persuasive speech essay about covid 19

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

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Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

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Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

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MyPerfectWords.com is a professional essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Persuasive Essay Writing

Persuasive Essay About Covid 19

Top Examples of Persuasive Essay about Covid-19

Published on: Jan 10, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 29, 2024

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

The coronavirus pandemic has everyone on edge. You can expect your teachers to give you an essay about covid-19. You might be overwhelmed about what to write in an essay.

Worry no more!

Here are a few examples to help get you started.

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

Check out some more persuasive essay examples to get more inspiration and guidance.

Examples of Persuasive Essay About the Covid-19 Vaccine

With so much uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine, it can be challenging for students to write a persuasive essay about getting vaccinated.

Here are a few examples of persuasive essays about vaccination against covid-19.

Check these out to learn more.

Persuasive essay on the covid-19 vaccine

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Writing a persuasive essay on Covid-19 integration doesn't have to be stressful or overwhelming.

With the right approach and preparation, you can write an essay that will get them top marks!

Here are a few samples of compelling persuasive essays. Give them a look and get inspiration for your next essay.

Integration of Covid-19 Persuasive essay

Integration of Covid-19 Persuasive essay sample

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid-19

Writing an argumentative essay can be a daunting task, especially when the topic is as broad as the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Read the following examples of how to make a compelling argument on covid-19.

Argumentative essay on Covid-19

Argumentative Essay On Covid-19

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive speech about anything can seem daunting. However, writing a persuasive speech about something as important as the Covid-19 pandemic doesnât have to be difficult.

So let's explore some examples of perfectly written persuasive essays.

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay

Here are seven tips that can help you create a strong argument on the topic of covid-19.

Check out this informative video to learn more about effective tips and tricks for writing persuasive essays.

1. Start with an attention-grabbing hook:

Use a quote, statistic, or interesting fact related to your argument at the beginning of your essay to draw the reader in.

2. Make sure you have a clear thesis statement:

A thesis statement is one sentence that expresses the main idea of your essay. It should clearly state your stance on the topic and provide a strong foundation for the rest of your content.

3. Support each point with evidence:

To make an effective argument, you must back up each point with credible evidence from reputable sources. This will help build credibility and validate your claims throughout your paper.

4. Use emotional language and tone:

Emotional appeals are powerful tools to help make your argument more convincing. Use appropriate language for the audience and evokes emotion to draw them in and get them on board with your claims.

5. Anticipate counterarguments:

Use proper counterarguments to effectively address all point of views.

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and address them directly by providing evidence or reasoning why they are wrong.

6. Stay focused:

Keep your main idea in mind throughout the essay, making sure all of your arguments support it. Donât stray off-topic or introduce unnecessary information that will distract from the purpose of your paper.

7. Conclude strongly:

Make sure you end on a strong note. Reemphasize your main points, restate your thesis statement, and challenge the reader to respond or take action in some way. This will leave a lasting impression in their minds and make them more likely to agree with you.

Writing an effective persuasive essay is a piece of cake with our guide and examples. Check them out to learn more!

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Our professional essay writer can provide you with all the resources and support you need to craft a well-written, well-researched essay. Our essay writing service offers top-notch quality and guaranteed results.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you begin a persuasive essay.

To begin a persuasive essay, you must choose a topic you feel strongly about and formulate an argument or position. Start by researching your topic thoroughly and then formulating your thesis statement.

What are good topics for persuasive essays?

Good topics for persuasive essays include healthcare reform, gender issues, racial inequalities, animal rights, environmental protection, and political change. Other popular topics are social media addiction, internet censorship, gun control legislation, and education reform.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on society worldwide. It has changed the way we interact with one another. The pandemic has also caused economic disruption, forcing many businesses to close or downsize their operations.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23 op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22 essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22 op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly, based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19. Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21 wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Persuasion key in encouraging people to stay home during Covid-19

13 April 2021

Read: Telegraph (£)

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Research Article

Testing persuasive messaging to encourage COVID-19 risk reduction

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Institute for Global Health, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, Department of Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing

Scott E. Bokemper,
Gregory A. Huber,
Erin K. James,
Alan S. Gerber,
Saad B. Omer

Published: March 23, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782
Reader Comments

What types of public health messages are effective at changing people’s beliefs and intentions to practice social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19? We conducted two randomized experiments in summer 2020 that assigned respondents to read a public health message and then measured their beliefs and behavioral intentions across a wide variety of outcomes. Using both a convenience sample and a pre-registered replication with a nationally representative sample of Americans, we find that a message that reframes not social distancing as recklessness rather than bravery and a message that highlights the need for everyone to take action to protect one another are the most effective at increasing beliefs and intentions related to social distancing. These results provide an evidentiary basis for building effective public health campaigns to increase social distancing during flu pandemics.

Citation: Bokemper SE, Huber GA, James EK, Gerber AS, Omer SB (2022) Testing persuasive messaging to encourage COVID-19 risk reduction. PLoS ONE 17(3): e0264782. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782

Editor: Camelia Delcea, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, ROMANIA

Received: October 20, 2021; Accepted: February 16, 2022; Published: March 23, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Bokemper et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Replication materials have been uploaded to Harvard Dataverse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VUKNOQ .

Funding: The authors acknowledge support from the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the Center for the Study of American Politics, and the Yale Institute for Global Health for funding this research.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Governments and public health officials have emphasized the importance of social (physical) distancing and other related measures in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Given ongoing vaccine hesitancy, that vaccines are not fully effective in preventing COVID-19 infections, and the lack of vaccine access in certain parts of the world, the need for interventions that cause individuals to take actions that reduces the risk of infection remain essential. In practice, many messaging and communication strategies have been observed. However, despite these widespread and varied efforts, we lack a robust evidentiary basis for understanding the messages that are effective at increasing individuals’ willingness to embrace actions that reduce the spread of COVID-19.

We conducted two experiments to examine how different public health messages affect people’s beliefs about the efficacy of social distancing, their intentions to practice social distancing, and their attitudes about enforcing social norms, such as persuading others to practice social distancing and negatively judging those who do not. Experiment 1 was exploratory in nature and tested a large number of messages that combined elements from different conceptual frameworks discussed below in an effort to find messages that increased respondents’ intentions to practice social distancing and willingness to encourage others to do so.

In Experiment 2, we take the two most successful messages from Experiment 1 and conduct a preregistered trial using a nationally-representative sample of American adults against both a Baseline Informational control similar to that used in Experiment 1 and a placebo-treated control group that is not exposed to any information about COVID-19 risk reduction. In our second study, in light of ongoing discussions about other practices to reduce the spread of COVID-19, we also examined mask wearing, willingness to self-isolate if exposed to COVID-19, and cooperation with government contact tracing. In both studies, we examine the possibility that certain messages are more effective among specific segments of the population.

This paper offers three important contributions. First, we conduct a large-scale multi-message study of different messages designed to encourage COVID-19 risk reduction actions with multiple outcomes followed by a replication study of the most promising messages. Testing a large number of messages means we can directly assess the relative effectiveness of different messages, decompose compound messages into their component parts to understand which elements of those messages make them effective, and address concerns that prior studies testing individual messages and finding them effective are driven by false positives. Our repeat testing of promising messages also allows us to understand whether messages that are initially effective remain effective, helping to further rule out sampling variability and understand the durability of apparently effective messages in light of changing public rhetoric about COVID-19 [ 1 ]. Finally, our focus on multiple outcomes means that we can understand both whether messages are effective only for the targeted individual’s own risk reduction behavior or also affect their likelihood of encouraging others to undertake these protective behaviors.

Second, we test a large number of different messages, drawn from three broad and theoretically relevant categories. First, we test messages that differ in whether they frame social distancing as a self- or other-regarding action and whether they highlight reciprocity in producing desirable outcomes. While several other papers have considered other-regarding messages, we also explicitly test whether it is easier to promote other-regarding behavior when highlighting reciprocity—that is how the other-regarding behavior of other individuals is also helping to protect the person targeted for persuasion. Second, we test a set of messages we characterize as “values consistent.” These are messages that try to frame social distancing in terms of values individuals likely hold, so that individuals who might otherwise be resistant to the behavior undertake it. We also test messages observed in public health and political rhetoric at the time these studies were fielded. In all cases, we test these messages relative to both a pure control that does not provide any COVID-19 relevant content and to a baseline public health message that provides a simple informational basis for social distancing as well as an injunctive appeal for doing so. This latter comparison provides further leverage in isolating the effects of any novel persuasive rhetoric.

Finally, these messaging studies provide an important window into the efficacy and limitations of efforts to promote COVID-19 risk reduction in the early stages of the pandemic in the United States and as it later evolved. Existing work on public health messaging has demonstrated behavioral change in response to specific messages about tobacco use, consumption of sugary beverages, high risk sexual behavior, and vaccination uptake [ 2 – 6 ]. Messages used in past work often target one or a very small number of behaviors at a time. However, successful public health strategies that address the COVID-19 pandemic require large numbers of people to change a broad range of daily behaviors, such as how they interact with friends and relatives, whether they wear face coverings in public, and cooperation with government efforts to identify infectious individuals. This suggests that a more fruitful messaging strategy needs to change attitudes towards social distancing more broadly rather than targeted messaging to increase the prevalence of a specific action. Changes in attitudes could also increase the willingness of individuals to encourage others to engage in these behaviors—that is, to reinforce desired behaviors through social norms [ 7 – 9 ]. Importantly, unlike other health behaviors, many individuals are at a relatively low risk of serious COVID-19 complications, but their behavior is nonetheless important for reducing the risk to individuals who are more vulnerable as the disease continues to spread throughout the general population.

Before proceeding, we note that we use the term social distancing rather than physical distancing as it reflects the language at the time the experiments were fielded. As has been noted by other researcher, the term physical distancing may be more appropriate [ 10 – 14 ].

The emergence of COVID-19 created an urgent need for governments and public health officials around the globe to induce behavioral change among people in society writ large. While formal restrictions, like closing schools, prohibiting large gatherings, and restricting travel, can quickly produce behavioral change, slowing the spread of infectious diseases also requires voluntary action by individuals like working from home, avoiding dining inside restaurants, and refraining from socializing with friends and family. An important challenge for public health officials is persuading people to change a large number of behaviors that cause a significant disruption to daily routines.

Given the novelty of social distancing in the United States early in the pandemic and the large number of people being told to distance to keep themselves, their families, and their community safe, it was not clear ex ante what types of messaging strategies would be effective at increasing people’s willingness to dramatically change their daily lives. While considerable work on public health messaging has been produced during the pandemic, in the early stages it was important to understand whether any component of the “kitchen sink” messages observed being used could be effective at increasing people’s beliefs about the importance of social distancing and their intentions to engage in the behavior.

The large number of messages we tested were motivated by different approaches in behavioral science. Specifically, we combined appeals about 1) social norms, 2) self-interest vs. other-regarding motives, 3) individual vs. collective action, and 4) values reframing, to better understand whether attitudes toward social distancing could be changed with written persuasive messages.

Social norms and health behaviors

Public health campaigns often invoke social norms to encourage the public to practice positive health behaviors, like wearing sunscreen [ 15 , 16 ], quitting smoking [ 17 ], and using condoms [ 18 ] (see also [ 19 ]). Beliefs about social norms have been shown to be powerful motivators of health behavior (for review, see [ 20 ]). Unsurprisingly, social norms theory has been applied to understanding people’s behaviors during the COVID-19, such as the decision to wear a mask [ 7 , 8 ] and whether to practice social distancing [ 9 , 21 – 23 ]. Social norms can be classified as either descriptive , i.e. what most people do, or injunctive , i.e. people’s beliefs about what they should do or what is believed to be the morally acceptable thing to do [ 24 ].

Early in the pandemic, public health experts had to rely on appealing to injunctive norms, emphasizing what most people should be doing to stay safe. Prior to COVID-19 infection becoming widespread in the United States, most people were not engaging in social distancing making it difficult to credibly appeal to descriptive norms as a way to increase the prevalence of the behavior. An appropriate baseline for comparison of messaging strategies about social distancing is therefore one that includes an appeal to injunctive norms, an approach that was relatively common at the beginning of the pandemic. Our baseline message therefore explains that public health officials believe individuals ought to socially distance to end the COVID-19 pandemic and details the specific health behaviors that people should undertake.

However, as social distancing became more widespread in the early months of the pandemic, public health messaging could also emphasize descriptive norms in conjunction with injunctive norms. For both social distancing and mask wearing, people report being more likely to engage in a public health promoting behavior when they report that others around them are doing so as well [ 7 , 9 ]. Descriptive social norms may also play a causal role in the decision to wear a mask. In a vignette-based experiment, respondents in the United States and Italy were more likely to report that they would wear a mask or ask someone to wear theirs properly when other people were described as wearing masks compared to when they were not [ 8 ]. This positive effect has also been observed when accounting for local ordinances and has been shown to be stronger when people also endorse the injunctive norm that social distancing is the morally correct behavior [ 25 ]. Thus, the combination of an injunctive norm with a descriptive norm may be especially likely to increase people’s willingness to engage in social distancing.

Self-interest vs. prosocial concern for social distancing

Descriptive social norms provide information about the prevalence of a behavior in a group of people, but this does not provide information as to why others are engaging in the behavior per se. That is, people may be practicing social distancing to protect themselves from contracting COVID-19, or they may also be practicing social distancing to protect others. It could also be that people are motivated by some combination of both motives. Past research has observed that both a concern for one’s own health and a concern for the health of others are motivations for social distancing behavior. In a survey of adults in North America and Europe, over 80% of respondents reported that they practice social distancing to protect themselves and to protect others [ 26 ]. Both motivations were also shown to be predictive of social distancing behavior in a computer-based scenario experiment in which participants reported their social distancing behavior in common daily situations, like meeting a friend or going to a grocery store [ 27 ]. Regarding concern for one’s own health, people who believe that they are more vulnerable to the disease are more likely to report higher levels of social distancing behavior [ 28 – 30 ]. Survey research has also examined the correlation between individual differences in personality and values has found that people who are more concerned about the well-being of others are more likely to engage in social distancing [ 31 – 34 ] and that this concern for others may be more predictive of behavior than concern for oneself [ 35 ]. Further, people who were less willing to place risk on others in an incentivized experiment were more likely to report engaging in social distancing than those who placed another individual at greater risk [ 36 ].

