Reexamining Fear Appeal Models from Cognitive Appraisal Theory and Functional Emotion Theory Perspectives

Recognizing inconsistencies between the extant fear appeal theories and emotion literature, this research integrated cognitive appraisal theory and functional emotion theory into a fear appeal literature and proposed a model that describes a process through which both fear and anxiety can contribute to adaptive responses. Findings from an experiment (N = 927) supported the predictions. Fear and anxiety emerged as distinct constructs. Perceived susceptibility was a stronger predictor of anxiety than fear, while perceived severity was a stronger predictor of fear than anxiety. In addition, greater fear and anxiety led to greater response efficacy through increased motivation to obtain protection-related information and heightened attention to such information, thus mediating the threat and coping appraisal processes. The SEM model testing the predictions showed that perceived susceptibility had the strongest total effects on protection intention, followed by anxiety, perceived severity, and fear.     

Content Analysis of a Live CDC Twitter Chat During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

A public response to a looming health threat may be marked with misinformation and panic. However, providing the public with accurate information and updates may be an effective way to prevent widespread fear. In response to the 2014 Ebola panic in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiated a Twitter conversation with the public to alleviate concerns and provide accurate information about the disease. This study conducted a content analysis of 512 randomly selected tweets by the general public directed to the CDC. The major themes identified included the etiology of Ebola, policy, the environment, spread and scope of the disease, fear and anxiety from the public, and misinformation. Practical implications of these findings include encouraging government and emergency health response organizations to prepare educational messages and materials in advance that detail responses to common questions, such as transmission and symptoms.     

Linguistic Synchrony in Parasocial Interaction

Social media can be used to assess public opinions and emotions during different stages of a crisis. Guided by the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model, this study examined a systematic sample of 2,881 tweets from a corpus of over one million tweets posted during the initial, maintenance, and resolution stages of the 2015 California measles outbreak. It found that the public showed the greatest interest (as measured by the number of tweets and retweets) in the initial stage of the crisis, but their interest drastically declined afterward. The expression of humor/sarcasm was significantly more frequent in the initial stage than in the maintenance or resolutions stage, while the expression of reassurance increased significantly from the initial, maintenance, and resolution stage. The emotion of alarm/concern was most frequently expressed during the initial stage. For message types, the public were more likely to tweet about their personal opinions and less likely to tweet about resources during the initial stage. These findings allow public health professionals to better design messages in response to the public’s concerns and emotions during public health crises.     

Humor in High-Stress Relationships: Understanding Communication in Police Officers' Romantic Relationships

A career in law enforcement is highly stressful given the nontraditional shiftwork, uncertain interactions, and risk of harm. These combined stressors likely spillover into one's romantic relationship and, thus, the study reported here explored one potential communicative coping mechanism—humor. Research exploring humor suggests that humorous communicators are better able to respond to stress, and this study explored if humor appears to benefit relational communication in police officer relationships. Findings begin to support this argument, revealing that romantic partners of police officers with a high humor orientation (HO) report using humor more to cope as well as experiencing less stress (both perceived and physical) and conflict (lower frequency of conflict and less intense/hostile conflict). Path analyses revealed that the use of humor to cope mediated the relationships between self-reported HO and stress, as well as conflict. Implications for humor and romantic relational communication are discussed.     

Fear appeal messages affect accessibility of attitudes toward the threat and adaptive behaviors

Fear appeals have long been used in persuasive messages to motivate people to perform adaptive behaviors. This research explored the influence of a fear appeal message concerning breast cancer on attitude accessibility. Messages advocating the efficacy of breast self‐examinations increased the accessibility of attitudes toward the adaptive behavior. Further, the accessibility of participants' attitudes toward the adaptive behavior predicted behavioral intentions to perform breast self‐examinations. Attitudes toward the threat became less accessible after exposure to a high fear‐arousing message, however. Analyses suggest that defensive reactions to the fear‐inducing message mediate the influence of the message on the accessibility of the attitudes toward breast cancer. Implications of these findings for models of fear appeals are discussed.     

