“It Happened to Me and It’s Serious”: Conditional Indirect Effects of Infection Severity Narrated in Testimonial Tweets on COVID-19 Prevention

Juan-José Igartua (), Laura Rodríguez-Contreras, Íñigo Guerrero-Martín and Andrea Honorato-Vicente
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Juan-José Igartua: Department of Sociology and Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, Campus Unamuno (Edificio FES), University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Laura Rodríguez-Contreras: Department of Sociology and Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, Campus Unamuno (Edificio FES), University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Íñigo Guerrero-Martín: Department of Sociology and Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, Campus Unamuno (Edificio FES), University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Andrea Honorato-Vicente: Department of Sociology and Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, Campus Unamuno (Edificio FES), University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 13, 1-22

Abstract: The health crisis caused by COVID-19 resulted in societal breakdowns around the world. Our research is based on determining which features of testimonial messages are most relevant in increasing persuasive impact. An online experiment with a 2 (severity infection narrative: low vs. high) × 2 (infection target: narrative’s protagonist vs. protagonist’s father) between-subject factorial design was carried out. Young people between 18 and 28 years (N = 278) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions, where they were asked to read a narrative message in the form of a Twitter thread describing a COVID-19 infection (with mild or severe symptoms) that affected either the protagonist of the message (a 23-year-old young person) or their father. After reading the narrative message, the mediating and dependent variables were evaluated. A message describing a severe COVID-19 infection affecting their protagonist to increase the perception of personal risk increased the persuasive impact through an increase in cognitive elaboration and a reduction in reactance. Our study highlights that creating persuasive messages based on social media targeted at young people that describe a careless behavior resulting in a severe COVID-19 infection can be an appropriate strategy for designing prevention campaigns.

Keywords: narrative persuasion; COVID-19; testimonial messages; Twitter; health communication; cognitive processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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