Comparing the effects of simple and refutational narratives in misinformation correction: The moderating roles of correction placement and issue involvement

Abstract

The study examines whether adding a refutational ending to narrative messages improves correction effectiveness and how the effect differs depending on whether the correction message is presented before or after exposure to misinformation. A 2 (narrative format: simple vs refutational narrative) × 2 (correction placement: prebunking vs debunking) between-subjects online experiment (N = 281) with US participants was conducted to correct misinformation about human papilloma virus vaccines. The results suggested that the refutational narrative was more effective in reducing misbeliefs in prebunking, whereas the simple narrative was more effective in debunking. This interaction was further moderated by issue involvement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Keywords

correction placement HPV vaccine issue involvement misinformation correction narrative persuasion

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Banas

Rains

(2010) A meta-analysis of research on inoculation theory. Communication Monographs 77(3): 281–311.

Berkowitz

(2015) HPV and cancer: 9 myths busted. Available at: https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/FOH-HPV-myths.h14-1589835.html

Bode

Vraga

(2015) In related news, that was wrong: The correction of misinformation through related stories functionality in social media. Journal of Communication 65(4): 619–638.

Busselle

Bilandzic

(2009) Measuring narrative engagement. Media Psychology 12(4): 321–347.

Cappella

Maloney

Ophir

Brennan

(2016) Interventions to correct misinformation about tobacco products. Tobacco Regulatory Science 2: 186–197.

Chan

Jones

Hall Jamieson

Albarracín

(2017) Debunking: A meta-analysis of the psychological efficacy of messages countering misinformation. Psychological Science 28(11): 1531–1546.

Chang

(2013) Imagery fluency and narrative advertising effects. Journal of Advertising 42(1): 54–68.

Cohen

(2016) Exploring subtext processing in narrative persuasion: The role of eudaimonic entertainment-use motivation and a supplemental conclusion scene. Communication Quarterly 64(3): 273–297.

Cohen

(1988) Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

10.

Crano

(1977) Primacy versus recency in retention of information and opinion change. The Journal of Social Psychology 101(1): 87–96.

11.

Dahlstrom

(2010) The role of causality in information acceptance in narratives: An example from science communication. Communication Research 37: 857–875.

12.

Dal Cin

Zanna

Fong

(2004) Narrative persuasion and overcoming resistance. In: Knowles

Linn

(eds) Resistance and Persuasio. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 175–191. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iTzmK4mxFIcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA175&dq=Narrative+Persuasion+and+Overcoming+Resistance&ots=n5w6E-3K2y&sig=RzQjT89jvCLN4nJPa9GNKI4vj_s

13.

Dillard

Shen

(2005) On the nature of reactance and its role in persuasive health communication. Communication Monographs 72(2): 144–168.

14.

Ecker

UKH

Butler

Hamby

(2020) You don’t have to tell a story! A registered report testing the effectiveness of narrative versus non-narrative misinformation corrections. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 5(64): 1–26.

15.

Ecker

UKH

Lewandowsky

Swire

Chang

(2011) Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 18(3): 570–578.

16.

Frazer

Robinson

Knobloch-Westerwick

(2021) Narratives’ impacts on attitudes: Do signaling of persuasive intent and fictionality matter? Communication Studies 72(3): 347–365.

17.

Garcia

Mann

(2003) From “I wish” to ‘I will’: Social-cognitive predictors of behavioral intentions. Journal of Health Psychology 8(3): 347–360.

18.

Green

Brock

(2000) The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(5): 701–721.

19.

Hamby

Ecker

Brinberg

(2020) How stories in memory perpetuate the continued influence of false information. Journal of Consumer Psychology 30(2): 240–259.

20.

Han

Davies

Grimes

(2021) Recency effects in the buffering of negative news by corporate social responsibility advertising. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 26(2): 382–402.

21.

Haugtvedt

Wegener

(1994) Message order effects in persuasion: An attitude strength perspective. Journal of Consumer Research 21(1): 205.

22.

Hayes

(2018) Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach, 2nd edn. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

23.

Huang

Wang

(2022) When a story contradicts: Correcting health misinformation on social media through different message formats and mechanisms. Information, Communication & Society 25(8): 1192–1209.

24.

