Browsing by Subject "misinformation"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Beyond the "Angelina Effect": A Longitudinal Analysis of Celebrity Breast Cancer Disclosures' Impact on News Media and Public Breast Cancer Information Seeking Outcomes
    (2017-07) LoRusso, Susan
    A long research tradition exists investigating the content of news coverage of celebrity breast cancer disclosures and, to a greater extent, the impact these personal health narratives have on public cancer-related outcomes. However, the bulk of this research focuses on specific, large-scale media events, such as Angelina Jolie’s 2013 BRCA disclosure. The attention to individual disclosures provide insight about the specific media event, but does not further knowledge about the larger phenomenon of celebrity cancer disclosures. To go beyond the Angelina effect, this dissertation addresses three overarching research questions: 1) What breast cancer-related messages are present in media coverage of celebrity breast cancer disclosures; 2) do these messages impact public cancer-related behavioral outcomes (i.e., online breast cancer information seeking); and 3) are there attributes of the celebrity that predict media and public outcomes? To address these questions, first, 110 individual celebrity breast cancer disclosures between 2005 and 2016 were systematically identified. Then, two longitudinal studies were conducted. To address the first question, Study 1 used computer assisted and hand coded procedures to assess the presence of episodic frames (defined as containing information specific to the celebrity and her experience with breast cancer) and thematic frames (defined as including population and subpopulation breast cancer information [e.g., prevalance, risk, survial rates]). In addition, the presence of seven content categories classified as misinformation (defined as information which is innaccurate, misleading, or oversimplified) in news coverage was assessed. Results demonstrated that 80% of the news articles were written with an episodic frame, and 20% were written with a thematic frame, indicating very little information beyond the celebrity’s own experience with breast cancer was conveyed to the public. However, misinformation was largely absent in the news coverage—only misinformation pertaining to early breast cancer detection and mastectomy decisions was present in 10% or more of the news coverage. Study 2 attempts to determine if news content impacts information seeking by using the framing outcomes from Study 1 to predict Google Trends search query outcomes. Due to the disparate rates in the presence of episodic and thematic frames this dissertation is unable to provide support linking content and online breast cancer information seeking outcomes. However, time series models suggest that media coverage of celebrity breast cancer disclosures in the aggregate have a distal impact on the public’s breast cancer information seeking outcomes. For example, some analyses suggested effects happened as late as 17 months after news coverage of the disclosure. Yet the nature of these trends may be a function of the data. Establishing if celebrity attributes can predict media and public outcomes was done through a moderation analysis of the results of Study 1 and Study 2. Specifically, the extent to which the presence of episodic and thematic and misinformation were present and statistically significant information seeking models were examined as a function of the celebrity’s age, career type, breast cancer-event type, and level of celebrity status (defined as the degree of fame the celebrity achieved at the time of disclosure). Eighty-seven percent of thematic frames present were in news coverage of celebrities at the highest levels of fame. Specific categories in the age, career-type, and level of celebrity status variables predicted the presence of misinformation. Some preliminary evidence suggests level of celebrity status may predict online breast cancer information seeking outcomes. The implications of the dissertation’s findings for health communication research, mass media effects research, and professional health communicators are discussed.
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    Correcting What’s True: Testing Competing Claims about Health Misinformation on Social Media
    (American Behavioral Scientist, 2022-02) Vraga, Emily, K.; Bode, Leticia
    This study expands on existing research about correcting misinformation on social media. Using an experimental design, we explore the effects of three truth signals related to stories shared on social media: whether the person posting the story says it is true, whether the replies to the story say it is true, or whether the story itself is actually true. Our results suggest that individuals should not share misinformation in order to debunk it, as audiences assume sharing is an endorsement. Additionally, while two responses debunking the post do reduce belief in the post’s veracity and argument, this process occurs equally when the story is false (thereby reducing misperceptions) as when it is true (thus creating misperceptions). Our results have implications for individuals interested in correcting health misinformation on social media and for the organizations who support their efforts.
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    Recounting a Memory: How it Changes Visual Memory and How Useful it is for Others
    (2019-05) Tan, Deborah
    Recounting one’s memory is common in everyday experience, such as in educational settings and spatial navigation. How recounting affects memory has largely been examined with verbal materials, with few studies examining its effects on visual memory. The goals of this dissertation are to investigate the effects of recounting a visual memory, first on the person recounting the memory, and second on the ability of the listeners to reconstruct the recounted memory. Following an introduction in Section 1, Section 2 examined how intervening recall affects visual detail memory and whether these effects change across time. Intervening recall interfered with visual detail memory in the short term, but enhanced it in the long term, suggesting that intervening recall has multiple effects on visual detail memory, which change over time. Section 3 showed that memory enhancement from intervening recall can generalize across memory attributes to source memory, supporting the idea that intervening recall can enhance memory as long as fruitful retrieval occurs for the attribute. In addition, there is a positive relationship between what occurs during recounting and subsequent memory performance, raising the possibility that greater fruitful retrieval leads to greater memory enhancement later on. Section 4 examined the usefulness of one’s memory recall for listeners. It demonstrated that whereas objects are easy to describe from perception, one’s verbal recall of what was seen minutes before is almost useless to third parties. This low utility of one’s verbal recall constrains theories about the extension of our memories to the external world and highlights the importance of looking to more informative and reliable sources of information, particularly in higher stakes situations such as during criminal investigations. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates that the way recounting affects memory depends on many factors. Furthermore, while recounting a memory can benefit the describer, such benefits do not necessarily extend to the listener, suggesting that recounting plays different roles for the describer and the listener.