emo-tional response, and consequent consumer choice, respecting the parameters of ethical sustainability.

Imperial Architecture and Identity: An Introduction

Imperial Architecture and Identity: An Introduction

Deinstitutionalization Through Optimism: The Community Mental Health Act of 1963.

Deinstitutionalization Through Optimism: The Community Mental Health Act of 1963.

Breast Cancer Information Behaviours and Needs among Singapore Women: A Qualitative Study.

Background:There is growing evidence on cancer communication and its impact on cancer-related health outcomes; however, little is known about how women gain access to and use breast cancer information in the multi-ethnic Asian context. This paper aimed to explore the breast cancer information acquisition behaviours and needs among Singapore women who attended a community-based health organisation for mammography screening. Methods, design and setting:Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 37 racially diverse, aged 50 and above women, who have received mammography screening within the past two years. The interviews were conducted at either the Singapore Cancer Society Clinic or participant’s home. Results:Although cancer information scanning was more prevalent than information seeking (91.9% vs. 62.2%), those who purposively seek information exhibited a higher knowledge level of breast cancer. The most commonly cited sources for information scanning were friends, television and family, and for information seeking were the Internet, pamphlets from a healthcare organisation/ public authority, and healthcare providers. Singapore women were well-informed about the benefits of mammogram; however, specific knowledge, such as modifiable risk factors, reasons for different screening options and the trade-off between harm and benefit, was still lacking which led to confusion about screening.Conclusion:Breast cancer health educational materials should provide clear and balanced information to give women a more accurate or realistic expectation about mammography screening. Study findings provide important implications for breast cancer education and programs to move beyond simply raising awareness and craft specific informative messages addressing the needs of the target group.

Air pollution in Northeast Asia: can framing of public messages influence beliefs and attributions?

ABSTRACT Public support for any policy is often influenced by communications highlighting aspects of it – such as a policy’s perceived “costs” or “benefits” to people. This paper tests for these attitudinal differences as they relate to the transboundary air pollution problem in South Korea where cross-national coordination efforts among China, South Korea, and Japan have done little to alleviate the problem. We conduct an emphasis framing experiment launched in mid-2019, testing whether the importance of cooperation with China decreases or increases with exposure to different frames, such as Korea working alone to address the problem or Korea and China working together. While the message frames utilised in our study did not show a powerful direct impact on respondents, a secondary analysis reveals differences across pre-existing beliefs and attitudes. For Korean policy makers to effectively respond to both domestic and foreign demands related to the air pollution problem in Northeast Asia, there must be acknowledgement of this variance throughout the policy making process. This study thus highlights a tension for policy makers: trying to shift public beliefs through specific messages or allowing change in policy design by engaging the public in a more bottom-up deliberative approach.

Controversial information spreads faster and further than non-controversial information in Reddit

Online users discuss and converse about all sorts of topics on social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit are among many other networks where users can have this freedom of information sharing. The abundance of information shared over these networks makes them an attractive area for investigating all aspects of human behavior on information dissemination. Among the many interesting behaviors, controversiality within social cascades is of high interest to us. It is known that controversiality is bound to happen within online discussions. The online social network platform Reddit has the feature to tag comments as controversial if the users have mixed opinions about that comment. The difference between this study and previous attempts at understanding controversiality on social networks is that we do not investigate topics that are known to be controversial. On the contrary, we examine typical cascades with comments that the readers deemed to be controversial concerning the matter discussed. This work asks whether controversially initiated information cascades have distinctive characteristics than those not controversial in Reddit. We used data collected from Reddit consisting of around 17 million posts and their corresponding comments related to cybersecurity issues to answer these emerging questions. From the comparative analyses conducted, controversial content travels faster and further from its origin. Understanding this phenomenon would shed light on how users or organization might use it to their help in controlling and spreading a specific beneficiary message.