While both self-interested and prosocial motives are present in people’s decisions to engage in social distancing, research on persuasion and public health messaging has produced mixed results for the effectiveness of appealing to either motive on behavioral intentions related to social distancing. Posters highlighting an “identifiable victim” or the spread of the disease to many others have been shown to decrease the willingness to engage in behaviors that were thought to spread COVID-19, like meeting with a friend or relative in their house [ 37 ]. Other work has found that inducing empathy for someone who is particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 can increase social distancing intentions [ 38 ]. Jordan, Rand, and Yoeli [ 39 ] observed that a prosocial framing of social distancing on a flier, i.e. avoid spreading coronavirus, was more effective than a self-interested frame, i.e. avoid getting coronavirus, in March 2020, although the prosocial frame was no more effective than the self-interested frame in a related experiment fielded a month later. Prosocial and empathy-inducing messages delivered as text have also been shown to be no more effective than the informational control to which they were added [ 40 ]. Thus, it is not clear whether persuasive messaging that appeals to protecting oneself or protecting others consistently produces the intended behavioral change beyond simply providing people with information.

Individual action vs. collective action

Descriptive social norms also do not convey how individual actions produce a benefit. Fundamentally, an outcome can be produced by individual or collective action, and the nature of a cooperative production function can differ substantially. In the case of individual production, public health campaigns could emphasize that each individual’s action produces a benefit. This approach aligns with past work on how beliefs about self-efficacy, an individual’s belief that they have the ability to perform an action to bring about a specific outcome, are an important determinant of whether an individual will perform a positive health behavior [ 41 , 42 ]. Beliefs about self-efficacy have been associated with intentions to practice social distancing in response to COVID-19 [ 43 , 44 ] and a hypothetical flu pandemic [ 45 ]. Thus, public health messaging may emphasize the importance of individual action as a means of protecting oneself and protecting others against COVID-19.

Alternatively, public health appeals could instead emphasize that the overall success of social distancing depends on collective action. Social distancing can be thought of as a collective action problem in which people have to work together to produce a group benefit. These types of cooperation dilemmas are widespread in human society and they vary in how the successful provision of a collective benefit is achieved [ 46 ]. One important feature of arguments that combine cooperative production with descriptive norms is that they invoke notions of reciprocity, the idea that one’s (costly) actions are being reciprocated by others in society, a factor that is shown to increase a willingness to undertake costly action [ 47 – 49 ].

The mapping between cooperative actions and outcomes may also vary. For one, social distancing to reduce the spread of COVID-19 could be thought of as a linear public good in which each individual’s social distancing provides an additional benefit to others. In this view, even if many people do not practice social distancing, those who do will still provide some benefit, although the fact each person’s actions matter may also encourage free-riding. Alternatively, social distancing could be thought of as a threshold public good in which the benefits are not realized until a critical mass of individuals engage in the behavior [ 50 ]. In this case, the possibility of not reaching a critical threshold may counteract the tendency to free-ride, although if the number of individuals falls short of the threshold, the benefit of social distancing is not produced and so one’s willingness to act may depend on believing enough other people are doing so.

Values reframing

One limitation of norm based approaches for policymakers and public health officials is that some people believe that COVID-19 does not pose a threat [ 27 , 51 ] or that social distancing violates another value they care about, such as displaying bravery rather than living in fear, an argument that appeared in the rhetoric of then President Donald Trump [ 52 , 53 ]. Rather than attempting to convince people with these beliefs about the threat posed by COVID-19, it may instead be effective when trying to persuade them to social distance to instead frame the action of social distancing as aligning with a value that they already hold [ 54 ]. For instance, bravery and risk-taking are generally viewed as attractive traits across a variety of cultures [ 55 – 57 ]. And indeed, many individuals, like medical professionals and emergency responders, demonstrated these desirable traits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is reframing the act of social distancing as demonstrating an individual’s strength and bravery an effective strategy? A values-based approach has been shown to be effective at increasing attitudes toward masking among American conservatives when messaging appealed to loyalty moral values [ 58 ]. More broadly, other work has considered how metaphors can be useful ways to frame responses to the pandemic in ways that people can easily relate to [ 59 ].

The present experiments

We present results from two experiments that combined elements of the theoretical approaches describe above to assess the efficacy of persuasive messages to increase people’s willingness to practice social distancing.

In Experiment 1, we tested the efficacy of a large number of messages against a Baseline Informational control message that defined social distancing and stated that public health experts believe it would reduce the spread of COVID-19. We note that this message also invoked an injunctive norm because it states public health experts believe people ought to be social distancing. This was a more conservative approach than testing against an untreated control group, which we chose because we were searching for promising messages that could outperform the baseline content most similar to extant public health outreach and to which they were added in the experimental context. Our focus in Experiment 1 is to examine whether any message outperforms that Baseline Informational content to which it was added.

In Experiment 2, we re-tested the two most promising messages from Experiment 1 on a nationally-representative sample of Americans against the Baseline Informational control and a separate placebo control message.

Experiment 1

Participants were randomly assigned to read a Baseline Informational message or to one of ten intervention messages. Due to the number of comparisons that utilize the baseline message, we assigned participants to this message with a 3/13 chance, while the remaining ten intervention messages each had a 1/13 chance of assignment. The survey was administered using Qualtrics survey software. Both experiments presented here were fielded under an exemption granted by the Yale IRB and written consent was obtained before participants could begin the study.

Study sample

We used a self-service online platform provided by the survey firm Lucid to recruit a sample of American adults ( n = 3,184). Lucid provides a diverse sample of respondents that more closely matches demographic characteristics of nationally representative samples than other survey platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk [ 60 ]. Approximately 81% of respondents assigned to an intervention completed the survey. Attrition was lower among those assigned to most of the intervention messages apart from the Baseline Informational message, by up to 8 percentage points. We did not find that pre-treatment covariates that explain outcomes differentially predicted attrition. The final analyzed sample was 2,568 respondents.

Participants were randomly assigned to read a Baseline Informational message that defined social distancing and stated that public health experts believe it would reduce the spread of COVID-19 or to one of ten intervention messages grouped into three categories. Each intervention message was added to the Baseline Informational message that included an injunctive norm statement. Table 1 shows the full text of the treatment messages and displays which parts of each tap into various theoretical constructs.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.t001

The first category of messages varied the beneficiary of social distancing behaviors and whether individual or collective action was needed to produce these benefits. In all of these messages, descriptive social norms were invoked by describing others as already social distancing (“Many other people are already social distancing.”). The beneficiary of social distancing was either the individual (“you could get sick and die”) or others (“members of your family and community could get sick and die”). We combined manipulation of the beneficiary with what was necessary to produce this benefit. Specifically, social distancing was framed as providing a benefit if an individual practiced it (individual action, “when you practice social distancing you reduce the risk”), if enough other people practiced it (threshold collective action, “if enough people practice social distancing then we can reduce the risk”), or for each additional person who practiced (linear collective action, “every person who practices social distancing reduces the risk”). As we note above, the latter two frames about collective production also emphasized norms of reciprocity in that they linked others’ behaviors to outcomes relevant for the respondent. Crossing these two dimensions of manipulation produced the six total intervention messages in this category.

The second category of messages were efforts at value reframing and stated that people who believe they are being brave by continuing with their daily routines despite the threat of the virus are actually being reckless. Theses message start with an example of people who are being brave during the pandemic, e.g. firefighters, and then takes a seemingly desirable action as incompatible with a value and reframes it instead as selfish and unattractive (“people who don’t practice social distancing… aren’t brave, they are reckless”). The message also emphasizes that by not social distancing, people are placing others at risk, i.e. the opposite of true bravery. This reframing was either presented alone (Reframing Bravery) or with language about how people who spread COVID-19 pollute the environment around them (Reframing Bravery + Pollution).

The final category of messages invoked the idea that practicing social distancing would facilitate returning to “normal” life before the COVID-19 pandemic (“Social distancing now means we can more quickly return to our normal way of life”) or that doing so involved adapting to an unavoidable “new normal” (“we are adapting to the ‘new normal’ necessary because of COVID-19”). These two messages were designed to mirror rhetoric being used by political leaders and in the media and were added to the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message.

We form four mean scales as outcome measures, with all scales ranging from 0 to 1 with 1 indicating behaviors or beliefs associated with reducing the spread of COVID-19. The four scales were: 1) a BELIEFS/norms scale that assesses agreement with beliefs about social distancing being important for your health and others people’s health and whether an individual would feel guilty for not practicing social distancing, 2) a social distancing (DISTANCING) scale that captures people’s intended willingness to social distance, avoid attending gatherings, forego elective medical procedures, and wear a mask, 3) a FOOD behavior scale that assesses people’s willingness to avoid high-risk food related behavior like going to a restaurant, and 4) a persuade/evaluate OTHERS scale that measures whether people would persuade others to social distance, report a business for violating rules, and negatively judge non-compliers. Several items in the DISTANCING and FOOD scales had previously been shown to be affected by rhetoric focusing on selfish and prosocial motivations for social distancing [ 39 ]. All of the outcomes were coded such that higher values corresponded to attitudes and behavioral intentions consistent with greater social distancing. The internal consistency of the scales was generally good with the exception of the FOOD scale, which had a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.65. Full text of outcome measures and scaling information appears in S1 Appendix .

We analyze our data using OLS regression comparing outcomes to the Baseline Informational message using indicators for each treatment and including pre-treatment demographic covariates to improve efficiency. Two messages appear particularly promising compared to the Baseline Informational message, with all treatment effect estimates plotted in Fig 1 . (Underlying regression analysis and distribution of scale outcomes appears in the S2 Appendix ). Among the messages that appear most effective, the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message also performs well relative to the Baseline Informational condition. For all four scales, the estimated effects of this message are positive. For the social distancing scale, the effect is .034 (95% CI: .002, .067) or 14.7% of a standard deviation. Respondents’ beliefs about the importance of social distancing also increase with an estimated effect of .040 (95% CI: -.002, .084) on the BELIEFS scale. The effect on the FOOD scale is .038 (95% CI: -.003, .079). The latter two effects are not statistically significant at the conventional 5% level, but do provide evidence that the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message broadly moved beliefs relevant to practicing social distancing.

Estimates displayed with 95% confidence intervals. Each panel shows the effect of each treatment message relative to the Baseline Informational condition for a primary outcome scale. All outcomes scales were coded such that higher values indicate more positive attitudes or intentions toward social distancing.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.g001

The Reframing Bravery message increases all four scale outcomes. The estimated effect on the OTHERS scale is .058 (95% CI: .023, .092), indicating that respondents who read the Reframing Bravery message report more willingness to enforce norms to promote social distancing. We also observe suggestive evidence that this message affects both the BELIEFS scale and the own social distancing scale. For the BELIEFS scale the estimate is .037 (95% CI: -.005, .079) or about 12.8% of a standard deviation, while the effect for the DISTANCING scale is .030 (95% CI: -.004, .064) or about 13% of a standard deviation. The estimated effect for the FOOD scale is positive, but imprecise.

It is also interesting that two messages appear, on average, less effective than the Baseline Informational content and the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message to which they are added. While no coefficient estimates are individually statistically significant, both the Return to Normal and New Normal messages are generally less effective than the content to which they were added across our primary outcome measures.

We also conduct a number of exploratory analyses for heterogeneous treatment effects by age, gender, partisanship, and geographic location and do not uncover large differences in average treatment effectiveness across these groups ( S3 Appendix ). Due to the rhetoric among the public and political elites surrounding the degree to which measures to address the spread of COVID-19 infringe upon people’s liberties, we elicited people’s adoption of a liberty moral foundation that captures their belief about the role of government in society [ 61 ]. We found evidence that intervention effectiveness varies by endorsement of liberty values. Compared to respondents below the mean in their adoption of liberty values, respondents who are above the mean in their adoption of liberty are more responsive to the Reframing Bravery message than to the Baseline Informational condition on the BELIEFS scale (p = .05) and OTHERS scale (p < .01), with weaker evidence for the DISTANCING scale (p = .14). The effects of the Reframing Bravery message are uniformly statistically insignificant for those low in liberty.

The two most promising messages were the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message and the Reframing Bravery message. Both were the highest performing messages on at least two of the four outcome scales when compared to the baseline content to which they were added. Given this, these messages were the ones that were selected to be re-tested on a nationally representative sample of Americans to discern whether they are more effective than the Baseline Informational content to which they were added. Additionally, we believe there was value in retesting the most effective messages at a later point in the time in the pandemic when attitudes about social distancing may have become more crystallized, perhaps making people harder to persuade.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 retested the two most successful interventions in Experiment 1 (Reframing Bravery, and Other-regarding Linear Cooperation and the Baseline Informational compared to an untreated Control message about an unrelated topic (bird feeding)). Experiment 2 was a pre-registered trial fielded between mid-July and early August 2020, a time when the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States had become far more widespread than during Experiment 1 [ 62 ]. We allocated respondents with equal probability to each intervention and written consent was obtained prior to participation.

We used the survey firm YouGov to recruit a nationally-representative sample of American adults. Respondents completed the study on their personal electronic devices. Power calculations indicated greater than 80% power to detect treatment effects 75% as large as in Experiment 1 with an N of 3,000 assuming scale distributions were the same as observed in Experiment 1. The study was fielded twice because of an implementation error in programming by the vendor for survey content that followed the items analyzed here for the first fielding (the error was for items for an unrelated project that was not about COVID-19, and which followed all of the items analyzed here). Consequently, the vendor re-fielded the entire survey resulting in a sample that was approximately twice as large as the sample described in our pre-registration document ( n = 3,000 pre-registered, n = 6,079 in final analysis dataset). YouGov does not provide data for respondents who decline to participate or drop out during the study.

The Baseline Informational treatment message was slightly modified from Experiment 1 to reflect changing guidance during the pandemic. It read:

To end the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials believe we should practice social distancing. Social distancing means that you should:

Work from home when possible
Wear a mask that covers your nose and mouth when outside of your home around other people
Stay at least 6 feet away from others if you need to go out in public, for example to shop for food or medicine
Avoid large gatherings, especially indoors
Stay home except to seek medical care if you are sick or have recently had close contact (closer than 6 feet for at least 15 minutes) with a person with COVID-19
Avoid pooled rides or rides where multiple passengers are picked up who are not in the same household

The additional content added to this baseline for the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation and the Reframing Bravery messages was unchanged from how they appear in Table 1 .

