Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 15, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 19, 2024 - Sep 13, 2024
Date Accepted: Dec 9, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Ubiquitous News Coverage and its Varied Effects in Communicating Protective Behaviors to American Adults in Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Evidence from a National Longitudinal Panel Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Effective communication is essential for promoting preventive behaviors during infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19. While consistent news can better inform the public about these health behaviors, the public may not adopt them.
Objective:
This study aims to explore the role of different media platforms in shaping public discourse on preventive measures to infectious diseases such as quarantine and vaccination, and how media exposure influences individuals' intentions to adopt these behaviors.
Methods:
This study uses data from legacy media in the U.S., Twitter discussions, and a U.S. nationwide longitudinal panel survey from February 2020 to April 2021. We employed Intermedia Agenda Setting Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to develop the theoretical framework.
Results:
We found a two-way interactive agenda flow between legacy media and social media platforms, particularly in controversial topics like vaccination (F = 16.39, p < .001 for newspapers; F = 44.46, p < .001 for Twitter). Exposure to media coverage increased individuals' perceived benefits of certain behaviors like vaccination but did not necessarily translate into behavioral adoption. For example, while individuals’ media exposure increased perceived benefits of mask-wearing (β=0.057, p<0.001 for household benefits; β=0.049, p<0.001 for community benefits), it was not consistently linked to higher intentions to wear masks (β = -0.026, p < .001).
Conclusions:
Our study integrates media flow across platforms with national panel survey data, offering a comprehensive view of communication dynamics during the early stage of an infectious disease outbreak. The findings caution against a one-size-fits-all approach in communicating different preventive behaviors, especially where individual and community benefits may not always align.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.