John Hopkins Medicine (2018) The HPV vaccine: Why parents really choose to refuse. Available at: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/the-hpv-vaccine-why-parents-really-choose-to-refuse

25.

Katz

Erkkinen

Lindgren

Hatsukami

(2018) Assessing the impact of conflicting health warning information on intentions to use E-cigarettes- An application of the heuristic-systematic model. Journal of Health Communication 23: 874–885.

26.

Kreuter

Green

Cappella

Slater

Wise

Storey

, et al. (2007) Narrative communication in cancer prevention and control: A framework to guide research and application. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 33: 221–235.

27.

Liu

Yang

(2020) The role of temporal distance perception in narrative vs. non-narrative persuasion related to e-cigarettes. Journal of Health Communication 25(7): 543–553.

28.

McGuire

(1961) The effectiveness of supportive and refutational defenses in immunizing and restoring beliefs against persuasion. Sociometry 24(2): 184–197.

29.

Michigan Medicine (2021) Few young adult men have gotten the HPV vaccine. Available at: https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/family-medicine/news/archive/202104/few-young-adult-men-have-gotten-hpv-vaccine

30.

Moyer-Gusé

Jain

Chung

(2012) Reinforcement or reactance? Examining the effect of an explicit persuasive appeal following an entertainment-education narrative. Journal of Communication 62(6): 1010–1027.

31.

Niederdeppe

Heley

Barry

(2015) Inoculation and narrative strategies in competitive framing of three health policy issues. The Journal of Communication 65(5): 838–862.

32.

Petty

Cacioppo

(1986) The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In: Petty

Cacioppo

(eds) Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 1–24.

33.

Pfau

Tusing

Koerner

Lee

Godbold

Penaloza

, et al. (1997) Enriching the inoculation construct: The role of critical components in the process of resistance. Human Communication Research 24(2): 187–215.

34.

Ratcliff

Sun

(2020) Overcoming resistance through narratives: Findings from a meta-analytic review. Human Communication Research 46(4): 412–443.

35.

Sangalang

Ophir

Cappella

(2019) The potential for narrative correctives to combat misinformation. Journal of Communication 69(3): 298–319.

36.

Scheufele

Krause

(2019) Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116(16): 7662–7669.

37.

Shelby

Ernst

(2013) Story and science: How providers and parents can utilize storytelling to combat anti-vaccine misinformation. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 9(8): 1795–1801.

38.

Slater

Rouner

(2002) Entertainment-education and elaboration likelihood: Understanding the processing of narrative persuasion. Communication Theory 12(2): 173–191.

39.

Sülflow

Schäfer

Winter

(2019) Selective attention in the news feed: An eye-tracking study on the perception and selection of political news posts on Facebook. New Media & Society 21(1): 168–190.

40.

Thorson

(2016) Belief echoes: The persistent effects of corrected misinformation. Political Communication 33(3): 460–480.

41.

University of Chicago Medicine (2019) Public perception of scientific uncertainty is linked to HPV vaccine policy support. Available at: https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/cancer-articles/public-perception-of-scientific-uncertainty-is-linked-to-hpv-vaccine-policy-support

42.

Vraga

Kim

Cook

Bode

(2020) Testing the effectiveness of correction placement and type on Instagram. The International Journal of Press/politics 25(4): 632–652.

43.

Walter

Murphy

(2018) How to unring the bell: A meta-analytic approach to correction of misinformation. Communication Monographs 85(3): 423–441.

44.

Walter

Brooks

Saucier

Suresh

Walter

Brooks

, et al. (2021) Evaluating the impact of attempts to correct health misinformation on social media: A meta-analysis. Health Communication 36(13): 1776–1784.

45.

Wang

Huang

(2021) Countering the “harmless e-cigarette” myth: The interplay of message format, message sidedness, and prior experience with e-cigarette use in misinformation correction. Science Communication 43(2): 170–198.

46.

Yang

Pierri

Hui

Axelrod

Torres-Lugo

Bryden

, et al. (2021) The COVID-19 infodemic: Twitter versus Facebook. Big Data & Society. Epub ahead of print 5 May. DOI: 10.1177/20539517211013861.

47.

Zaichkowsky

(1994) The personal involvement inventory: Reduction, revision, and application to advertising. Journal of Advertising 23(5): 59–70.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.71 MB