We made incremental changes to the four scales (BELIEFS, DISTANCING, FOOD, and OTHERS) used in Experiment 1 to reflect changing policies and circumstances. Given that contemporary discourse around social distancing had changed, we included new items that reflected what people were likely thinking about in their daily lives. We added items to the DISTANCING scale about attendance at religious services, participation in political events, self-isolation following COVID-19 exposure, and alerting public health authorities if diagnosed with COVID-19. For the OTHERS scale we added an item about cooperating in contact tracing. In the months between our studies, the behaviors we added to the scales had become salient in public discourse about COVID-19 risk reduction. We also included a new MASK scale composed of items about wearing a face covering in six circumstances, as well as relative willingness to shop at a store that requires rather than prohibits face masks. These additional items (and perhaps the passage of time) increased the reliability of the four scales that were used in Experiment 1 with the FOOD scale having the lowest reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.78). The modified outcome text and scale reliability appears in S4 Appendix .

At the time this experiment was fielded, messaging outside of the experimental context about the importance of items in our DISTANCING scale had become far more widespread, although mask wearing remained a contested policy tool. It was therefore unclear whether messaging would be similarly effective in this new context.

We find baseline increases in scores on the BELIEFS and DISTANCING scales over time (i.e., averages for these outcomes in the bird feeding Control message in Experiment 2 are greater than the averages in the Baseline Informational condition in Experiment 1). Fig 2 plots main effects of message efficacy compared to the Control message for all outcomes (underlying regression analysis and distribution of scale outcomes appears in S5 Appendix ). The Baseline Informational message is associated with increased BELIEFS and DISTANCING scores (p < .05, one-sided, in both cases) relative to the bird feeding message. The Reframing Bravery and Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation messages appear to be more effective, however. Each is associated with a statistically significant increase in four outcomes: the BELIEFS, DISTANCING, OTHERS, and MASKS scales, with p-values < .05, one-sided, in all cases. The magnitudes of these effects are approximately 0.1 standard deviation for each measure. None of the messages have large or statistically precise effects on the FOOD scale.

Compared to the placebo control, the Baseline Informational message, the Reframing Bravery message, and the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation increase beliefs and reported behavioral intentions to practice social distancing. These are OLS regression coefficient estimates for each primary outcome by treatment compared to the placebo control with 90% confidence intervals. The dashed vertical line represents the effect of the Baseline Informational Message on an outcome. All outcomes scales were coded such that higher values indicate more positive attitudes or intentions toward social distancing.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.g002

There is less clear evidence that these messages are incrementally more effective that the Baseline Informational content to which they are added. For the BELIEFS, DISTANCING, OTHERS, and MASKS scales, both the Reframing Bravery and Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation messages are associated with effects that are always larger than the Baseline Informational message, with the magnitudes of these differences ranging from 22% to 88% and averaging 50%. Because effect sizes are still modest, however, these differences are not generally statistically distinguishable at p < .05, two-sided, with the notable exception of the Reframing Bravery message which has an effect 88% larger than the Baseline Informational message on the OTHERS scale.

Differences in effects for those who endorse liberty values partially confirm Study 1 (See S6 Appendix ). Compared to the Control message, the Reframing Bravery message is more effective among those who endorse liberty for encouraging social distancing—it increases DISTANCING measure by .027 units (90% CI: .009, .043), an effect that is 70% larger than the effect for those who do not endorse liberty values. This difference is not significant, however, and the estimates for the other outcomes are inconsistently signed. If we instead focus on the relative effectiveness of the Reframing Bravery message compared to the Baseline Informational message, a test that accounts for the fact that those who endorse liberty values may respond differently to the baseline content, we uncover more evidence that those who endorse liberty values respond more to the Reframing Bravery treatment. In particular, for those who endorse liberty values, the Reframing Bravery message is between 20% and 125% more effective than the Baseline message for the five primary outcomes. The largest difference is for the DISTANCING scale outcome, where the difference is .014 (90% CI: -.004, .033).

In addition to our scale outcomes, we also examine results for several individual items of particular interest, including the three measures of compliance with government policies to reduce the spread of COVID-19 discussed above: Self-isolation for those exposed, alerting authorities if testing positive, and cooperation with authorities in contact tracing. These items are included in the DISTANCING behavior index, but are also individually of interest because they are areas where governments have reported difficulty obtaining compliance. Fig 3 show that the Reframing Bravery message is associated with a statistically significant increase in self-isolation and willingness to alert authorities, effects that are larger than and statistically distinguishable from the effects of the Baseline Informational message. (Underlying regression results appear in S5 Appendix ) Similarly, the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message is associated with a statistically significant increase in self-isolation and willingness to cooperate in contact tracing, effects that are larger than and statistically distinguishable from the effects of the Baseline Informational message.

The Reframing Bravery and Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message increase respondents reported intentions to not engage in key behaviors to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and to cooperate with government officials, even compared to the Baseline Informational message. This figure shows OLS regression coefficient estimates compared to the Control message with 95% confidence intervals. All outcomes scales were coded such that higher values indicate more positive attitudes or intentions toward social distancing.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.g003

Second, we also examine effects for three isolated behaviors, attendance at religious gatherings and inside visits to a friend and family member’s house. Religious gatherings emerged as sources of conflict over prohibitions on group meetings ( 18 ), while private indoor meetings are thought to be vehicles by which asymptomatic individuals expose those who are at more serious risk for infection. Once again, these items are individually in the DISTANCING behavior index. Results appear in Fig 3 . The Reframing Bravery Message is associated with statistically significant increases in all three outcomes, while the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message is associated with changes in both the family and friend small gathering outcomes. The Reframing Bravery effect for attendance at religious services is statistically distinguishable from the effect of the Baseline Informational message (p < .05). The Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation effect for each type of private gatherings is also statistically larger than the effect of the Baseline Informational message (p < .03 and .05, respectively).

In Experiment 2 we find that the Baseline Informational message, the Other-regarding Linear Cooperation message, and the Reframing Bravery message outperform the placebo control message on the primary outcome scales, with the exception of the FOOD scale. Moreover, this experiment replicates the finding from Experiment 1 that respondents who are high in liberty values are more responsiveness to the Reframing Bravery message.

General discussion

The results presented here show that public health messaging can increase behavioral intentions and beliefs about social distancing that helps reduce the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, we observed that an Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message that 1) focused people on protecting others, 2) increased the salience of risk presented by COVID-19, 3) emphasized that other people were social distancing, and 4) stated that every person who practices social distancing protects others was effective at increasing attitudes and behavioral intentions related to social distancing. We also found that a Reframing Bravery message that 1) gave examples of bravery, 2) reframe not social distancing as not being brave, but being reckless, and 3) emphasized that not social distancing is not attractive and places others at risk was effective. Importantly, these messages are effective in both an initial study fielded in May 2020 and in a replication study fielded in August 2020, and this efficacy is in comparison to a Baseline Informational message communicating the factual basis for social distancing behavior and instructing others to do so. We observe these effects for measures of a respondent’s own intended social distancing activities as well as for how individuals are likely to behave toward others who do not social distance.

It is also worth noting that a simple Baseline Informational message that invoked an injunctive norm that people should be social distancing and explained what social distancing was outperformed a placebo-control condition in Experiment 2. This suggests that relatively early in the pandemic simply providing people with information and emphasizing that doing these things is the correct behavior may be enough to increase attitudes toward social distancing and behavioral intentions to do so.

Moral foundations theory, [ 61 , 63 ] which postulates that humans have several underlying common values that are differentially emphasized by various individuals, has been used to explain health behaviors such as vaccination [ 64 ]. Increasingly, opposition to public health measures is grounded in the language of personal freedoms [ 64 ] and, indeed, concerns about government infringement on personal freedoms have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 65 , 66 ]. We find that emphasis on liberty value modifies the impact of the Reframing Bravery intervention indicating that such messages are particularly powerful for those for whom personal freedoms are important.

A potential avenue future research could explore how messaging strategies interact with people’s motivation for social distancing. Past research has found that many people engage in social distancing to protect themselves and to protect others [ 26 ]. However, other work has observed that people who endorsed conspiracy theories were more concerned about themselves and were also less likely to report intentions to practice social distancing [ 67 ]. Given heterogeneity in people’s motivations to protect themselves or to protect others, some messaging strategies, like the Other-regarding, Linear Cooperation message, may have different effects depending on whether it aligns with the motivation that a given individual holds. More broadly, future work should consider how people’s concern for themselves and concern for others interact with how receptive they are to specific public health campaigns.

This work has several limitations that should be considered alongside the results. First, while we observe robust attitudinal change in response to persuasive messaging, we do not observe actual behavioral change. Given the relatively small effect sizes, approximately 0.1 standard deviation increases on the primary outcomes in Experiment 2, these treatment messages as written communication may be insufficient to push people to change their behavior. Second, we utilized compound treatments that invoked many different constructs that are thought to produce attitude and behavioral change. Future work should focus on disentangling whether specific elements of the messages are particularly effective at promoting social distancing. Third, policymakers and public health experts had repeatedly emphasized the importance of social distancing and survey respondents may have over-reported their intentions to social distance due to social desirability concerns, though past work has found that reported behavioral intentions correlate with actual behavior [ 68 ] and people’s self-reported behavior is not affected by social desirability bias [ 69 ]. Third, as the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly evolved and different behaviors, like masking or vaccination, have become more salient in public discourse, the messages that we find to be effective in summer 2020 may not be as effective as the pandemic has progressed. Finally, we only measured attitudes and behavioral intentions at a single point in time so we cannot make claims about the duration of the effects that we observe.

Our findings can inform both mass public health messaging initiatives (e.g. those deployed on social and electronic media) as well as interpersonal communication strategies such as healthcare provider-level communication and persuasion. While this work shows robust attitudinal changes in response to public health messaging, additional research is necessary to determine which specific elements of the treatments produced these changes.

Supporting information

S1 appendix. experiment 1 outcomes..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s001

S2 Appendix. Regression results for Fig 1 and distribution of outcomes for Experiment 1.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s002

S3 Appendix. Subgroup analyses for Experiment 1.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s003

S4 Appendix. Experiment 2 outcome measures.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s004

S5 Appendix. Regression results for Figs 2 and 3 and distribution of outcomes for Experiment 2.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s005

S6 Appendix. Liberty endorsement subgroup analysis for Experiment 2.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264782.s006

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The Science of Persuasion Offers Lessons for COVID-19 Prevention

Hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing—experts agree these protective behaviors are key to stemming coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). But how should leaders encourage their uptake?

Look to the science of persuasion, says communications professor Dominique Brossard, PhD. Brossard is part of a new National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine group called the Societal Experts Action Network, or SEAN, whose recent report lays out research-based strategies to encourage COVID-19–mitigating behaviors.

Brossard says the changes must feel easy to do—and to repeat, which helps to form habits. Past public health campaigns also suggest it’s wise to know and understand one’s target audience, and to tailor messages and messengers accordingly.

“It’s difficult to change people’s behavior at the massive level,” Brossard, chair of the life sciences communications department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a recent interview with JAMA. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

JAMA: You and your coauthors write that simply explaining the science of COVID-19 and its risks will rarely translate to a change in attitudes and behaviors, even if people understand and accept the facts. Why isn’t it enough to explain the science if you want to change health behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Because human beings rely more on the psychological dimensions of the risk than the quantitative aspect of the risk. If experts measure risk in numbers, such as the probability of getting harmed by something, human beings in general—you and me included—look at what we call the qualitative aspect of that risk: the potential magnitude of the effect, the potential dread, how much it may impact people [close] to us, and so on. So, psychological dimensions.

JAMA: How does that translate to people’s unwillingness to change their attitudes and behaviors?

Dr Brossard: If we’re asked to do something new, that will impact our willingness to do it for a variety of reasons. It might be because people around us, our social network, the norms around us tell us that this is something that’s not acceptable. It might be because it’s a little inconvenient. It might be because we forget about it. At the end of the day, when we perform certain behaviors, rarely do we think about the science that tells us why we shouldn’t do it and why this might be dangerous. We do it because, as social animals, we pay attention to cues that our minds tell us to pay attention to and our community and people around us tell us to pay attention to. Therefore, our behavior is really based on the psychological components rather than more quantifiable aspects.

JAMA: Your report recommends 5 habit-promoting strategies: make the behavior easy to start and repeat; make the behavior rewarding to repeat; tie the behavior to an existing habit; alert people to behaviors that conflict with existing habits and provide alternative behaviors; and provide specific descriptions of desired behaviors. How can these strategies be applied today?

Dr Brossard: People are more likely to act in healthy ways when it’s easy for them to perform that behavior. So let’s think in terms of hand washing, for example. It will be very important to have hand washing stations and hand sanitizer easily accessible to people. Making the behavior very easy to start and to repeat is very important. If you put a mask next to your front door, and it’s easy to grab when you go out the door, that’s going to be easy to implement and you may be more likely to actually do it again. If you want to encourage people to physically distance from other people around them, having signs on the floor is actually something that works. They don’t have to calculate in their mind: what does it mean to be physically distanced? How far am I from other people? They simply stand where the mark tells them. It makes the behavior easy to repeat and easy to perform.

JAMA: So you’re trying to take away any barriers to the behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The idea is if you take away as many barriers as possible, you encourage people to repeat the behavior. And then you end up creating a habit.

JAMA: In your report you mentioned that having many hand sanitizer stations sets the norm—that it’s normal to hand sanitize.

Dr Brossard: Mask wearing and physically distancing are new habits we’re creating from scratch. As social animals, that’s not something we do, in general. However, hand washing is a habit that we would have hoped the population already had. The problem is it hasn’t been really implemented. People do it very inconsistently. If you have hand sanitizers everywhere, it’s very easy. As a matter of fact, in supermarkets, when you have the hand sanitizer at the door, people line up and do it. So it’s that idea of the social norm and making it sound like, this is something you do, it’s widely available, other people do it as well, and therefore, this is socially acceptable and highly encouraged, and we should just all do it.

JAMA: The report also discusses 10 strategies for communicating risk, like using clear, consistent, and transparent messaging. It feels like that’s the opposite of what we’ve had. What’s your take on the federal government’s messaging around COVID-19 mitigation?

Dr Brossard: I think that in this case what’s really crucial is the messaging at the local level. At the state level vs county level vs town level, having a consistent strategy, consistent messages, is very important. It’s clear that for public health–related issues, really what makes a difference is the action of local leaders. It’s really the community-based action that can change people’s behavior. At the local level people trust the doctors, the public health officials.

JAMA: Masks unfortunately have become politicized. Is it too late for universal masking to be accepted or do you think minds can still be changed?