Содержание и формы участия Конституционного Суда РФ в правотворчестве

Introduction. The judicial constitutional review authorities ensure the supremacy and direct application of the constitutions. They also participates in lawmaking activities. Constitutional review authorities can participate in lawmaking activities directly or circumstantially. There are two kinds of the direct participation of such authorities in lawmaking activities: legislative initiative and participation in lawmaking activities in connection with the implementation of the constitutional review. The methodology of research is based on general scientific and special legal research methods. Theoretical analysis. Some authors note that the decisions of the constitutional review authorities can modify conditions of public life. Authors often emphasize that court decisions that rules certain norms as unconstitutional have the same goals as statutory acts. Empirical analysis. Constitutional courts administer a special kind of lawmaking, such as “positive”, “negative”, “adjusting” and “interpretative” lawmaking. “Positive” lawmaking is connected with the adoption of statutory acts, which regulate the activities of the constitutional courts. “Negative” lawmaking consists in ruling certain legal norms and sources of law unconstitutional and making them void. By means of “adjusting” lawmaking constitutional courts do not rule the norms as completely unconstitutional, but constitutionally interpret them. “Interpretative” lawmaking consists in clarifying legal norms of constitutions. The constitutional review authorities may also provide recommendations to the legislative authorities. Results. The constitutional review authorities can directly participate in lawmaking activities as a legislative initiative or in connection with the implementation of the constitutional control as “positive”, “negative”, “adjusting” and “interpretative” lawmaking. Circumstantial participation of such authorities in lawmaking activities is administered by adopting special messages.

Does communication support the promotion of cycling for transportation? Results from an experiment to test messaging strategies

IntroductionActive transportation can contribute to increase levels of PA, but to date interventions seem to have limited effects. Since communication approaches might contribute to intervention effectiveness, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of diverse messaging strategies aimed at promoting cycling for transportation. MethodsA 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design was adopted. The experiment was conducted among 313 adults in the province of Québec, Canada. To be eligible, participants had to be aged between 18 and 54 years and currently employed. The main and interaction effects of different messaging strategies on information processing outcomes (perceived argument strength and involvement) and on the three-week follow-up intention and behavior were examined. Variables were assessed by means of questionnaires. Analyses controlled for baseline attitude toward cycling for transportation. ResultsAdjusted ANCOVAs revealed a main effect of the self-efficacy (p = 0.03) condition on involvement. A significant main effect of attitude (p = 0.008) and self-efficacy (p = 0.007) messaging strategies was observed on perceived argument strength. No other main or significant interaction effect was observed for these information processing outcomes. The GEE models revealed a significant time X implementation intentions interaction effect on intention (p = 0.02). No significant main or interaction effect was observed on cycling at follow-up. ConclusionsNo clear pattern of effect was observed for the tested messages, but results from this study helped increase our knowledge concerning the effects of specific message content. Results also suggest that integrating messages pertaining to attitude, self-efficacy, and implementation intentions could support (albeit modestly) public health interventions aimed at promoting cycling for transportation.

Analysis of Youth Physical Activity Promotion in a Nationally Representative Sample of U.S. Synagogues.

Faith-based organizations are entities recommended to promote and provide health-related physical activity to youth. Meanwhile, religious institutions—including synagogues—typically use diverse media, including websites, bulletins/newsletters, and calendars to inform current and potential members about both general (e.g., theological) and specific practical messages (e.g., about the occurrence of services, meetings, and programs). Given the historical role synagogue centers played in the early- to mid-twentieth century in providing members recreational and sport programming, we were interested to know what physical activities synagogues currently advertise through the aforementioned media. From January through May 2019, we completed a line-by-line analysis of the public websites of a large nationally representative sample of synagogues (n = 1383 sites from 337 U.S. cities in 39 states) to assess content (including links to bulletins/newsletters and calendars) related to child and adolescent physical activity. Only 35.4% of the sampled websites used these media to mention that their synagogue provided even a single physical activity program/event. Thus, most synagogues either (a) did not provide physical activity programs for children and adolescents, or (b) neglected to use online platforms to promote engagement in them. We found 938 distinct programs/events and 1667 specific activities across synagogue websites that mentioned at least one physical activity. Programs by type and proportion (i.e., percentage of programs overall) included youth group (39.1%), preschool (26.9%), youth worship (18.0%), and youth education (16.0%). We situate our findings by explicating past and current functions of synagogues related to the provision of youth programming. Future research should examine the beliefs that synagogue rabbis and media gatekeepers hold toward physical activity in general and youth physical activity specifically. Youths should also be queried as to what role synagogue programming can/should play in promoting/providing and accommodating their physical activity needs and preferences.