Which papers cited which tweets? An exploratory analysis based on Scopus data

Many altmetric studies have analyzed which papers were mentioned how often on Twitter (one of the most important altmetrics sources). In order to study the potential relevance of tweets from another perspective, we investigate which tweets were cited in papers. If many tweets were cited in publications, this might demonstrate that tweets have substantial and useful content. Overall, a rather low number of citations to tweets (n=13,149) by less than 7,000 papers was found. Most tweets do not seem to be cited because of any cognitive influence they might have had on studies; they rather were study objects. Thus, this study does not support a high relevance of tweets (for research). Most of the papers that cited tweets are from the subject areas Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and Medicine. Most of the papers cited only one tweet. Up to 65 tweets cited in a single paper were found. An author keyword analysis revealed that the single largest topic seems to be the COVID-19/corona pandemic.     

What do academic libraries tweet about,and what makes a library tweet useful?

People spend an increasing amount of time using social media systems to network, share information, learn, or engage in leisure activities (e.g., gaming). Libraries too are establishing a social media presence to promote the library and provide services to user populations through the social media systems the users frequent. This study explores Twitter uses by six large academic libraries and factors that make library tweets useful. 752 tweets were analyzed by topic to develop a subject typology of library tweets. In addition, tweets and Twitter user characteristics were analyzed to explore what makes library tweets useful, as measured by the number of retweets and favorites received. Content analysis of the samples of library tweets revealed nine content types, with the event and resource categories being the most frequent. In addition, the analysis showed that tweets related to study support services and building and maintaining connections with the library community were the most frequently retweeted and selected as favorites. The presence of a URL in the tweet was positively associated with the number of retweets, and the number of users followed was positively associated with the number of favorites received. Finally, a negative correlation was found between the account age and number of favorites.     

TweetStorm in #ferguson: How News Organizations Framed Dominant Authority,Anti-Authority,and Political Figures in a Restive Community

After Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot African American teen Michael Brown in August 2014, rioters unleashed their anger on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. Using content analysis and framing theory, this study analyzed how news organizations covered events in Ferguson on Twitter over the course of a month immediately following the shooting. Protesters were framed as troublemakers; but community leaders were not framed as “rabble-rousers.” Journalists continued to rely on official sources more than alternate sources in spite of criticism of law enforcement and other political elites, but nearly 10% of the coded tweets that relied on official sources included some element of skepticism. Tweets from cable news outlets did not show partisan bias in any significant amount; and traditional legacy news media sources utilized the Twitter platform enhancements—such as article links, photos, links to other content, or hashtags—more than their new digital media counterparts. As Twitter launched #ferguson into the national consciousness, it is quite plausible that the framing of the tweets by news agencies may have molded perceptions of larger issues about the racial health of the nation, established policies of law enforcement, and the challenge of elected leaders to resolve explosive domestic problems.     

The Relationship of Dispositional and Situational Fear of Crime with Television Viewing and Direct Experience with Crime

Considerable differences exist in the size and direction of the relationship between television viewing and fear of crime found by previous studies. This article argues that different types of fear exist and that fear should not be confused with perception of risk. A distinction was introduced between dispositional fear of crime and situational fear of crime. The relationship between television viewing and the two types of fear was examined and a distinction was made between direct, indirect, and mediated experience with crime. Hawkins and Pingree (1990 Hawkins , R. P. , & Pingree , S. ( 1990 ). Divergent psychological processes in constructing social reality from mass media content . In N. Signorielli & M. Morgan (Eds.), Cultivation analysis: New directions in media effects research (pp. 35 – 50 ). Newbury Park , CA : Sage . [Google Scholar]) hypothesized that direct experience would interact negatively with television viewing, whereas cultivation's resonance hypothesis assumed a positive interaction. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,394 adults in Flanders, Belgium. Television viewing was positively related to dispositional fear of crime, whereas direct experience with crime was not. Direct experience predicted situational fear of crime, whereas television did not. There were no interaction effects. This study suggests that the relationship between television viewing and fear of crime depends upon the operationalization of the concept of fear of crime. More research is needed to establish which types of fear exist and how they are related to television viewing and direct experience with crime.     

