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The Effects of Message Framing on Online Health Headline Selection: A Mediation of Message Credibility

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Sustainable Digital Communities (iConference 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12051))

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Abstract

The acquisition of health information is conducive to promoting the public’s health literacy and improving citizens’ health. The display of online health information often features an entering page that lists headlines hyperlinked to health article pages. Among the various techniques that help increase headline effectiveness, this study was particularly interested in message framing (gain/loss framing) and investigated how it influenced headline selection in the form of fixation and clicking and considered message credibility as a possible mediator. Based on an eye-tracking experiment, this study found that gain-framed headlines received a larger fixation count, a longer fixation duration, and a larger clicking count. In addition, message credibility had partial mediating effects on the relationship between message framing and fixation count and that between message framing and clicking count. The findings provide useful implications for creating effective online headlines in the health domain and enrich our understanding of how information characteristics affect information selection.

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Acknowledgement

This research has been made possible through the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 71774125 and No. 71874129.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Tingting Jiang, Xi Wu & Ying Wang

  2. Center for Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Tingting Jiang

  3. School of Information Management, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Ye Chen

Authors
  1. Tingting Jiang
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  2. Xi Wu
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  3. Ying Wang
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  4. Ye Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tingting Jiang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Anneli Sundqvist

  2. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Gerd Berget

  3. University of Boras, Boras, Sweden

    Jan Nolin

  4. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad

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Jiang, T., Wu, X., Wang, Y., Chen, Y. (2020). The Effects of Message Framing on Online Health Headline Selection: A Mediation of Message Credibility. In: Sundqvist, A., Berget, G., Nolin, J., Skjerdingstad, K. (eds) Sustainable Digital Communities. iConference 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12051. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_34

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43686-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43687-2

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