An Improved NID Steganography Method for Low Bitrate Speech on VoIP

In the procedure of encoding process on low bitrate speech, fixed codebook division is an efficient and promising embedding method for steganography. An improved neighbor index division (NID) steganography method based on the high bitrate frame of G.723.1 codec (6.3kbit/s) is proposed, which employs the parity and low distortion of neighbor indices for G.723.1 fixed codebooks. Differing from previously NID method which performs quantized index modulation (QIM) beforehand, the proposed method divides codeword indices into separate sub-codebooks according to the secret message bits dynamically in the original G.723.1 codec quantization period. Compared with existing NID method, our proposed method doesn’t need to divide the codebook before the encoding starts. The embedding and codebook dividing happen simultaneously, which utilizes the characteristics of specific secret message bits. The experiment results show that the proposed method has a much lower quality degradation for the decoding speech and still fulfills the low latency requirement for communication.

Why Do Some Americans Resist COVID-19 Prevention Behavior? An Analysis of Issue Importance, Message Fatigue, and Reactance Regarding COVID-19 Messaging

ABSTRACT Despite the rapid transmission of and death toll claimed by COVID-19, there is evidence of resistance toward behaviors shown to effectively prevent and slow the spread of the disease, such as mask wearing and social distancing. This study applies psychological reactance theory to examine COVID-19 message factors (i.e., message fatigue, issue importance) that may be linked to nonadherence to CDC recommendations via the experience of reactance. Participants (N = 268) were current U.S. residents over the age of 18 who completed an online survey about their perceptions of COVID-19 messaging in general as well as toward a specific COVID-19 message they recalled. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that perceived freedom threat toward a COVID-19 message was predicted positively by message fatigue and negatively by issue importance. Greater perceived freedom threat was linked to greater reactance, which in turn was associated with lower levels of adherence to hygiene- and social-related COVID-19 preventive behavior. Notably, the negative association between reactance and social-related adherence was stronger than that between reactance and hygiene-related adherence. Implications for the role of reactance in risk and crisis communication as well as for public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

American Scientists’ Willingness to Use Different Communication Tactics

The careful choice of tactics—such as specific messages, styles, channels, or sources—is how strategic science communicators ensure that the time and money going into communication results in intended changes to chosen audiences’ beliefs, feelings, and frames, as well as associated behaviors. Using a sample of scientists from American research universities ( N = 516), we assess scientists’ willingness to use 11 different communication tactics and the relationship between these tactics and potential predictors. We find that scientists are open to a range of communication tactics. Practical and theoretical implications for science communication are discussed.

Release or Denial: Evaluating the Roles of Emotion and Risk in Parole Decisions.

Parole boards often incorporate numerous factors when making release decisions. These factors are typically related to the inmates' case files. However, in some instances, parole boards' decisions are influenced by factors outside of the case files, sometimes referred to as extra-legal factors. According to the emotion as social information model, emotion can communicate specific messages to others, and in this case, parole board members might unknowingly incorporate their own emotions and inmates' emotional displays into their decisions. The current study examines the role of parole board member and inmate emotional expressions as predictors of parole release decisions. Parole hearings were coded for emotion, parole board and inmate gender, supporter presence, and risk scores. Overall, risk scores and parole board members' emotions predicted release decisions. Higher risk scores were associated with a lower likelihood of release, and inmates' negative emotion was related to a lower likelihood of release. Implications are discussed.

