On the Relationship Between Skepticism Towards and Reactance to Health Messages: The Special Case of Online Communication on Tick-Borne Encephalitis

In general, health communication messages intend to change individuals’ behaviors, applying both cognitive reasoning and increasingly personal accounts to achieve these changes. Nonetheless, against the background of increasing skepticism towards scientific findings and patronizing message claims, health messages fail to achieve their intended results. By use of a quantitative survey with Austrian respondents (n = 271), the study at hand intends to uncover individuals’ level of skepticism towards Tick-Borne Encephalitis (TBE) as well as their evaluations of online vaccination-related information on TBE. Moreover, as skepticism is likely to lead individuals to reject health message content altogether, we also test for the relationship between skepticism and reactance. Results indicate that there is only a marginal relationship between the two variables in the TBE communication context. For this reason, other variables might have to be included in future research to derive more comprehensive results and recommendations. Since skepticism has proven to be of lesser importance in TBE message reception, government or health officials are recommended to prioritize additional constructs, such as trust, which can be elevated through more affective communication.

Effects of skepticism about corporate social responsibility advertising on consumer attitude

We adopted a 2 × 2 mixed experimental design to control for form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), advertising message claims (single message vs. multiple message), and levels of advertising skepticism (high vs. low), to elucidate how these influence advertising preferences and advertising credibility. On the basis of data collected from 320 participants (152 men and 168 women), 4 significant findings were obtained: (a) The form of message claims in CSR advertisements affects advertising preference and advertising credibility, (b) levels of advertising skepticism affect advertising preference and advertising credibility, (c) consumers with high advertising skepticism exhibit advertising skepticism toward CSR advertisements with single-message claims, (d) consumers with low advertising skepticism exhibit preference for CSR advertisements with multiple-message claims. Our findings suggest that enterprises should plan advertisement content carefully when promoting their CSR activities because exaggerated or understated content triggers doubt in consumers' minds.

“Crafty Advertisers”: Literary versus Literal Deceptiveness

The purpose of this paper is to use literary theory to extend prior categorizations of message claims that are likely to result in deception by implication from the level of the individual claim to that of the advertisement's overall meaning. The paper will first summarize three literary forms that advertising has adapted—metonymy, irony, and absurdity—and discuss each in terms of how form and content interact to yield the whole verbal meaning of a text. These forms can be used to structure an ad so that the totality misleads the consumer by perverting meaning in three different ways. Metonymy can mislead by adding multiple meanings; irony, by hiding doubled meanings; and absurdism, by conveying subjectively ambiguous meanings. Advertising examples will be presented in the discussion. The paper will conclude with research suggestions for gaining greater understanding of how artistic creativity can be balanced with the public policy need to protect the consumer from deception by innuendo.