Dr Brossard: You will always have extremes on both ends. The vast majority of the population will be somewhere in between. People that are extremely set on the attitude not to wear a mask, which is, by the way, a very, very small minority, are unlikely to change their views. However, all the others can change their views. People are reasonable in the sense that they want to protect their own, they want to protect the community, they want to have the economy reopen, and so on. So I would say, yes, there’s still hope. And we see it. Every week, our group at the SEAN Network publishes a summary of all the polls that address [COVID-19–related] behaviors. We see that mask wearing is increasing. It’s not yet at the level that we would like to make sure that we are protected, but it’s indeed increasing.

JAMA: You reported that highlighting crowded beaches or people who aren’t wearing masks can be counterproductive. Why? And what’s a better approach?

Dr Brossard: They end up thinking that it’s a more prevalent behavior than it actually is. Or it may actually prompt them to think, “Oh, I wish I was on the beach.” You want to highlight good behavior and make it sound like this is socially acceptable rather than highlighting undesirable behavior and making it sound like it’s more frequent than it actually is.

JAMA: So local leaders should emphasize that mask wearing is increasing, for example?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The research on social norms is extremely, extremely important here. We tend to get cues based on the people around us. Human beings have something that we call fear of isolation. We don’t like to be the lonely person that is the only one doing a certain thing when the vast majority around us are doing another thing. So it’s very important to actually show, “Look, this is going in this direction. Political leaders from both sides of the spectrum are doing it.” To show that the desirable behavior is something that’s becoming prevalent and that this is the direction society is taking.

JAMA: One lesson in your report is that it’s important to concede uncertainty. Why should leaders say things like, “Based on what we know today…”?

Dr Brossard: This is a really key message of risk communication. If you highlight something as being certain and then the science changes and suddenly you say, “Well, wait a minute, actually this was wrong, and now it is this,” you destroy trust. Science evolves, particularly in the context of COVID-19. We are all discovering this virus. The social sciences have shown that acknowledging uncertainty will actually increase trust, much more than painting things as certain. So it’s very important to say, “Based on the science of today, this is what we should do.” It’s very important to show that it’s a work in progress.

JAMA: What about the messengers themselves? Have we tapped into social media influencers enough? And who are community influencers that have the power to change our collective behaviors?

Dr Brossard: It makes us think of the AIDS community, where the leaders of the communities were messengers in helping promote protective behaviors. Using messengers that are trusted by the target audiences and relying on social media is extremely important. And as far as influencers in the communities, this will depend from one community to the other. Let’s take Wisconsin, for example. Football is a sport that people enjoy regardless of their political ideology, age, and so on. So the [Green Bay] Packers are messengers that transcend potential barriers there. It’s important to find trusted messengers that can connect with the audience on social media but also face-to-face. That can be a trusted local business leader, for example.

JAMA: What have we learned from past public health campaigns, like antismoking and wearing seatbelts, that can be applied now?

Dr Brossard: In the ’70s, we had social marketing approaches that suggested that we needed to stop trying to educate people and actually adapt a marketing technique to social issues. The antismoking Truth campaign, as it was called, was a successful application of social marketing techniques. The idea that you need to segment your audience and tailor the message specifically to that audience is something that the Truth campaign very well illustrated. A specific audience that needed to be targeted was adolescents and teenagers, and one thing that adolescents do is rebel against authority. They don’t like people to force them to do things. So the Truth campaign tried to appeal to their drive for autonomy by showing them that the tobacco industry was taking advantage of the adolescent population. That was extremely powerful. The problem is that a mass media campaign like that can be extremely, extremely expensive. That’s why it’s very important also to rely on what we think of as organic dissemination of messaging through social media, which we couldn’t do when the Truth campaign was put together.

JAMA: How can physicians apply these strategies of persuasion with patients, in their communities, or on social networks?

Dr Brossard: We are all tempted to correct misinformation. And right now, we see it everywhere, right? However, we need to be careful because by repeating the misinformation itself, we make it more prevalent. When physicians want to communicate about COVID-19, it’s better to actually communicate the right information without repeating the misinformation itself. I think it’s very important to remember that all of us are part of the solution by making sure that those right behaviors get communicated to as many people as we can. I think physicians have a really, really big part to play in this organic dissemination.

JAMA: How will these strategies apply once we have a COVID-19 vaccine?

Dr Brossard: It goes back to that idea of targeting and audience segmentation to understand who has issues with the vaccine—in this case potentially COVID-19—and why. We actually do not know why people think the way they do. What we do know is that there’s no wrong concern. If people are concerned, they’re concerned. We need to listen and try to understand why and then address that.

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Abbasi J. The Science of Persuasion Offers Lessons for COVID-19 Prevention. JAMA. 2020;324(13):1271–1272. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.15139

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software.

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Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

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Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

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The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

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Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story.

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Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party.

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems.

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack

ITSM Manager

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An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process.

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Open access
Published: 28 October 2021

Discursive structures and power relations in Covid-19 knowledge production

Mario Bisiada ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3145-1512 1

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 8 , Article number: 248 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Cultural and media studies
Language and linguistics

This article critically examines the discourse around the Covid-19 pandemic to investigate the widespread polarisation evident in social media debates. The model of epidemic psychology holds that initial adverse reactions to a new disease spread through linguistic interaction. The main argument is that the mediation of the pandemic through social media has fomented the effects of epidemic psychology in the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing continued access to commentary and linguistic interaction. This social interaction in the absence of any knowledge on the new disease can be seen as a discourse of knowledge production, conducted largely on social media. This view, coupled with a critical approach to the power relations inherent in all processes of knowledge production, provides an approach to understanding the dynamics of polarisation, which is, arguably, issue-related and not along common ideological lines of left and right. The paper critiques two discursive structures of exclusion, the terms science and conspiracy theory , which have characterised the knowledge production discourse of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. As strategies of dialogic contraction, they are based on a hegemonic view of knowledge production and on the simplistic assumption of an emancipated position outside ideology. Such an approach, though well-intentioned, may ultimately undermine social movements of knowledge production and thus threaten the very values it aims to protect. Instead, the paper proposes a Foucauldian approach that problematises truth claims and scientificity as always ideological and that is aware of power as inherent to all knowledge production.

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Transmediatisation of the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil: The emergence of (bio-/geo-)political repertoires of (re-)interpretation

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The first truly global, digitally mediated event

The Covid-19 pandemic is the first truly global event:

Not the Black Plague, not the transatlantic slave trade nor the two World Wars, not the 9/11 terrorist attacks have affected everyone, on every continent, as instantly and intimately and acutely as the spread of coronavirus, uniting us as we fear and think and hope about the same thing. (Badhken, 2020 )

While other events of historical magnitude had a global impact, they “were not experienced by the entire world at the same time” (Milanović, 2020 )—though this experience takes a different form for each of us, in terms of both our personal reaction and that of the country we live in. What unites these personal experiences is that they have been largely digital because, apart from being the first truly global event, it is also “the first epidemic in history in which people around the world have been collectively expressing their thoughts and concerns on social media” (Aiello et al., 2021 , p. 1). So our first global event is also the one “where we never met face-to-face in real-time with other people who lived through it” (Milanović, 2020 ).

Social media turned into the prime channel of the public sphere in quarantined societies, and a rigid and noxious polarisation evidently dominates the discourse (European Court of Human Rights, 2021 ; Yang, 2021 ). The question of why a crisis that should unite us in our communal struggle against a virus has produced such a divided society has put the spotlight on social media, which are still commonly assumed to be geared to create polarisation. The banning of @realdonaldtrump from Twitter may be read by future media scholars as to the beginning of an era of control of social media, as the end of Silicon Valley companies’ innocence as mediators of discourse. Since the global communities’ engagement in a fight against information disorder may produce other bans and regulations of free speech on public networks, the discussion of the role of social media as a public sphere will take important turns in the coming years.

In Rosenberg’s ( 1989 , p. 2) terms, as particular societies construct their characteristic responses following dramaturgic forms, epidemics are extraordinary opportunities to gain an “understanding of the relationship among ideology, social structure, and the construction of particular selves”. To understand “our contemporary reaction to a traditional stimulus”, we must distinguish between what is unique and what seems to be universal to pandemic responses (Rosenberg, 1989 , p. 2). This article tries to take the first step towards this goal through a critical approach to the discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic. An aspect unique to this pandemic is that it has been mediated primarily by social media. How this has shaped the response will be subject to extensive study in years to come, and the large amount of language data this has produced will be of great interest to social media discourse analysts. I propose that the mediating role of social media has provided the opportunity to approach the pandemic through the mode of knowledge production practice that is already exhibited by social movements. Contests over this knowledge production, however, led to a polarisation that cannot be explained comprehensively by common partisan affiliations but that should be understood to be interpretative, that is, predominantly issue-related. I argue that this polarisation has caused, and is caused by, among other things, discursive structures of exclusion, specifically through the hegemonic use of terms such as conspiracy theories and science . The following section will begin this argument by introducing the model of epidemic psychology that I adopt to understand our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Epidemic psychology and the virtual public sphere

Strong ( 1990 ) proposes the “epidemic psychology” model to describe the early reaction to new fatal diseases. He comments on the “striking problems that large, fatal epidemics seem to present to social order; on the waves of fear, panic, stigma, moralising, and calls to action that seem to characterise the immediate reaction” and the “extraordinary emotional maelstrom which seems, at least for a time, to be beyond anyone’s immediate control” (Strong, 1990 , p. 249), descriptions that fit our experience in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic quite well. Strong sees the capacity of language to enable coordinated action among large groups of people, our “shared intentionality” (Tomasello, 2008 , p. 343), as the key factor in epidemic psychology, making human societies “complex and, though elaborately organised, still potentially subject to fundamental change, simultaneously massively ordered and extraordinarily fragile” (Strong, 1990 , p. 256).

Most social action is based on routine: Strong ( 1990 , p. 257) cites Alfred Schütz’s idea that everyday life is “a matter neither of rationality nor irrationality, but of routine”. Similarly, Berger and Luckmann ( 1966 , p. 172) have argued that “the most important vehicle of reality-maintenance is casual conversation”, which “can afford to be casual precisely because it refers to the routines of a taken-for-granted world. The loss of casualness signals a break in the routines and, at least potentially, a threat to the taken-for-granted reality” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 , p. 172). Such a threat to routine can lead to “epidemic psychology in which contagious waves of panic rip unpredictably through both individuals and the body politic, disrupting all manner of everyday practices, undermining faith in conventional authority” (Strong, 1990 , p. 257). In sum,

the human origin of epidemic psychology lies not so much in our unruly passions as in the threat of epidemic disease to our everyday assumptions, in the potential fragility of human social structure and interaction, and in the huge diversity and elaboration of human thought, morality and technology; based as all of these are upon words rather than genes. (Strong, 1990 , p. 258).

With language at the heart of epidemic psychology, the threshold at which epidemic psychology sets in may be lower in the digital age due to greater connectedness and thus exposure to language and conversation. The study of language use on social media is thus fundamental to understanding the social processes and transformations that will result from the Covid-19 pandemic. The Internet and social media are by now fundamentally important for all types of linguistic acts including casual conversation and coordinated social action. We produce and receive more language on a daily basis than ever (McCullock, 2019 , p. 2). In Foucauldian terms, social media provides the environment of commentary that keep alive a large amount of discourses which would otherwise disappear (Foucault, 1981 , pp. 56–57), thus creating the impression that particular knowledges are established. If we consider social media “important engines of context collapse, rather than enablers of ideological segregation” (Bruns, 2019 , p. 99), it should come as no surprise that the symptoms of epidemic psychology described by Strong ( 1990 ) set in so quickly and transversally in our societies (see, e.g. Esses and Hamilton, 2021 ; Aiello et al., 2021 ).

Social media use has increased vastly during the Covid-19 pandemic (Nguyen et al., 2020 ), and it is the connectedness through social media that makes this pandemic unlike any other (Aiello et al., 2021 ; Madrigal, 2020 ; Tsao et al., 2021 ). The possibility to experience it in a socially distanced way is afforded to us only by our digitalised world. As Harari ( 2021 ) observes, “[i]n 1918, […] if you ordered the entire population of a country to stay at home for several weeks, it would have resulted in economic ruin, social breakdown and mass starvation. In contrast, in 2020, […] automation and the Internet made extended lockdowns viable, at least in developed countries”. How viable they are in terms of long-term effects remains to be seen, and, as Harari ( 2021 ) rightfully notes, even this digital world could not function without “the crucial role that many low-paid professions play in maintaining human civilisation: nurses, sanitation workers, truck drivers, cashiers, delivery people”. Given this fundamental importance of digital access, the #StayHome narratives of lockdown life have been particularly developed-world, digitalised, middle class, childless narratives. But the key point is that “after 2020, we know that life can go on even when an entire country is in physical lockdown” (Harari, 2021 ).

How will this new importance of social media affect society? Whether virtual public spaces also constitute a virtual public sphere has long been discussed (for an overview, see Bruns and Highfield, 2016 ). While using social media empowers users by broadcasting their opinions more widely, “the same anonymity and absence of face-to-face interaction that expands our freedom of expression online keeps us from assessing the impact and social value of our words” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 16). In fact, this sense of empowerment may misrepresent the true impact of our opinions (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 17) and also of those held by others: Because a few vocal users can create a lot of activity, browsing social media may give us a distorted view of society, making it appear more polarised than it actually is.

A case in point is the (now deleted) Twitter thread that made Eric Feigl-Ding famous: He summarised a paper about the new coronavirus with the words “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD—the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!!” and called this infectiousness “thermonuclear pandemic level bad” (24 January 2020). In a response thread on Twitter, science writer Ferris Jabr shows that Feigl-Ding’s thread “missed essential context and contains numerous errors” and argues that his “claim that ‘we are now faced with the most virulent virus epidemic the world has ever seen’ and that the new coronavirus is 8x as infectious as SARS is completely untrue” ( https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1220963553911271424 ). Feigl-Ding’s viral thread thus

exemplified a deep problem on Twitter: The most extreme statements can be far more amplified than more measured messages. In the information sphere, while public-health researchers are doing their best to distribute scientific evidence, viral Twitter threads, context-free videos, and even conspiracy theories are reaching far more people. (Madrigal, 2020 )

Some argue, however, that it’s exactly this recognition of constant evolution that should inform modern science, that Feigl-Ding has just understood how social media work and “committed the unpardonable sin of failing to act on Twitter like enough of a scientist—you know, terrified of getting something wrong, because science never does ” (Science+Story, 2020 ). As social media come under increasing pressure through debates over misinformation, one task the pandemic sets us is to work towards a virtual public sphere that goes beyond the imagined communities (Anderson, 1983 ) or virtual spheres “consist[ing] of several spheres of counterpublics that have been excluded from mainstream political discourse, yet employ virtual communication to restructure the mainstream that ousted them” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 21).