恐怖诉求：传播效果的ERP实验研究——一种基于神经科学的传播学研究

本文是关于恐惧诉求的传播效果的ERP测定的分析报告。通过ERP实验我们确定和描述了恐怖启动信息与主信息的关系、被试的幸福感差异与恐怖启动信息加工的关系、三类恐怖启动信息的加工差异以及对于目标信息的加工特点进行了测定。     

The role of emotions for citizen engagement via social media – A study of police departments using twitter

Police departments increasingly use social media for enhancing their relationships with citizens. However, little is known about how specific characteristics of police-initiated messages affect whether and to what extent citizens engage with the former. This study looks at 11 large police departments using Twitter in Germany. Based on a multimethod approach, it explores the effect of content type and two emotional elements (i.e. arousal and valence) of tweets on different dimensions of citizen engagement. The latter is measured as observable online behavioral responses to police tweets in form of likes, comments, and retweets. The results suggest that emotional arousal (i.e. the emotional intensity of a tweet) plays a key role in triggering all forms of citizen engagement, while emotional valence (more specifically, the negativity of a tweet) largely shows no effect. Moreover, the impact of content type (informative versus interactive) varies across the different engagement dimensions.     

档案机构微信推文行业辨识度之省思

档案机构微信推文的行业辨识度是档案机构微信质量建设的重要组成部分。文章用例证法从行政性、文化性和娱乐化三方面分析了档案机构微信推文行业辨识度问题产生原因。基于议程设置原理对档案机构微信推文推送优先度提出建议,从"多推档案事"和"多用档案说事"两个角度提出解决档案机构微信推文内容行业辨识度问题的方法,融入历史主义思想和档案表征解决档案机构微信推文形式创新问题。     

The role played by government communication on the level of public fear in social media: An investigation into the Covid-19 crisis in Italy

In situations of crisis, governments must acknowledge that communication is a major weapon in their armoury, and can be used to convince the public to accept sometimes stringent measures, while preventing a worsening of the situation by curbing any spread of panic. Theoretically, during a pandemic, fear can be contained at reasonable levels by governments counterbalancing uncertainty with information. However, there is no empirical evidence on how the flow of information during a crisis can influence emotional states among the population. In this process, social media appears to be a valuable tool for governments to observe emotional response in a population. In the light of this and within the context of the Italian government's social media campaign #iorestoacasa (‘I'm staying at home’) launched during the Covid-19 crisis, the current study utilises text analytics to explore the relationship between government and press communication, and the level of fear expressed by citizens through more than 200 thousand #iorestoacasa tweets. The results highlight how the content of the messages evolved in the early part of the outbreak and during the social media campaign. They suggest that in Italy the discussion regarding the efforts made by the European Council to find common solutions for dealing with the emergency has prompted a positive influence on public mood. Conversely, messages about people's individual vulnerability and the associated sense of an external locus of control correlated positively with levels of fear. This study opens new ways to support government communication during a crisis by monitoring public emotional response through social media.     

Tweeting Facts,Facebooking Lives: The Influence of Language Use and Modality on Online Source Credibility

The present study examines how language use (e.g., personalized vs. depersonalized language) and modality (e.g., tweets vs. Facebook status updates) influence source credibility interdependently. A total of 257 participants read personalized or depersonalized health messages embedded in mock-up tweets or Facebook status updates. The results show that users perceive depersonalized tweets as more credible than depersonalized status updates posted on Facebook. On the other hand, personalized status updates on Facebook generate higher credibility judgments than personalized tweets. The findings are discussed in light of the MAIN model as well as the preconceived user expectations and communication norms of social media.     

Digitally Empowered

In January 2013, Peter Bradshaw, a film critic for The Guardian, said that Twitter users had become the favourite “critics” of the film industry. The implicit concern in this article on a subject dear to cultural journalism—“Would be criticism bankrupted when we are all ‘critics’ on the Web?”—became evident in the following years. It is pertinent, then, to explore the media answer not only to this subject but both to sourcing and expertise in general in the culture section. Did they embrace these new news sources (and which) that emerged in the digital environment, such as the reader, blogs or artists tweets? Assuming the first hypothesis, how did they include them in their editorial model, alongside with the “traditional” experts and sources? We conducted a content analysis to the culture section of an international media—The Guardian—between 2014 and 2016 (n?=?992), identifying the role of what we would like to call digitally empowered sources and the presence of new “experts” in cultural criticism. We concluded that these digitally empowered sources play an important role in the overall editorial, business and engagement media's strategy and are deeply engaged with a new digital feature: hypertextuality. New patterns of expertise also reflect an editorial positioning supported in an engagement strategy and in the recognition of the readers’ added value to content.     