Communicating Environmental CSR towards Consumers: The Impact of Message Content, Message Style and Praise Tactics

While engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gradually become mainstream in the business context, the investigation of CSR communication and its effectiveness remains limited. This study examines how environmental CSR communication affects consumer perception and behavior through an experiment design. We distinguish three CSR communication factors—message content (climate responsibility vs. sustainable use of natural resources), message style (greenhushing vs. uniform vs. greenwashing) and praise tactics (consumer praise vs. company praise)—and assess their impacts on consumer trust, purchase intention and consumer advocacy, respectively. We also investigate the moderating role of attributed intrinsic and extrinsic corporate motives on engaging in environmental CSR. An online experiment (N = 304) revealed that a uniform message style outperforms the other two styles, whereas greenwashing is found to be least effective. In addition, attributed intrinsic corporate motives moderate the impacts of environmental CSR communication on consumer trust, purchase intention and consumer advocacy, respectively. No moderation effect was found for attributed extrinsic corporate motives. The findings provide important implications for effective environmental CSR communication with respect to specific message styles and attributed corporate motives.

Adaptation of a french e-health tool for suicide prevention in young populations: Modalities and benefits

IntroductionFrance’s suicide rate is among the highest in Europe, with the young among the more at risk than others. Several European projects have demonstrated the effectiveness of using e-tools in suicide prevention particularly for hard-to-reach populations. Lessons from StopBlues, an e-health tool (application/website) for suicide prevention in the general population developed in 2018 which was promoted by municipalities and general practitioners, shows the necessity to adapt its content for young people.ObjectivesThe objective is to develop an e-health tool, BlueZberry, for suicide prevention targeting adolescents and young adults with psychological pain by adapting StopBlues and its promotional plan.MethodsThe detailed content of BlueZberry and its promotional plan were determined via a literature review and 26 individual and group interviews with experts and youth with StopBlues as a starting part.ResultsThe literature review and interviews confirmed the need to adapt the tool according to age of the user since the context and source of psychological pain vary rapidly at this time of life. BlueZberry consists of three modules for age groups 12-14, 15-17 and 18-25 years with specific graphics and messages. Its locally organized promotion should include youth hangouts on top of usual places.ConclusionsThis adaptation of StopBlues will reach a larger audience by offering a more suitable solution for this vulnerable population. A web-portal will serve as an entry point for both StopBlues and BlueZberry where users will be redirected to one of the tools/modules according to their profile and respective needs.

Changing Patient and Public Beliefs About Antimicrobials and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Using a Brief Digital Intervention.

Background: A key driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is patient demand for unnecessary antibiotics, which is driven by patients’ beliefs about antibiotics and AMR. Few interventions have targeted beliefs to reduce inappropriate demand. Objective: To examine whether a brief, online algorithm-based intervention can change beliefs that may lead to inappropriate antibiotic demand (i.e. perceptions of antibiotic necessity and lack of concern about antibiotic harm). Design: Pre- and post-intervention study. Participants: Participants were 18 years or older, and residing in the United Kingdom, who self-selected to participate via Amazon mTurk, an online survey plaform, and via research networks. Intervention: Participants were presented with a hypothetical situation of cold and flu symptoms, then exposed to the intervention. The online intervention comprised: 1) a profiling tool identifying individual beliefs (antibiotic necessity, concerns, and knowledge) driving inappropriate antibiotic demand; 2) messages designed to change beliefs and knowledge (i.e. reduce antibiotic necessity, and increase antibiotic concerns and knowledge), and 3) an algorithm linking specific messages to specific beliefs and knowledge. Main measures: The profiling tool was repeated immediately after the intervention and compared with baseline scores to assess change in beliefs. A paired samples t-test was used to determine intervention effect. Key Results: A total of 100 respondents completed the study. A significant change in beliefs relating to inappropriate demand was observed after the intervention, with a reduction in beliefs about antibiotic necessity (t = 7.254; p < 0.0001), an increase in antibiotic concerns (t = −7.214; p < 0.0001), and increases in antibiotic and AMR knowledge (t = −4.651; p < 0.0001). Conclusion: This study is the first to demonstrate that patient beliefs about antibiotics and AMR associated with inappropriate demand can be changed by a brief, tailored online intervention. This has implications for the design of future interventions to reduce unnecessary antimicrobial use.

Populist communication: content and style elements (Self-Presentation of Political Actors)

Populist communication: content and style elements (Self-Presentation of Political Actors)