Most theorisations on the virtual public sphere consider it in conjunction with the non-virtual sphere. The new situation we face now is the temporary quasi-disappearance of physical interactions. As I have argued in this section, while epidemic psychology had been constrained in previous pandemics by the sheer absence of contact, it is now able to continue unchecked, simply because a lockdown no longer keeps us from conversing with the world. The public sphere has been forcibly moved into the virtual space, for a short yet decisive amount of time: Public shaming of “irresponsible” people, insults (“Covidiot”), dubious model predictions and all the other effects of epidemic psychology could be observed. This, as I argue in the following section, has made the Covid-19 pandemic a phenomenon of communal knowledge production practice.

The Covid-19 pandemic as process of knowledge production

The Covid-19 pandemic is a unique phenomenon of knowledge production practice in the history of humanity because the phenomena of epidemic psychology described by Strong ( 1990 ) are for the first time mediated by a global network, that is, social media. The knowledge production in the Covid-19 pandemic resembles, in an accelerated form, that of climate change. Our first global event also gave us the opportunity to learn together, in real time, across the globe. Social media turn not only politics from a closed space into “a conversation that can be joined by outsiders” (Ausserhofer and Maireder, 2013 , p. 306), but also science, by way of knowledge production practices. There has long been a discussion in the philosophy of science on how knowledge gets subsumed into “scientism”, defined as “the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science” (Habermas, 1972 , p. 4). The Covid-19 pandemic has placed science along with its hegemonies in the spotlight of society, and it is thus informative to reflect on the relation between science and knowledge.

As a response to public fear, the Covid-19 pandemic has followed the model of epidemic psychology in generating an “exceptionally volatile intellectual state” (Strong, 1990 , p. 254), as little is known about the new disease (Davey Smith et al., 2020 ) and there was uncertainty about whether “a new disease or a new outbreak is trivial or whether it is really something enormously important”, leading to “collective disorientation” (Strong, 1990 , p. 254). This volatile intellectual state and disorientation have created discourses of knowledge production (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008 ; Della Porta and Pavan, 2017 ; Pavan and Felicetti, 2019 ), defined as “practices through which local and highly personal experiences, rationalities, and competences get connected and coordinated within shared cognitive systems which, in turn, provide movements and their supporters with a common orientation for making claims and acting collectively” (Pavan and Felicetti, 2019 , p. 3).

Such practices create what Foucault ( 1980 ) calls local, subjugated knowledges, defined as an “autonomous, non-centralised kind of theoretical production, one that is to say whose validity is not dependent on the approval of the established regimes of thought” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 81). While such theoretical production consists of “local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges”, it does not constitute a right to ignorance or non-knowledge: it is opposed “not to the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organised scientific discourse” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 84). More recently, Fischer ( 2000 ) has shown how local contextual knowledge by citizens can help solve complex social and environmental problems. One example of these from the current pandemic are mutual aid groups (Engler, 2020 ; Mahanty and Phillipps, 2020 ; Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar, 2020 ). However, the often centralising, heavy-handed or even authoritarian responses of governments, coupled with blanket policies that reflected little trust in the intelligence or autonomy of its citizens, hindered such knowledge production movements. Citizens were delegated to a passive role while a selected group of experts led the response, which mirrors the dynamics experienced by environmental movements (Fischer, 2000 , pp. 92–93).

A ready response to this volatile intellectual state tends to be that educated citizens should trust in science and condemn those who believe conspiracy theories, who spread fake news, who usher in an era of post-truth. Such a response, however, is often undergirded by a simplistic understanding of ideology, by the idea that we can and must somehow combat ideology and promote scientific truth through critical scrutiny of language and discourse in the media. Foucault criticised the usefulness of the notion of ideology for the fact that it “always stands in virtual opposition to something else which is supposed to count as truth” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 180). Rather than exploring a knowable reality, scientific enquiry has been described as constructive practice, that is, “oriented toward ‘making things work’ successfully and embedded in a reality which is highly artificial and essentially self-created” (Knorr-Cetina, 1977 , p. 670). In other words, assuming some kind of “false consciousness” within ideology presupposes the existence of a “consciousness which is not false (the position of critique)” (Mills, 2004 , p. 29), but such a position does not exist: “All knowledge is determined by a combination of social, institutional and discursive pressures” (Mills, 2004 , p. 30).

The dominating theoretical approaches to critical discourse studies hold that, through an awareness of linguistic/ideological oppression based on neo-Marxist or rationalist analysis, people are empowered to bring about social change and thus achieve emancipation (Hart and Cap, 2014 , p. 2). While this is a useful approach to studying language and social change, Pennycook ( 2001 , pp. 36–41) criticises such “emancipatory modernist” approaches as potentially patronising and argues that they lack the means to respond to the awareness of ideological oppression. Emancipatory modernist approaches to discourse are often grounded in a simplistic view of ideology juxtaposed with some “knowable reality” and hold the problematic notion that “scientific knowledge of reality can help us escape from the falsity of ideology” (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 41), a rationale that is itself often used by populist agitators (Bruns, 2019 , p. 114). Messianic attempts to help people see the light often fail, overlooking that many discourse practices aim to “explore others’ reaction to one’s identity and have it confirmed in interactions, including hostile reactions that confirm one’s status as a critical outsider” (Krämer, 2017 , p. 1302), thus cementing the very status one seeks to challenge into an emancipated position of its own. When studying epidemic psychology and the uncertain intellectual state it produces, it is thus more important than ever to remember that all language is political (Gee, 2011 , p. 10), all knowledge production is ideological and there is no truth or knowledge outside ideology (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 89).

As is the case with climate action, science’s indeterminacy, its raising more questions than it could answer, has led to its politicisation (Fischer, 2000 , p. 95). My argument in this section has been that, in the volatile intellectual state the Covid-19 pandemic has caused, the hegemonies of knowledge production, while always existing below the surface, have been made exceptionally visible. The restlessness of hypermediativity, fuelled by a constant generation and availability of data, allowed everyone to conduct “fact-based” statistical analyses and share them, around the clock. The fast exchange through social media and the way it empowers users to broadcast opinions and knowledge to wide audiences have caused a politicisation and polarisation of scientific debates (Clarke, 2020 ; Bhopal and Munro, 2021 ). In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic as a process of knowledge production, it is necessary to differentiate the concept of polarisation a bit further, as I will do in the next section.

Interpretative polarisation

In this paper, I understand polarisation as a dynamic phenomenon, driven by “interpretative” polarisation, “the process wherein different groups in a society contextualise a common topic in starkly different ways” so that “frames used by one camp are deemed unfounded, inappropriate, or illegitimate by other camps” (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 , p. 2). Social media are so rooted in our daily lives that they receive attention from a range of disciplines, and many commentators still purport that social media “foster extreme viewpoints by design” (Bhopal and Munro, 2021 ) and are thus inherently geared to produce polarisation.

A range of evidence argues against this deterministic view, however. In a review of a range of studies, Tucker et al. ( 2018 , pp. 15–16) argue that “[t]he consumption of political information through social media increases cross-cutting exposure, which has a range of positive effects on civic engagement, political moderation, and the quality of democratic politics, but also facilitates the spread of misinformation”. Bruns ( 2019 ) has cast doubt on Pariser’s ( 2011 ) concept of the “filter bubble”, and the popular idea that social bots on Twitter “pretend to be a human user and [are] operated by some sinister actor to manipulate public opinion” seems unfounded according to recent research (Gallwitz and Kreil, 2021 ). Frequent use of ever more available social media diversifies individuals’ networks, which may alleviate concerns about echo chambers on social media (Lee et al., 2014 ), though may not necessarily “create more informed citizens” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 15), or a public sphere as such: While social media use “may reduce ideological polarisation as a result of leading to higher cross-cutting exposure, it may simultaneously increase affective polarisation because of the negative nature of these interactions” (Tucker et al., 2018 , p. 21), of which the Covid-19 pandemic has provided many.

In the absence of knowledge on the disease, the reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic subverted the established ideological standpoints. The range of ideological persuasions observed at anti-lockdown protests and the fact that liberal thinkers argue for closed borders while conservative thinkers question night-time curfews and police presence shows that the conflict cannot be thought along the usual partisan lines. Research on polarisation has argued for the recognition of various dimensions of opinion polarisation: Where new issues arise, people are prepared to deviate from their regular partisan or ideological direction (Wojcieszak and Rojas, 2011 ). Studies suggest that partisan/ideological affiliation is not as directly influenced by knowledge as issue-related opinions:

[K]nowledge is found to predict the variance of two issue-related measures of polarisation, whereas there is no such association between knowledge and partisan/ideological polarisation. This is consistent with previous research that the more knowledgeable are likely to move to more extreme issue positions by counter arguing claims incompatible with their political predisposition. (Lee et al., 2014 , pp. 716–717)

People evaluate objects that they encounter frequently along different lines to rare but impactful objects: differing findings for party/ideology and issue-related polarisation suggest that the underlying mechanism of partisan and ideological polarisation is distinct from that of issue-related processes (Tucker et al., 2018 , pp. 40–48). This recognition shows that studies or surveys linking attitudes towards the Covid-19 pandemic to partisan affiliations are not entirely informative.

In a study of how citizens evaluate arguments about contested issues, Taber and Lodge ( 2006 ) find that prior attitudes decisively guide how new information is processed:

Far from the rational calculator portrayed in enlightenment prose and spatial equations, homo politicus would seem to be a creature of simple likes and prejudices that are quite resistant to change. […] Skepticism is valuable and attitudes should have inertia. But skepticism becomes bias when it becomes unreasonably resistant to change and especially when it leads one to avoid information as with the confirmation bias. (Taber and Lodge, 2006 , pp. 767–768)

The “boundary line between rational skepticism and irrational bias” (Taber and Lodge, 2006 , p. 768) is a key issue in discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic, and one that can perhaps not be established in a normative way.

To address the question of why a newly arisen issue that could not be addressed by existing political schemes has polarised society so quickly, we may argue, then, that different contextualisations of the same issue have produced different evaluations in people (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 ). While people can generally process multiple frames and evaluate different angles, this ability may be hampered where “competing groups rely exclusively on contrasting frames and reject (or are unaware of) those frames underlying divergent preferences”, which may lead to “contrasting interpretations that sustain irreconcilable positions”. It is this configuration that, I argue, leads to interpretative polarisation, which may make “meaningful conversation between groups almost impossible” (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 , p. 2) and reinforce political polarisation.

Examples of such contrasting interpretations abound. The term lockdown has had differing definitions in each country, which led to shadings such as hard/soft lockdown . The term new normal was perhaps meant to anchor hygiene measures in people’s thoughts, but is seen by many as an attempt to normalise draconian restrictions and situations that are clearly anything but normal. The dichotomy of health vs economy is another example of how the same issue can be presented in different lights, depending on the angle one takes.

Interpretative polarisation can explain why partisan analysis does not apply to the Covid-19 pandemic as an extraordinary phenomenon whose epidemic psychology, as I have argued so far, made necessary new reflections, a process of knowledge production. The Covid-19 pandemic challenges existing ideological boundaries, so an analysis of its discourse requires an approach that goes beyond seeing ideology as a given structural object and instead analyses hegemonies and power struggles inherent in all discourses of knowledge production.

Discursive structures of exclusion

Exclusion through dialogic contraction.

An oft-repeated charge in debates on the Covid-19 pandemic is that particular voices or opinions have been ignored or excluded from the debate, that particular things cannot be said. This is then countered by the reminder that there is free speech, that anyone can publish anything after all. Both positions forget that discourses are generally considered to be “principally organised around practices of exclusion” (Mills, 2004 , p. 11): Any notion of what seems natural to say or what seems unsayable is the result of such exclusion practices, of “battles ‘for truth’” where, in the words of Foucault, “by truth I do not mean ‘the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted’, but rather ‘the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true’” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 132).

Foucault ( 1981 , pp. 52–54) proposes three procedures of exclusion: prohibition, the division of reason/madness and the opposition between true/false (the “will to truth”). The argument that nobody is excluded because everyone is free to publish anything misunderstands practices of discursive exclusion by reducing them to the first of those principles (prohibition) while ignoring the existence of the other two. Based on Bakhtin’s concept of “centripetal-centrifugal struggle”, Baxter ( 2011 ) argues that, as it is “difficult to presume that all discourses are equal in the play for meaning, […] competing discourses are not equally legitimated. Some are centred (the centripetal) and others are marginalised (centrifugal). In the instance of monologue, all but a single totalising discourse is erased” (Baxter, 2011 , p. 14). Thus, the struggles of exclusion are regular phenomena of hegemony in discourse, made visible through the extraordinary process of knowledge generation. The fact that free speech is constrained and certain things become dominant in discourses while others become unsayable is a product of competing power relations in a discourse (see Mills, 2004 , p. 64). These power relations, as usual in Foucauldian thought, are not inherently negative or positive, but potentially dangerous if not questioned, which is the aim of this section.

In what follows, I investigate two discursive structures of exclusion via dialogic contraction that originate in the emancipatory modernist approach to ideology in discourse identified above: First, the reference to an abstract authority ( the science ) and second, accusations of conspiracy theories . I understand dialogic contraction with reference to Bakhtinian dialogism (for an introduction, see Robinson, 2011 ) as used in various theories of discourse analysis such as Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005 ) and Relational Dialectics Theory. In the latter, discourses (defined roughly as systems of meaning or “voices”) compete in discursive struggle, on a cline between monologic and idealised dialogic (Baxter, 2011 ). While in idealised dialogism all discourses are given equal weight, monologism consists of “a discursive playing field so unequal that all but one monologic, authoritative discourse is silenced” (Baxter, 2011 , p. 9). This model is useful for analysing the discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic because it reflects the accusation that the public debate has increasingly become monologic, with the authoritative discourse of the respective political leaders and their close circles of experts in the dominant position.

One of the first demands on social media at the beginning of the pandemic was that people should be quiet and “let experts talk”. These calls were meant to reduce noise in the discourse, a defence mechanism to the heated reactions in the networks, in line with early reactions of epidemic psychology. They were initial reactionary attempts to exclude voices from commenting on what was from the beginning a complex social crisis that concerns everyone. Attempts to restrict the discourse to “experts” only later crystallised into the two frequent formulas that we should follow the science and that we must combat conspiracy theories .

