Petya Eckler

Spreading the virus: emotional tone of viral advertising and its effect on forwarding intentions and attitudes

ABSTRACT Viral advertising has attracted advertisers in recent years, yet little is known about how exactly it works from an information processing perspective. This study extends knowledge by exploring how the emotional tone (pleasant, unpleasant, coactive) of viral video ads affects attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and forwarding intentions. Results indicate that pleasant emotional tone elicits the strongest attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and intention to forward. The effects were weaker for coactive tone and weakest for negative emotional tone. These results challenge the common approach of shocking or scaring online users to motivate them to forward a viral video.

Electronic word of mouth on Twitter about physical activity in the United States: exploratory infodemiology study

Background Twitter is a widely used social medium. However, its application in promoting health behaviors is understudied. Objective In order to provide insights into designing health marketing interventions to promote physical activity on Twitter, this exploratory infodemiology study applied both social cognitive theory and the path model of online word of mouth to examine the distribution of different electronic word of mouth (eWOM) characteristics among personal tweets about physical activity in the United States. Methods This study used 113 keywords to retrieve 1 million public tweets about physical activity in the United States posted between January 1 and March 31, 2011. A total of 30,000 tweets were randomly selected and sorted based on numbers generated by a random number generator. Two coders scanned the first 16,100 tweets and yielded 4672 (29.02%) tweets that they both agreed to be about physical activity and were from personal accounts. Finally, 1500 tweets were randomly selected from the 4672 tweets (32.11%) for further coding. After intercoder reliability scores reached satisfactory levels in the pilot coding (100 tweets separate from the final 1500 tweets), 2 coders coded 750 tweets each. Descriptive analyses, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Fisher exact tests were performed. Results Tweets about physical activity were dominated by neutral sentiments (1270/1500, 84.67%). Providing opinions or information regarding physical activity (1464/1500, 97.60%) and chatting about physical activity (1354/1500, 90.27%) were found to be popular on Twitter. Approximately 60% (905/1500, 60.33%) of the tweets demonstrated users’ past or current participation in physical activity or intentions to participate in physical activity. However, social support about physical activity was provided in less than 10% of the tweets (135/1500, 9.00%). Users with fewer people following their tweets (followers) (P=.02) and with fewer accounts that they followed (followings) (P=.04) were more likely to talk positively about physical activity on Twitter. People with more followers were more likely to post neutral tweets about physical activity (P=.04). People with more followings were more likely to forward tweets (P=.04). People with larger differences between number of followers and followings were more likely to mention companionship support for physical activity on Twitter (P=.04). Conclusions Future health marketing interventions promoting physical activity should segment Twitter users based on their number of followers, followings, and gaps between the number of followers and followings. The innovative application of both marketing and public health theory to examine tweets about physical activity could be extended to other infodemiology or infoveillance studies on other health behaviors (eg, vaccinations).

Exploring the Hardwired for News Hypothesis: How Threat Proximity Affects the Cognitive and Emotional Processing of Health-Related Print News

This study explored how the proximity of threatening health news affects cognition and emotion through a 2 (Proximity: High/Low) × 4 (Topic) fractional experiment. Fifty-one participants read four news stories about either local or distant health threats, with their heart rate, skin conductance, and corrugator electromyography recorded. Results showed that high-proximity health threats elicited greater heart rate deceleration than did low-proximity health threats, indicating greater allocation of automatic resources to encoding high-proximity threats. Recognition data demonstrated that details from high-proximity health threats were recognized more accurately than details from low-proximity health threats. There were no significant effects of proximity on either skin conductance levels or corrugator activation. These results are discussed in terms of Shoemakers (1996) hardwired for news hypothesis and A. Langs (2000, 2006) limited capacity model.

Media performance, agenda building, and democratization in East Africa

This chapter discusses media performance during the democratization process in the Eastern African countries of Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda, which form a regional union called the East African Community (EAC). The analysis is inspired by over 200 seminal academic studies and expert texts from various disciplines, mostly on East Africa, to assess how these governments influence media performance during their wave of democratization. The chapter examines a range of issues that demonstrate the autocratic means of building a government agenda, such as restrictive press laws, sectarianism, election malpractice, political and ethnic violence, and influence peddling. It shows how this agenda-building approach exercised by the EAC member states undercuts the contributions of the media to the democratization process. The authors demonstrate how the emergence of independent media and religious institutions in some of the EAC member states constitute the most vigilant and influential part of civil society. Further, the argument is that media performance is most successful when its agenda mobilizes citizens to challenge the structures of authoritarian rule by promoting human rights, economic empowerment, and the rule of law.

Effects of Social Support About Physical Activity on Social Networking Sites: Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior.

Despite the physical and mental health benefits of leisure-time physical activity (LTPA), only about half of college students participate in the recommended amount of LTPA. While college students are avid users of social network sites (SNSs), whether SNSs would be an effective channel for promoting LTPA through peer social support is unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of social support from students’ contacts on SNSs on their intention to participate in LTPA, applying the Theory of Planned Behavior. Participants were recruited through a mass e-mail sent to undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in fall 2011. In total, 439 surveys were analyzed. Descriptive analyses and analysis for mediating effects were conducted. Social support about LTPA from contacts on SNSs has indirect effect on intention through affective attitude, instrumental attitude, and perceived behavioral control (PBC). The results indicate that social support about LTPA from contacts on SNSs might not be effective to change students’ intention unless attitudes and PBC are changed. Future interventions aiming to promote students’ intention to participate in LTPA by increasing support from contacts on SNSs should increase affective attitude, instrumental attitude, and PBC at the same time.