BIRGing,CORFing, and Twitter Activity Following a Political Referendum: Examining Social Media Activity Concerning the 2014 Scottish Independence Vote

A sizable body of research has examined BIRG, or Basking in Reflected Glory, as the psychological process of associating with the successes of others. A sample of 253,188 tweets related to the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum were collected leading up to and following the vote. Results support BIRG processes on the part of anti-independence tweeters, and Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORF) responses by those favoring independence. Evidence does not support the notion that CORF was attenuated by high involvement.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">EveTAR</Emphasis>: building a large-scale multi-task test collection over Arabic tweets

This article introduces a new language-independent approach for creating a large-scale high-quality test collection of tweets that supports multiple information retrieval (IR) tasks without running a shared-task campaign. The adopted approach (demonstrated over Arabic tweets) designs the collection around significant (i.e., popular) events, which enables the development of topics that represent frequent information needs of Twitter users for which rich content exists. That inherently facilitates the support of multiple tasks that generally revolve around events, namely event detection, ad-hoc search, timeline generation, and real-time summarization. The key highlights of the approach include diversifying the judgment pool via interactive search and multiple manually-crafted queries per topic, collecting high-quality annotations via crowd-workers for relevancy and in-house annotators for novelty, filtering out low-agreement topics and inaccessible tweets, and providing multiple subsets of the collection for better availability. Applying our methodology on Arabic tweets resulted in EveTAR, the first freely-available tweet test collection for multiple IR tasks. EveTAR includes a crawl of 355M Arabic tweets and covers 50 significant events for which about 62K tweets were judged with substantial average inter-annotator agreement (Kappa value of 0.71). We demonstrate the usability of EveTAR by evaluating existing algorithms in the respective tasks. Results indicate that the new collection can support reliable ranking of IR systems that is comparable to similar TREC collections, while providing strong baseline results for future studies over Arabic tweets.     

Mining service quality feedback from social media: A computational analytics method

In spite of the growing opportunities and demands for using social media to assist government decision-making, few studies have investigated social media sentiments toward public services due to the large volume and noisy nature of big data. Taking a design science approach, this paper suggests a systematic method to assign tweets into each of the SERVQUAL dimensions to identify sentiments and track perceived service quality of healthcare services for policy makers. The method consists of (1) identifying more reliable topic sets through repeated latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and clustering; and (2) classifying tweets using topics based on an existing theory for service quality. The method is applied to tweets on the quality of NHS of the UK to demonstrate its usability. We measured social perceptions of healthcare service quality and identified keywords for each SERVQUAL dimension. Moreover, a comparison between the social perceptions derived from the tweets and traditional survey result on the same service quality shows the similarity which confirms the usability of the proposed method. The method has a practical value as a complimentary tool for the more expensive national scale surveys as well as academic value as a novel method integrating text mining with theoretically sound quality framework, SERVQUAL.     

It isn't a matter of just being funny: Humor production by organizational leaders

This study explored whether organizational leaders recognize humor as part of their management style and how compatible the leaders ‘ humor strategy is with their overall communication style. Results reveal that leaders use more pro‐social humor than anti‐social humor in the workplace. Several relationships between the emotional aspects of humor production and the communicator style constructs indicate that leaders use humor as a socially acceptable communication technique to control groups and enhance their own communicator image.     

The effects of message source and fear appeal on young adults’ response to Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) messages in Singapore

This study examines the psychological processes that determine how fear appeal and sponsor type impact young adults’ responses to public campaigns against Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) in Singapore. The results showed that fear appeal in the STD messages increased the level of anger arousal, while the STD messages sponsored by a commercial company versus a government agency increased the level of negative cognitions among participants. The interaction between fear appeal and sponsor type was found in both affective and cognitive responses of psychological reactance against the STD messages.