This simplistic binary choice juxtaposing the science/experts/evidence with conspiracy theories/fake news is at the heart of the dialogic contraction in the Covid-19 pandemic. It makes it seem as though the only available positions are either to believe Covid-19 to be a global threat that eclipses all other threats or to deny its existence altogether, thus mirroring labellings used in the climate debate, which “isolate, exclude, ignore, and dismiss claim-makers of all types from constructive dialogue” (Howarth and Sharman, 2015 , p. 239).

These strategies of dialogic contraction work by appealing to taken-for-granted truths (science is good, populism is bad) and to an imagined neutral position outside ideology, power and discourse. This position is workable in routine debates, where challenges are either confined to academic circles or addressed by societies’ “general politics of truth” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 131). In an epistemologically disruptive event such as the Covid-19 pandemic, however, as I argue in this article, the role of science in the public enters the spotlight, epistemic psychology challenges our established routines, and discursive structures of dialogic contraction towards a monologic extreme rapidly translate into social polarisation.

Critical approaches to discourse that are conscious of and able to consider power relations as they emerge from discursive practice thus seem better suited to study our present situation. To study language with the aim of explaining power rather than just reveal it, we must show how power operates in discourses rather than how it is held by particular, pre-categorised actors or institutions (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 93). As Katsambekis and Stavrakakis ( 2020 ) argue:

In many cases, understanding the policies of certain actors through the lens of ‘populism’ […] and the vague notion of a ‘populist threat to democracy’, often adopted in typical anti-populist discourses, seems to be diverting attention from other imminent dangers to democracy, most importantly: nativism, nationalism, authoritarianism, racism. (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis, 2020 , p. 7)

Having established discursive structures of exclusion as inherent to all discourse, I now discuss two strategies of dialogic contraction that I consider to be fundamental to the polarisation that we have seen in this pandemic and that let us answer why a global health crisis and the knowledge production that ensued, where we are all on the same side, has become such a polarising topic.

The science as legitimating authority

A central claim made by most leaders throughout the Covid-19 pandemic has been that they “follow the science” (Pérez-González, 2020b ; Stevens, 2020 ; Pierce, 2021 ). In his first prime-time address to the nation on 11 March, Joe Biden said, “we know what we need to do to beat this virus. Tell the truth. Follow the scientists and the science”. What is unclear about such statements is what exactly “the science” refers to. Sweden, under Anders Tegnell’s advice, also “follows the science”, and the rate of agreement of the Swedish scientific community, when asked whether scientific advice had been taken into account, does not differ from that reported for other countries (Rijs and Fenter, 2020 ). Yet the Swedish approach, generally described as at best “unorthodox”, differs radically to that of many other countries, and mentioning “Sweden” in a current social network discussion is a safe way of being delegitimised as a reasonable discourse actor (Torjesen, 2021 ).

This suggests that the reductive notion of the science , like the similar formula the evidence (see Furedi, 2020 ), is defined based on particular principles of authority, established, though not overtly specified, by dominant discourse actors. It disclaims the multivoicedness, interdisciplinarity and plurality of processes of knowledge production (Knorr-Cetina, 1999 ) and serves as a discursive strategy of dialogic contraction, an expression of discursive hegemony: “The debate becomes polarised and binary: if the science says yes to face coverings, then challenging the orthodoxy or even questioning its universality becomes heretical” (Martin et al., 2020 , p. 506).

Taylor ( 2010 ) conducts a corpus-assisted study of the use of the term the science in UK press articles between 1993 and 2008. Referring to Aristotle’s model of rhetoric and argumentation, she argues that science , instead of being used as part of logos, providing logical proof, “is increasingly used as a part of ethos, that is, persuasion at the interpersonal level”, projecting a particular stance towards the audience and appealing to an unspecified or unexplained authority, “making the writer’s personal character appear more credible by enroling ‘science’ on their side of an argument” (Taylor, 2010 , p. 222). This is especially the case where authors “refer to some unspecified, autonomous, authoritative entity” such as the science (Taylor, 2010 , p. 236). These findings are echoed by Pérez-González’s ( 2020a , p. 13) study of a corpus of a wide range of climate change blogs, where bloggers attempt to construct authoritative voices of consensus by using the the science formula.

While scientific discourse in general is rarely characterised by consensus, it is much less so in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. A review of studies shows that a lot of research on the issue has been biased or of low quality (Raynaud et al., 2021 ). Critiques of bias in the acceptation and rejection of evidence have long existed (Stevens, 2007 ) and are echoed in a cross-country report on populism in the Covid-19 pandemic:

“Experts” are not neutral actors that will save liberal democracy from “bad populists”. […] [T]he pandemic has rather revealed the deeply political character of scientific input in critical junctures as well as the very political agency of experts themselves. […] It becomes apparent then that exactly as populists do not form a coherent bloc in the pandemic, experts too cannot be treated as a unified front, thus the dichotomy “ experts vs populists” is exposed as fundamentally flawed once more in the context of the ongoing crisis. (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis, 2020 , pp. 7–8)

Many righteous approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic, but also to the climate emergency, succeed in identifying ideologically motivated harmful practices, but succumb to the emancipatory modernist lack of self-reflexivity on whether its messages, which are meant to convince the targeted audience, do not just patronise it, as discussed above. Populists will respond to this not by accepting that they are wrong, but by rejecting the entire frame of knowledge: “We’ll probably also start to hear calls for climate lockdowns. I know, right now that sounds completely preposterous, but don’t these kooky ideas always find a way to bleed into the mainstream? […] Don’t worry though, they’re just following the science ” (Miller, 2021 ).

It is understandable to want to reinforce a society that bases its actions on informed opinion, especially in the age of Trumpism. However, it is the very reductionism of an approach that makes an unspecified truth-claim to the science and disqualifies everything else as unreasonable that allows populist actors like Trump to gain power by turning the same simple strategy on its head. The postmodernist challenges of a simplified, messianic notion of the science remain valid. The formula represents a simplistic and hegemonic view of what “science” is and threatens to turn it into a buzzword of discursive exclusion and disciplining, undermining equal engagement in knowledge production.

Conspiracy theory as a sanctioning device

The second structure of exclusion I discuss is the term conspiracy theory . Husting and Orr ( 2007 ) critique this term as a metadiscursive “vocabulary of motive in struggles over the meaning of social and political worlds, events, and ideas” ( 2007 , p. 132). In simple terms, its use signifies a discursive move of “going meta”, that is, “elect[ing] to step back from the immediacy of a question to question the questioner’s motives, or tone, or premises, or right to ask certain questions, or right to ask any questions at all” (Simons, 1994 , p. 470). Invoking the label conspiracy theory thus has the function of “shifting the focus of discourse to reframe another’s claims as unwarranted or unworthy of full consideration” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 129). While research has put into question whether applying the label has any negative effect on the targeted actor’s beliefs (Wood, 2016 ), the accusation of conspiracy theory seeks to discursively expel actors from the community of reasonable interlocutors, thus “protecting certain decisions and people from question in arenas of political, cultural, and scholarly knowledge construction” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 130) by reverting the focus of attention onto the questioner.

This discursive structure is often used in “cultures of fear” that “generate new mechanisms of social control” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 128). Considering that many European countries are still in constant alert mode from terrorism, the description of such a culture fits the past year quite well:

fear and threat become the means for media, politicians, and corporations to sell commodities, buy votes, and justify policies reducing civil rights and promoting war (Altheide, 2000 ). As a mythos of consensus has turned into a mythos of fear, we would expect to find new interactional mechanisms to shield authority and legitimacy from challenge or accountability. (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 130)

More recently, Husting ( 2018 ) identifies two problems with current academic and journalist discourse around conspiracy. First, a cognitive approach, which “attempts to diagnose traits like character and intelligence, intent on identifying hidden, usually individualised causes of constructing, believing in, and circulating conspiracy theories” (Husting, 2018 , p. 111). By psychologising the subjects of its analysis in this way, “it misses the political work done by the labels themselves” and overstates their coherence to argue for their danger to society (Husting, 2018 , p. 112). Husting argues that this cognitive analysis expresses a neoliberal responsibilisation of the individual in various ways to “follow expert advice to optimise well-being and health of body, mind, and polis” (Husting, 2018 , p. 113). As citizens, we “regulate ourselves by regulating, judging, and contemning others, and keeping our own thoughts and styles of reason and emotion clear” (Husting, 2018 , p. 123). The disputes over truth, falsity and conspiracy theories thus “serve to construct, circulate, and enact a ‘well-tempered’ citizen in liberal politics” (Husting, 2018 , p. 113).

The second problem Husting ( 2018 ) identifies with current conspiracy theory discourse is its affective register. According to dominant analyses, conspiracy theorists “step out of the sphere of reason and logic, and enter the terrain of the emotional and the psychotic” (Husting, 2018 , p. 117). Yet conspiracy discourse is itself “a form of emotional and political engagement driven by contempt and laced with anger and fear” by policing the boundaries of reasonable political doubt and theorising an “uncorrupted democratic sphere” (Husting, 2018 , p. 117) outside ideology. By constructing conspiracy theories as threats to the order of the state and to the uncorrupted citizen, conspiracy theory discourse falls victim to the same pseudo-messianic discursive approach it seeks to unravel.

In a study of Wikipedia edits of the article on the German word for conspiracy theory, Verschwörungstheorie , Vogel ( 2018 ) argues that the term is not used with a descriptive, analytical function, but is part of an established metadiscursive accusatory, stigmatising and disciplinary pattern to sanction views from a position or epistemology outside the collectivism and the “sayable” in the ingroup, whose validity is assumed to be taken for granted (Vogel, 2018 , p. 281). As Husting ( 2018 , p. 120) says, “[o]nce the label ‘conspiracy theory’ sticks to someone, it impugns their intellectual and moral competence and relieves hearers of the need to consider the validity of her or his claims”. The use of the term, thus, lacks a problematisation of one’s own supposed neutrality. Its use is hegemonic, not analytical.

Vogel ( 2018 ) studies Wikipedia discourse specifically, but his observations are transferable to general social media discourse. And in the pandemic knowledge production, the epistemological conditions and power relations among participants within such knowledge production movements (Esteves, 2008 ) are comparable. Due to the shift of the public sphere into the digital as discussed above, most people will have experienced debates in online worlds along with everything this entails.

In a comprehensive survey of the usage of conspiracy theory , Butter ( 2018 ) writes that, while the Internet and social media have made conspiracy theories more visible and fast-moving, they are no more frequent or influential than they used to be because they are still regarded as “stigmatised knowledge”. In the wake of the current surge of populism combined with the fragmentation of society through the Internet, Butter ( 2018 , p. 18) argues, the fragmented public sphere and the different notions of truth condition the current debate in which some are afraid again of conspiracies while others are still worried about the fatal effects of conspiracy theories. The dialogic contraction we are arguably seeing can thus be traced to a particular constellation of fears for the public sphere combined with the fear of the pandemic.

In sum, value-laden terms such as conspiracy theory are attempts to exercise discursive power over others by excluding them from being reasonable participants in the debate, both in everyday interactions by users and in official government acts. Mechanisms that define limits of the sayable “weaken public spaces that are central for interaction, contest, and deliberation: the spaces where we define our world” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 147).

In this section, I have discussed two structures of exclusion by dialogic contraction: the science and conspiracy theory . These are common terms in everyday discourse, but, as I have shown, their appropriateness for academic study and debate is questionable due to their hegemonic nature and unreflected reference to accepted and sanctioned knowledge. This is not to say, of course, that we should endorse conspiracy theories or reject science. The aim is rather to become aware of how all types of knowledge are related to power. I am not interested here in evaluating the veracity of particular discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic (cf. Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 131), or even in whether conspiracy theories are dangerous or not, but in the mechanisms whereby one discourse becomes considered dominant and thus supported by financial and social capital whereas the other becomes confined to the margins of society (Mills, 2004 , p. 17).

In this paper, I have adopted the model of epidemic psychology, which functions fundamentally through linguistic interaction, and argued that social media use has fomented its effects in the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing sustained access to commentary and linguistic interaction. I have suggested that this social interaction in a context of a volatile intellectual state can be seen as a discourse of knowledge production, conducted largely on social media. This view, along with the power relations it implies, provides an approach to understanding the dynamics of polarisation as interpretative, outside established partisan lines. To understand the polarisation better, I have discussed two discursive structures of exclusion, the terms the science and conspiracy theory , which have characterised the knowledge production discourse of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. I have argued that these are strategies of dialogic contraction which are based on a hegemonic view of knowledge and a simplistic view of ideology based in the emancipatory modernist view of language that represents the currently dominant form of discourse analysis.

With this line of argument, I have intended to make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic discourse and take a step towards understanding the polarisation in our societies. As I have argued, this polarisation is due to discourse practices and not attributable to social media technology. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to reflect on many things, not just ourselves, but also the way we study society and (means of) communication. A great amount of data is being collected (see, e.g. Chen et al., 2020 ) and many studies will investigate the role of language and social media in the social transformation we are going to see in the coming years. I hope that the literature review conducted in this article has contributed some reflections on pertinent concepts and possible methodologies, or at least heuristics, for these future studies to consider.

From the perspective of discourse studies, I have endorsed the practice of Critical Applied Linguistics (Pennycook, 2001 ), which identifies both strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to discourse and seeks to improve on them by a greater foundation in critical theory and by a series of paradigmatic characteristics to problematise practice. Arguments are to be sought in texts, not in author profiles, so constructing corpora of texts harvested in “conspiracy theory” or “anti-vaxxer” forums or that consist of “fake news” means starting from a value position, a truth claim that can only confirm ideologies we already look for, but hardly explain their working in society. As Butter and Knight ( 2016 , p. 23) argue, “the aim of producing empirical, value-neutral research on the phenomenon of ‘conspiracy theory’ is misguided, because the term itself is not value-neutral”.

Categories such as “class”, “gender”, but also “identity” are often assumed to “exist prior to language”, to be reflected in language use, when really they need to be explained themselves, with language being a part of this explanation (Cameron, 1995 , p. 15). Like other conflicts, the polarisation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has unveiled “the processes of norm-making and norm-breaking, bringing into the open the arguments that surround rules […] and how unquestioned (‘conventional’) ways of behaving are implicitly understood by social actors” (Cameron, 1995 , p. 17). It is this kind of processes that should be studied from a self-reflexive position that is aware of its own subjection to ideology and power relations.