Facebook use and negative body image among U.S. college women

ABSTRACT Young women increasingly spend time on social media, but the relationship of this exposure to body image is still in the initial stages of exploration. In this study the authors used social comparison theory to examine the relationship between time spent on Facebook and body image. A survey of 881 U.S. college women was conducted in April–May 2013. Findings showed that 10.1% had posted about weight, body image, exercise, or dieting, and 27.4% had commented on friends’ posts or photos. More time on Facebook related to more frequent body and weight comparisons, more attention to the physical appearance of others, and more negative feelings about their bodies for all women. For women who wanted to lose weight, more time on Facebook also related to more disordered eating symptoms.

International journalists’ expectations from the US media coverage of Hurricane Katrina:

This study examines how international journalists evaluated the performance of the US media in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina through the concept of journalistic expectations. A survey was conducted to determine whether expectations were met and whether they differed across cultures. Data were collected from Europe, Asia/ Middle East, Africa, North America, and South America. Expectations were not met for accuracy, diversity, and skepticism but were satisfied for investigative reporting and public dialogue. Major differences existed between journalists from Europe and other continents. This study advances the concept of journalistic expectations and contributes to understanding how they vary across cultures and how international journalists evaluate their counterparts covering a major natural disaster.

“Window” Shopping Online: Cognitive Processing of General and Specific Product Windows

In this study, 36 participants navigated Amazon.com while their on-screen activity and physiological responses were recorded. An analysis of on-screen activity showed online shopping as a series of transitions between general browsing array pages (e.g., computers) and specific product pages (e.g., Apple MacBook). We recorded physiological responses associated with cognition in the moments following the onset of each page type (general array/specific product). The onset of specific product pages elicited cardiac orienting responses indicating automatic resource allocation to encoding, while the onset of general array pages did not elicit cardiac orienting responses. Furthermore, the magnitude of heart rate deceleration during the orienting response was a significant predictor of how much time participants spent on specific product pages. This demonstrates that the cognitive processes of consumers on shopping websites systematically during transitions between general and specific pages. These results are explained in terms of cognitive resource allocation during online shopping and exposure to interactive marketing.

Cross-national content analysis of the coverage of the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict

This study compares media framing of the Russia-Georgia conflict across leading news outlets in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia. A content analysis of 288 stories from eight news media outlets in these countries examined two major frames – reactionary depiction and partisan alignment. Results show that Russian and Ukrainian news outlets covered the conflict through the partisan alignment frame but with different categories from it. Romanian news outlets covered events with a reactionary depiction frame, while the Bulgarian news outlets covered the conflict with both frames.

The effect of perceived susceptibility on autonomic responses to and memory for health-related news

Presentation of an accessory intense acoustic stimulus coinciding with the onset of the visual imperative stimulus (IS) in a forewarned simple RT task facilitates RTrelative to IS alone trials (StartReac effect) and elicits blinks larger than those seen on control trials. In Experiment 1, 95 or 105 dBA noise bursts of 0 or 30 ms rise time were presented during half the 5 s ISs in a simpleRTtask at lead intervals of 0, 50 and 150 ms and during intertrial intervals. RT was facilitated in the presence of an accessory acoustic stimulus and the extent of RT facilitation decreasedwith increasing lead interval. Blinks were larger at the 0 ms lead interval than at longer lead intervals or during intertrial intervals. However, blink startle magnitude or blink facilitation were not related to RT or RT facilitation suggesting that, contrary to previous suggestions, startle does not mediate the Start- Reac effect. Experiment 2 varied the reporting and response requirements to the IS to assess whether attention to the IS or motor preparation affected blink facilitation at 0 ms. Blinks were elicited 0 or 150 ms after IS onset. RT was shortest in the presence of an accessory acoustic stimulus at 0 ms and slower if presentation of the IS required additional report. Neither motor preparation nor the additional attention requirement to the IS affected the extent of blink facilitation at 0 ms. Thus, blink facilitation at 0 ms seems to reflect on the summation of sub-reflex threshold excitation by the IS and super-reflex threshold excitation by the reflex eliciting stimulus in the motor pathway.The pattern of attentional startle is modulated when the lead stimulus and startle eliciting stimulus are presented in different modalities. Startle modulation is said to be modality specific if startles are inhibited and modality non specific if startles are facilitated relative to baseline. This finding is of theoretical interest as modality specificity is indicative of early selection and modality non-specificity of late selection mechanisms. Previous research provided evidence for modality specificity in continuous performance tasks, and modality non-specificity in tasks that assessed attention to discrete stimuli. The present research investigated experimental conditions that may determine the engagement of early or late selection mechanisms. Participants were given a target detection task under conditions that approximated continuous performance (Group 1), discrete trials(Group 3), and continuous performance with discrete trials (Group 2). Blink startles elicited with a burst of white noise were recorded at 120 ms or 1200 ms, during targets, non-targets and baseline. Blink startle was inhibited relative to baseline in all three groups. Contrary to expectations, greater inhibition during targets compared to non targets was found in Groups 2 and 3 but not inGroup 1. The current results are consistent with a modality specific account of attentional startle modulation. Moreover, we propose on the basis of the current results that within the early selection mechanism, attention may be more or less engaged depending on the overall context of the task.