A promising approach might be found in the Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus (Marwick et al., 2021 ), which argues, among other things, that fake news do not originate in extremism, but that “strategic disinformation and its cousin ‘propaganda’ are state and media industry practices with very long histories”, so instead of “plac[ing] the responsibility on individuals to become better consumers of media”, this approach seeks to “foreground questions of power, institutions, and economic, social, cultural, and technological structures as they shape disinformation”. Research shows that greater public awareness of how science communication works increases the acceptance of scientific findings regardless of partisan ideologies (Weisberg et al., 2021 ).

The process of knowledge production on social media I envision in this paper in many ways resembles what is taking place in climate action and environmentalism (Pérez-González, 2020a ). One might counter that the pandemic response cannot be called a social movement, but has been more of an emergency response to a problem that was always short-lived, and much more fast-paced than climate change, so is not perfectly comparable. But the knowledge production conducted on social media, and some of the movements born from this (see Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar, 2020 ), provides a blueprint for environmentalism, a social movement that could benefit from the same kind of knowledge-practice. Some see the Covid-19 pandemic as a “test run” for the climate emergency, as there is hope “that the great mobilisations of state resources currently being unspooled to address Covid-19 prove the possibility of a comparable or greater mobilisation against ecological catastrophe” (Clover, 2021 , p. S28). Nevertheless, the climate emergency has only recently been labelled thus and its perceived and mediatised urgency does not match that of Covid-19, though of course its destructive potential is far greater. The debate on science and knowledge in our societies and the ways in which these discourses are structured and mediated in social networks are thus of prime importance.

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This work is part of the project Frames and narratives of translation and of migration in Europe , funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), with grant number PID2019-107971GA-I00.

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Lessons learned: What makes vaccine messages persuasive

You’re reading Lessons Learned, which distills practical takeaways from standout campaigns and peer-reviewed research in health and science communication. Want more Lessons Learned? Subscribe to our Call to Action newsletter .

Vaccine hesitancy threatened public health’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists at the University of Maryland recently reviewed 47 randomized controlled trials to determine how COVID-19 communications persuaded—or failed to persuade—people to take the vaccine. ( Health Communication , 2023 DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2023.2218145 ).

What they learned: Simply communicating about the vaccine’s safety or efficacy persuaded people to get vaccinated. Urging people to follow the lead of others, by highlighting how many millions were already vaccinated or even trying to induce embarrassment, was also persuasive.

Why it matters: Understanding which message strategies are likely to be persuasive is crucial.

➡️ Idea worth stealing: The authors found that a message’s source didn’t significantly influence its persuasiveness. But messages were more persuasive when source and receivers shared an identity, such as political affiliation.

What to watch: How other formats, such as interactive chatbots and videos, might influence persuasiveness. And whether message tailoring could persuade specific population subgroups.

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Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions

Affiliations.

1 Yale Institute for Global Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
2 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
3 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
4 Yale Institute for Global Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Yale School of Nursing, West Haven, CT, USA.
5 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
PMID: 34774363
PMCID: PMC8531257
DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.10.039

Widespread vaccination remains the best option for controlling the spread of COVID-19 and ending the pandemic. Despite the considerable disruption the virus has caused to people's lives, many people are still hesitant to receive a vaccine. Without high rates of uptake, however, the pandemic is likely to be prolonged. Here we use two survey experiments to study how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. In the first experiment, we test a large number of treatment messages. One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the reputational costs that one might incur if one chooses not to vaccinate. Another subgroup of messages built on contemporary concerns about the pandemic, like issues of restricting personal freedom or economic security. We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators. We replicate this result on a nationally representative sample of Americans and observe that prosocial messaging is robust across subgroups, including those who are most hesitant about vaccines generally. The experiments demonstrate how persuasive messaging can induce individuals to be more likely to vaccinate and also create spillover effects to persuade others to do so as well. The first experiment in this study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov and can be found under the ID number NCT04460703 . This study was registered at Open Science Framework (OSF) at: https://osf.io/qu8nb/?view_only=82f06ecad77f4e54b02e8581a65047d7.

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Influence of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic: Moderating role of media type

Marjan basirat.

a Ph. D Student in Media Management, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Iran

Pejman Ebrahimi

b Doctoral School of Economic and Regional Sciences, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences(MATE), Gödöllő 2100, Hungary

Parisa Bouzari

c MSc Supply Chain Management , Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE), Gödöllő 2100, Hungary

Seyed Mahdi Sharifi

d Associate Professor in Media Management, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Iran

Maria Fekete-Farkas

e Institute of Economic Sciences, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE), Gödöllő 2100, Hungary

This study highlights the influence of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is believed to be the top modern societal challenge necessitating extensive collective action and collaboration. The statistical population included Iranian individuals by answering our online survey questionnaires at diverse phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. 406 completed questionnaires were gathered and analyzed. Note that, according to the official reports, Iran encountered COVID-19 disease since February 19, 2020. Data collection was started on July 18, 2020 (at the beginning of second wave of COVID-19 in Iran) and lasted until October 30, 2020. Various social network platforms including Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram were used for distribution of the questionnaires. According to the results, perceived severity and perceived self-efficacy had an insignificant direct influence on intention to stay home. From another perspective, perceived vulnerability (β = 0.261, CI = 0.059; 0.242]) and perceived response efficacy (β = 0.502, CI = 0.347; 0.656]) positively and significantly affected the intention to stay home. Moreover, no significant difference was found between these two kinds of media messages in research sample. Our findings showed that “perceived response efficacy” has the highest importance score of 0.502; if the perceived response efficacy performance is boosted by one unit point by individuals during COVID-19 pandemic, its overall intention to stay home will increase by 0.502. Besides, our results showed that lowest performance (78.104) is associated with perceived vulnerability highlighting an excellent opportunity for improvement in this area.

1. Introduction

COVID-19 is believed to be the deadliest pandemic round the world [42] . This disease is highly contagious and it is transmitted rapidly and easily through symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers [39] . The COVID-19 pandemic is believed to be the top societal challenge in recent years necessitating extensive collective action and collaboration. Undoubtedly, some actions can help restrict pathogen transmission, however, self-isolation is a significant step in this regard [26] . Until the comprehensive and common use of vaccinations, extreme behavioral change and societal coordination are believed to be the best strategies to hamper the spread of the virus. There is no doubt that the behaviors for hampering the spread of the virus are not easy to follow since they require cautious hand washing, wearing facial masks, and most importantly, complying to the extreme social distancing measures. Since, this disease is so deadly and contagious and self-isolation is considered as the most effective behavior to slow down the spread of the virus [63] on one hand, and staying home can causes financial problems for people and impact their physical and mental health [2 , 25] on the other hand, creating effective messages on the part of the public health officials for motivating behavior change is a challenge [25] . Therefore, decision makers are looking for the most effective ways to convince people to obey the rules. In addition, the general public is not usually completely aware of the direct significances of environmental hazards, thus the mass media can provide clues about such risks for individuals [11] . A Japanese study [41] focused on the impact of different kinds of persuasive messages for encouraging staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown. Other previous studies [7 , 25 , 36] as Table 1 illustrates, mostly focus on the source and characteristics of persuasive messages and identification of the best type of media to send these messages was not covered by these studies. As one of the most important challenges for decision makers is to choose the best carriers to send persuasive messages, further research is needed to identify the best type of media to improve efficiency. Accordingly, this study focuses on the role of media type in persuasive messages for encouraging individuals to stay home during this pandemic. The influence of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic and moderating the roles of media types are studied in this paper.

Previous researches related to COVID-19 and intention to stay home.

This paper is in the following structure: First, we review the literature of media messages and encouraging people to stay home in pandemic. Then we develop four hypotheses and examine whether they influence the intention to stay home. The third part explains the measures and data collection with structural equation modeling. Finally, paper discusses about results and make some suggestion for future researchers.

2. Literature review and hypotheses development

Countries, one by one, started to take containment and mitigation measures following the pandemic outbreak while information about the virus’ transmission dynamics, clinical characteristics, or effective treatments was scarce. The best strategies to control the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.-c) were handwashing, social distancing (hereinafter called physical distancing [WHO, 2020d]), and mask wearing. Studies on COVID-19 has gathered significant momentum, but, information is still rapidly developing, further complicating health communication messaging [64] . Following the worldwide reactions to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, our societies have been witnessing dramatic changes to human behavior because public officials are paying special attention to the health of their citizens and the influence on the economy with stay-at-home and social distancing instructions [35] . Since social distancing and decreasing social interactions with others are believed to save millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic [18] , public health advisors believe that managing the spread of COVID-19 is dependent on the individuals to acclimatize and modify their habits for conforming to the new social distancing measures quickly. By staying home, we mean following the rules Okuhara et al [41] suggested. Cancelling or postponing plans such as “meeting people”, “eating out” and “attending events” [41] . Due to negative consequences of social distancing measures like higher unemployment rates, less work productivity and unexpected effects on the individuals’ mental well-being, strategies to hamper the spread of COVID-19 are not parallel to daily life functioning [25] . However, new reports show that people are significantly different in terms of implementing measures for hampering the pathogen transmission [36] . Governments, public bodies, private organizations, and individuals are able to easily instruct people on the reasons for keeping the distance from others, some platforms for sharing messages are believed to be better than others [36] . Undoubtedly, media can be the source of persuasive messages to influence people's behavior. This study tries to show of “perceived severity”, “perceived vulnerability”, “perceived response” and “perceived self-efficiency” influence the intention to stay home. Table 1 is illustrated based on previous researches in the field of COVID-19.

2.1. Perceived severity and intention to stay home

Studies have confirmed the variations in the risk perceptions of COVID-19 and their association with both engagement in health-protective behaviors and poor mental health outcomes, but information on the way individuals perceive the risk of COVID-19 relative to other infectious diseases is scarce [63] . In the first study on the risk perceptions and engagement in health-protective behaviors, including staying-at-home, for the COVID-19 pandemic, 6991 adults from 10 countries across Europe, America, and Asia were investigated. The study identified the main predictors of COVID-19 risk perception including personal experience with the virus, individualistic and prosocial values, hearing about the virus from friends and family, trust in government, science, and medical professionals, personal knowledge of government strategy, and personal and collective efficacy [12] . Other studies reported that feeling personally at risk of COVID-19 infection is probably linked to a greater inclination to perform disease prevention health behaviors such as social distancing in the early stages of the pandemic [7 , 67] . The few studies focusing on individuals during the early stages of a pandemic reported linked the perceived personal risk of infection and the health effects of infection to involvement in social distancing and other health-protective behaviors [34] . Earlier investigation have shown that assessing psychological and behavioral responses in pandemic situations is significant to know how perceived risk forms involvement in health-protective behaviors, since this information could inform the content and tone of public health messaging [6] . Substantial resistance to social distancing measures has been reported in some countries, with widespread protests linked to perceptions that lockdown measures influencing civil freedoms. Following the social distancing measures is dependent on the seriousness of COVID-19 infection and differences in perceptions of individual risks of infection [63] . Stapleton [62] showed why individuals understand the instructions such as stay-at-home during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they prefer non-compliance. She argues that speakers (rule-givers) should pay attention to their credibility, authority and ability to mediate consequences, rule plausibility, setting acceptable motivative augmental control, if the behavior specified in the rule clashes with habits, and if the message provokes non-compliance [62] . The main reaction to the epidemic was stay-at-home instructions restricting social mobility as a mechanism to hamper the spread of COVID-19 infection [63] , individuals have not been assured on how the perceived severity influences the intention to stay home. For investigating the possible influence of perceived severity on intention to stay home during pandemic, this hypothesis is proposed:

H1 : Perceived severity influences the intention to stay home in COVID-19 pandemic condition.

2.2. Perceived vulnerability and intention to stay home

According to optimism bias, individuals often judges the risk of experiencing negative health conditions poorly and miscalculate their probability of infection relative to the average person [56] . According to Health Belief Model (HBM), if individuals perceive themselves as being vulnerable to a pathologic condition with possible serious consequences, then they may be motivated more to embrace pro-health mindsets and health behaviors [8] . For instance, one may assume that excluding themselves from circumstances that could increase risk of exposure, as going out, will be helpful for COVID-19 avoidance. As such, they may be motivated more to stay home. According the model, people are more likely to embrace a health behavior (i.e., stay home) if they feel they are at high risk of being infected (perceived vulnerability), the disease leads to significant health risks (perceived severity), involvement in the preventive measures is beneficial and they are exposed to persuasive cues and action [49] .

The mass media can potentially influence public rational about provocative environmental and science issues, particularly for emergent topics for which exists unsolidified public opinion accompanied by incomplete awareness or inaccurate knowledge [4] . When risk messages are presented in the form of vivid and affect-laden circumstances, the addressee tend to perceive greater personal vulnerability [59] . For investigating the possible effect of perceived vulnerability on intention to stay home during pandemic, this hypothesis is proposed.

H2 : Perceived vulnerability influences the intention to stay home in COVID-19 pandemic condition.

2.3. Perceived response efficacy and intention to stay home

As it was mentioned before, staying-at-home is the most effective reaction to hamper the spread of COVID-19 infection [63] . Studies also prove that virus transmission is decreased by implementing social distancing [1] . However, it is not easy to be separated from loved ones, to lose freedom, or to be uncertain about the status of the disease [2] . Consequently, people are entitled to be justified for conforming to the rules, including social distancing. However, it is hard to imagine that self-preservation would bring about the required behavioral changes from a societal perspective, particularly among younger adults at low risk of serious harms. On average, people were not worried much about their own health than about the influence of prolonged restrictions and, particularly, the health of family and friends [36] . In simple terms, effective messages just instruct people on preventing of infections and nothing is shared about the significance of infection avoidance in the entire society. The suggestions are not for messages only from public health authorities, but from all types of organizations and people promoting social distancing [36] . It is believed that the perceived benefits of social distancing behaviors, along with the perceived seriousness of COVID-19 to one's health positively influenced the mindset about social distancing measures. Moreover, as it was anticipated, perceived barriers to social distancing measures negatively influenced the mindset about social isolation [7] . Within media messages, affective response is significantly involved in judgment and decision making [59] and the expected benefits of a behavior is important in this process.

For investigating the possible influence of perceived response efficacy on intention to stay home during pandemic, this hypothesis is suggested.

H3 : Perceived response efficacy influences the intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic.

2.4. Perceived self-efficacy and Intention to stay home

According to Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), behavior intention is more prominent if the person's attitude toward the behavior is satisfactory, when important people in someone's life approve of that behavior, and when the person assumes he/she can perform the behavior [7] . Studies show that in coronavirus messaging, other-focused (vs. self-focused) appeals for an array of health behaviors intensifies the intentions to practice such behaviors [31] . -The reason is that other-focused (vs. self-focused) appeals function more as moral arguments. Thus, consistent with the moral matching hypothesis, message persuasiveness depends on how much the addressee saw public health as a moral issue. Specifically, the more people advocate public health, the other-focused arguments will be compelling more for them and they aim more to practice the advocated behaviors [37] .

Studies show that perceived benefits and barriers to social distancing measures, influence attitude toward social isolation [7] . Thus, affect is significantly involved in encouraging behavior and decisions. Since affect is capable of guiding risk perception and decision-making, knowing how individuals are exposed to and make sense of affective cues about the environment seems vital. As the general public is not complete aware of the direct significances of environmental threats, the mass media can provide every one with affective cues about such risks for these individuals [11] .

Luttrell & Petty recommended during a global pandemic, messages emphasizing the profits of social distancing for the health and well-being of others might be more influential than messages underlining social distancing's profits for one's own health, chiefly for people who consider public health as a relatively moral issue [37] . For testing the possible influence of self-efficacy on intention to stay home during pandemic, this hypothesis is suggested.

H4 : Perceived self-efficacy influences the intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic.

2.5. Media type

The severity of COVID-19 risk is declared in different ways. On one hand, descriptions of increases in hospitalizations and deaths enhance the COVID-19 severity perception; On the other hand, comparisons with the flu and rural states not yet experiencing COVID-19 downplays the risk [28] . During this period of time, whether the control policies are activated by governments or the implementation of these norms is voluntary, the effectiveness of containment measures depends on the people's perception of contagious risks [66] . As a result, the current COVID-19 risk perception can affect the adoption of recommended protective behaviors such as staying home.

In the time of health emergencies, receiving valid information can affect individual's behaviors. A study which examines the relationship between media usage and taking protective actions shows that higher use of media and higher rate of their trustfulness is related with a higher COVID-19 threat perception, higher response-efficacy and self-efficacy, and larger use of protective behaviors [65] . The results of researches in Hong Kong and Vietnam communities [29 , 33] also indicate associations between COVID-19 risk perception and taking protective behaviors like social distancing and usage of media.

Since understanding the role of media during the pandemic can help policymakers to develop better strategies, it is necessary to examine the possible effect of media type on practicing protective behaviors such as staying home during COVID-19 pandemic. For testing the possible influence of media type on intention to stay home during pandemic, this hypothesis is suggested.

H5: Media type can moderate the effect of perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, perceived response efficacy and perceived self-efficency on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic. The research model is shown in Fig. 1 .

Research Model.

3. Measures and data collection

All measures were modified based on preceding studies [41 , 46 , 51] . 15 items were applied on a 5-point Likert scale from “Strongly disagree = 1” to “Strongly agree = 2”, three items for each variable.

The statistical population of the study involved Iranian individuals answering online survey questionnaires in diverse phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minimum sample size is not arbitrary in the PLS-SEM technique. PLS-SEM models are run with a small sample size using bootstrapping techniques, but their outcomes and accuracy strongly depend on the sample size [10 , 21] . Consequently, according to the specifications of PLS-SEM models and using SPSS Sample Power sampling software an optimal sample size was established. This research uses the convenience sampling approach in gathering the data. While this approach is commonly used in quantitative studies to overcome bias [3 , 15] . (The Harman's single-factor has been carried out with five variables. The five factors were then loaded into a single factor. The analysis shows that the largest variance explained by the newly created factor is 41.10%, which is below the threshold value of 50% [44] .

The largest number of variables was 4 in the set multivariate regression model by considering a confidence level of 95%, a power of increment of 0.95, and an increment to R-squared of 0.05. A minimum sample size of 358 was considered based on the research model. Foe ensuring validity in sampling, and obtaining more data in the COVID-19 gloomy condition, gathering data was done uninterruptedly for obtaining more questionnaires. Finally, 406 completed questionnaires underwent analysis. Prior to proceeding to the formal data collection process, a pilot study was done for ensuring the content validity and reliability from 25 sample size. Note that, according to the official reports, Iran encountered COVID-19 disease since February 19, 2020. Data collection was started on July 18, 2020 (at the beginning of second wave of COVID-19 in Iran) and lasted until October 30, 2020. Related links were posted and shared on social networks for obtaining good feedback from respondents. Various social network platforms including Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram were used for distribution of the questionnaires. The highest feedback was received through the Instagram platform (55.5%) and Telegram groups (24.5%). Response rates were also low through Facebook (2.5%) platform. In the research sample, 28.1% and 71.9% of the respondents were males and females, in the respective order. The majority of the respondents (32%) were in the age groups of 20-29 years and 30-39 years. Moreover, 37.4% of the respondents had Associate and Bachelor's degrees. 33% of respondents had master's degree revealing high levels of education of majority of respondents. Respondents were instructed to pay attention to the real circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic impact while answering the questions with transparency and loyalty. Based on the type of media, majority of respondents (75.4%) have been influenced by online social media compared to 26.4% respondents who followed TV and Radio programs. A complete description of the respondents' demographic information is depicted in Table 2 .

Demographic attributes

For the model estimation, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was applied [21] . PLS-SEM presents satisfactory features upon dealing with complex models, non-normal data, small samples [20] . Measurement models were assessed by SmartPLS 3 (version 3.3.2) software [48] . It is possible to apply PLS-SEM to both reflective and formative measurement models [55] . Reflective measurement models were verified based on CTA analysis (p-value > 0.05) ( [13 , 19 , 20] ; Joseph F Hair Jr, Sarstedt, Ringle, & Gudergan, 2017; [30] ). Therefore, reflective measurement models were considered for the assessments. PLS-SEM offers fixed latent variable scores required for running an IPMA. The latter compares the structural model's total impact on a predictor variable with the predictors’ average latent variable scores [14 , 20 , 47] . Table 3 depicts that means and standard deviations on the five-point scale ranging from1–5, the variances in intention to stay home (M = 3.387,SD = 1.120), perceived severity (M = 3.561, SD = 0.897), perceived vulnerability(M = 3.774, SD = 1.150), perceived response efficacy (M=4.005, SD=0.911) and perceived self-efficacy (M=4.065, SD=0.814) were significant. Accordingly, participants in this sample were different substantially in terms of the extent to which they perceived the significance of stay home during COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the sample was well usable to test our hypotheses.

Measurement models, Convergent validity, and Reliability

Notes : AVE, Average of Variance Extracted; C. alpha, Cronbach's alpha; Rho_A, rho_A reliability indices for each construct; CR, Composite Reliability; VIF, Variance Inflation Factor in items level.

4.1. Evaluation of measurement models

As Table 3 depicts, all Cronbach values, CR and rho_A values were above the threshold of 0.7, showing internal consistency and reliability ( [9 , 16 , 22 , 32 , 40 , 52] ). All the outer loading values were above the 0.7 threshold [21 , 27 , 53 , 55] ). However, the AVE scores were above the cut-off point of 0.50 showing the internal consistency of the measurement model [20] . The AVE and outer loadings values also showed the measurement model's convergent validity [50] . Prior to performing the analysis, it was essential to first ensure that collinearity was not a critical problem [54] . The full VIFs are assessed (for all the items). The VIF values were below the threshold value of 5, indicating that collinearity is not a concern. Meanwhile, values less than 3 are considered ideal values ( [17 , 21] ). Table 2 depicts the result of the outer VIFs values. According to the reports by Hair et al. [23] and Henseler et al. [27] , we evaluated the discriminant validity using the correlations’ Heterotrait-Monotraitratio (HTMT) ( Table 4 ). All the HTMT ratios were below 0.85, signifying that the measurement model achieved discriminant validity.

Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT)

4.2. Structural model assessment

For obtaining better and more precise results, outlier data were tested prior to testing the hypotheses. FIMIX approach was applied for testing the unobserved heterogeneity of the statistical population and robustness check in PLS-SEM. Actually, FIMIX-PLS is chiefly valuable here by making model selection criteria helping to know how many segments to retain from the data (Joe F Hair Jr, Sarstedt, Matthews, & Ringle, 2016; [38] ). One of the best criteria for this goal is Entropy Statistic Normed (EN) and the value of EN in this research is 0.976, which is a positive and acceptable value (Joseph F Hair Jr et al., 2017; [45] ). Perceived severity had insignificantly influenced intention to stay home (β = 0.019, CI = [-0.085; 0.122]). Thus, H1 is rejected. Perceived vulnerability positively and significantly influenced intention to stay home (β = 0.261, CI = 0.059; 0.242]). Thus, H2 is supported. Perceived response efficacy positively and significantly influenced the intention to stay home (β = 0.502, CI = 0.347; 0.656]). Therefore, H3 is supported. Perceived self-efficacy insignificantly influenced the intention to stay home (β = 0.024, CI = [-0.098; 0.137]). Thus, H4 is rejected ( Table 5 , Figs. 2 and and3 3 ).

Results of research hypotheses and model fit

Note: t>1.96 at * p<0.05; t>2.58 at ⁎⁎ p<0.01; t>3.29 at ⁎⁎⁎ p<0.001; two-tailed test

Path coefficients.

T-statistics model.

For evaluating the model's in-sample fit, we calculated the R 2 . The model explained 54.1% of the variance in intention to stay home. Furthermore, the out-of-sample predictive power was determined using the PLSpredict procedure with ten folds and ten repetitions [57 , 58] . Q 2 predict value of intention to stay home was good and above zero. Therefore, the model had predictive relevance. We considered the intention to stay home as the only model's target construct. As linear model (LM) had a better root mean square error (RMSE) for all target construct's indicators in comparison with the PLS-SEM benchmark ( Table 6 ), the model had high predictive power. Furthermore, NFI index or Bentler and Bonett indexes were used here (NFI for this model is 0.716). NFI led to the values between 0 and 1. The closer NFI to 1, show the better fitness of the model [5] .

PLS predict assessment of the manifest variable intention to stay home

Notes : RMSE = root mean squared error; gray-shaded results = PLS-SEM's predictive power is lower than the LM benchmark.

4.3. Moderating role of media type

The measurement invariance of the composite models (MICOM) procedure suggested by Hair et al. [24] was used in this study. MICOM includes three stages: (i) configural invariance assessment, (ii) compositional invariance assessment, and (iii) the evaluation of equal means and variances. Step 1 deals with setting the configural invariance for ensuring that each latent variable in the PLS path model has been specified equally for all the groups. Configural variance exists when constructs are equally parameterized and estimated across groups. An initial qualitative evaluation of the latent variables’ specification across all the groups is compulsory (Joseph F Hair Jr et al., 2017). In step 2, if the test yields a p-value larger than 0.05, compositional invariance can be assumed. In step 3, full measurement invariance is established if no significant differences are observed in mean values and (logarithms of) variances across the groups. The results ( Table 7 ) revealed evidence of partial measurement invariance allowing us to compare the standardized coefficients across the two groups of media. For evaluating the moderating role of media type (H5), permutation test approach was applied for comparing online social media and TV & Radio in the model (no respondents was influenced by magazine). This study divided online social media (75.4% respondents) and TV & Radio (24.6% respondents) based on received online questionnaires. Considering p-value>0.05 and confidence intervals, no significant difference is observed between these two types of media in research sample.

MAICOM test

Notes: C=1: correlation value=1; CI: confidence interval; CIE: compositional invariance established?; D=0: difference in the composite's mean value (=0); CI: confidence interval; EMV: equal Mean values; R=0: logarithm of the composite's variances ratio (R=0); CI: confidence interval; EV: equal variances.

4.4. Importance-performance map analysis (IPMA)

IPMA is a very beneficial analytical tool in PLS-SEM that graphically spreading the standard path coefficient estimates in a more practical approach [47] . More precisely, IPMA offers a contrast of importance (i.e. total effect of predecessor constructs in predicting a target construct) and performance (i.e. average latent variable scores). Therefore, IPMA is beneficial for identifying predecessors with a relatively low performance but a high importance for the target constructs. In this study, our target construct is intention to stay home predicted by four predecessors.

It is depicted that “perceived response efficacy” has the highest importance score of 0.502; if people during COVID-19 pandemic boost their perceived response efficacy performance by one unit point, its overall intention to stay home will increase by 0.502. Additionally, our results show that lowest performance (78.104) is related to perceived vulnerability revealing a great opportunity for development in this area. A complete list of importance-performance values in Table 8 .

Importance-performance map analysis

Note : All total effects (importance) larger than 0.10 are significant at α ≤ 0.10 level. The bold values indicate the highest importance (total effect) and highest performance value.

5. Discussion

Given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the impact of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home was investigated in this paper. The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is a highly disruptive event considerably influencing the daily life round the world. People infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, are found in >200 countries [39] . Since social lockdown is the only prevailing strategy for hampering the pandemic prior to the availability of vaccines for treating COVID-19, behavioral change in individuals, especially staying = home seems vital [41] . According to, Okada and Kiuchi (2020), our findings showed that perceived severity and perceived self-efficacy insignificant influenced the intention to stay home. From another perspective, perceived vulnerability and perceived response efficacy positively and significantly influenced the intention to stay home revealing that when people feel susceptible, they are more likely to follow the instructions and stay home.

According to the results, “perceived response efficacy” has the highest importance score. Generally, people are more likely to help specific victims who are identified, relative to victims described merely statistically [36] . This effect happens even for a specific anonymous victim, if merely thinking about a specific person persuades stronger caring feelings [60] . Since individuals were significantly less worried about their own health than about the health of family and friends [36] , using persuasive messages highlighting the inevitability of staying home to protect others would be more effective. According to some investigations, posters highlighted how one person's behavior might bring about the infection of an identifiable, susceptible person, or considerable numbers of other people, amplified caution, as measured by stated intentions for behaviors and assessments of acceptable behaviors [36] . These findings are supported by other recent evidence on messages underlining risks to others and the immediate influence of present behavior (Jillian Jordan, Erez Yoeli, & David Rand, 2020; [43 , 61] ).

From the managerial perspective, IPMA matrix is capable of revealing very significant notes. For instance, perceive response efficiency has the highest importance in research variables to influence the intention to stay home. Thus, decision makers must consider perceive response efficiency more for persuading people to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic.

This study also studied the role of media type delivering the persuasive messages. The findings reveal that the type of media does not influence the intention to stay home. People receive the persuasive messages through diverse kinds of media anyway. People feel the risk, but diverse motives (maybe missing the loved ones or economic problems) force them to go out and not to stay home. More investigations are needed for clarifying this paradox.

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How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

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