Health Communication最新文献

This essay presents a personal reflection on health communication research conducted in Lebanon amid poverty, disease, war, and the constant shadow of death. Through scenes of displacement, fear, and loss, it shows how crisis carves itself into the body and the work. This is a record of knowledge made under fire, and an invitation to confront what scholarship demands when the ground itself is not stable.

This study tests whether misinformation on social media undermines citizens' capability to perceive the factual public health information provided by the government during the pandemic and whether such misinformation impacts citizens' distrust in the government. The results of the survey experiment indicate that the simple presence of misinformation on a social media platform distorts citizens' perceptions of factual pandemic information, while the frequent use of social media shows the opposite but a smaller effect. Also, we find that perceptual distortion due to misinformation does not directly impact citizens' distrust in the government, while political polarization appears to have a larger effect. We discuss the implications of the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms of information distortion and citizens' distrust in the government in an international setting.

Although research has highlighted the connection between healthcare design and communication among nurses, it is essential to understand the experiences of additional healthcare professions due to increasing healthcare specialization. Employing multiple methods, this study explores interprofessional communication (IPC) and physical design in two different hospital cardiovascular units (CVUs). The first hospital incorporated a rectangular single-corridor design (RSCD) with patient rooms along the hallways. The second hospital included patient rooms on the perimeter of hallways in a circular design (CD) and dedicated spaces for co-located staff from multiple professions. Seven focus groups of 40 healthcare professionals (HCPs) from 12 healthcare professions were conducted to elicit perspectives on interprofessional communication, design, and patient care. Observations (N = 8,978) of face-to-face communication were conducted across both hospital CVUs. Patient records (N = 1,930) were gathered to understand patient characteristics and outcomes. Thematic qualitative analysis revealed that HCPs perceived design features as both facilitating and constraining IPC. In RSCD units, greater distance hampered interprofessional communication in acute/progressive care while proximity facilitated IPC in ICU care. In CD units, dedicated spaces for co-located staff afforded proximity, IPC, and patient care communication. While inefficient technology constrained communication in RSCD, updated technology in CD afforded IPC, indicating technology's communicative agency in sociotechnical healthcare systems. Observations indicated that HCPs in CD units engaged in more IPC than in RSCD (p < .05). Patients were similar across units for demographics, characteristics and comorbidities. A key takeaway from this study is that dedicated workspaces for embedded, co-located HCPs facilitated higher levels of interprofessional communication and engagement.

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT become increasingly popular sources of health information, understanding what shapes users' trust in AI-generated health information (AI-HI) is essential. Despite growing use, little is known about how human- and source-related factors jointly influence trust across national contexts. Drawing on frameworks from AI trust and online health information research, this study used multi-group structural equation modeling with representative samples from Austria (N = 502), Denmark (N = 507), France (N = 498), and Serbia (N = 483) to predict trust in AI-HI and its effect on intention to use AI-HI. AI literacy and performance expectancy consistently increased trust across countries, while social norms and prior AI-HI experience showed smaller, context-dependent effects. Health literacy, personal innovativeness, effort expectancy, and surveillance risk perceptions were not significant. Informational risk perceptions had only a weak negative effect on trust, indicating that while concerns about inaccuracy can reduce confidence, they play a relatively minor role in shaping it. Trust strongly predicted intention to use AI-HI in all countries, with path-level effects largely stable across contexts. These findings suggest that trust in AI-HI is shaped more by digital capabilities, perceived utility, and social endorsement than by privacy concerns or health literacy. Future research should examine how digital literacy interventions and transparency standards can foster informed trust in these systems.

Reducing the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus hinges on accurate, timely recognition of prediabetes risk and the ability to make corresponding lifestyle changes. However, this critical step is often hindered by resistance to and avoidance of health information among high-risk individuals. Drawing on self- and vicarious-affirmation (VA) theory, this study experimentally tests a brief, culturally targeted, message-based vicarious-affirmation intervention among Hispanic adults at elevated risk (N = 1,039). Relative to standard messaging, the intervention did not improve primary outcomes; however, VA increased knowledge compared to a no-message control, and mechanism-focused analyses indicated modest sequential indirect effects on knowledge, information seeking, and behavioral intent. While the effect of VA did not vary by cultural attachment, the downstream pathways linking mediators to knowledge did: self-appraisal significantly predicted knowledge alongside message derogation at lower levels of cultural attachment, whereas at moderate to high levels, only message derogation remained significant. These findings advance affirmation theory by specifying mechanisms and boundary conditions tied to cultural identity, and by illustrating how low-burden, scalable messages can exert effects even when direct mean differences on primary outcomes are modest. Results also underscore the need for replication and extension to clarify conceptual distinctions among affirmation approaches.

This study examines the use of deepfakes in self-disclosure interventions within mental health contexts. Specifically, we investigate how videos featuring self-deepfakes, celebrity deepfakes, and virtual agents disclosing mental health challenges shape affective resistance and intention to seek support, considering the moderating influence of individual baseline mental health. The findings indicate that self-deepfakes elicited greater affective resistance than celebrity deepfakes, leading to reduced help-seeking intention, whereas no significant differences were observed between self-deepfakes and virtual agent disclosures. Also, the moderation analysis showed that participants with lower baseline mental health were especially prone to heightened affective resistance toward self-disclosure videos featuring deepfake representations of themselves. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence (AI)-generated self-deepfakes, which personalize content without affording users agency, may reverse the conventional self-referencing effect, provoking affective resistance rooted in identity threat. Since these counterproductive effects are most salient among individuals with negative self-schemas who struggle with greater mental health challenges, AI-driven technologies should be applied in health communication with caution, accompanied by tailored strategies designed to curb impulsive, emotion-driven resistance.

This study explores how far a variety of choices in the visualization of help givers in first aid instruction materials can be associated the perception of these help givers in viewers. We present a reception study, in which we analyze 40 images from a first aid corpus by focusing on variations in their image type, perspective, camera angle, shot size, color, facial expression visibility, and gender. A total of 107 participants evaluated these images using 20 pairs of trait adjectives on a 6-point scale. Results indicate that drawings had a slightly higher positive composite score than photographs. Bird's-eye perspectives, front-facing camera angles, and full-body shots all yielded a higher positive composite score, which suggests a preference for visual cues related to directness and completeness. Color images were favored over grayscale. Interestingly, images with obscured facial expressions were rated higher, potentially due to reduced emotional cues allowing for individual interpretation. Images portraying female help givers consistently received higher positive scores than male help givers. These findings show the relation between visual design and the perceived positive characteristics of help givers. The insights can be useful in the process of optimizing first aid material design.

Emotional reactions to health information significantly influence health decisions. The theory of persuasive hope details how messages can influence behaviors and intentions by evoking hope. Messaging about noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has begun to include hope-focused appeals, and scholars have recommended using hope appeals in messaging about genetic testing. The current study extends the theory of persuasive hope by testing if critical reflection, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers serve as mechanisms of hope's effect on NIPT intentions. Women who were planning to or considering becoming pregnant (N = 744) participated in a message experiment where they received an informational message about NIPT that either included or did not include a hope-focused narrative. The narrative had a positive indirect effect on NIPT intention via hope. Hope influenced intention through greater perceived benefits and lower perceived personal and ethical barriers. Findings further hope theorizing by identifying mechanisms through which hope persuades. Practically, health messaging could gain from using hope-focused narratives to emphasize the benefits and minimize the barriers to engaging in a recommended health behavior. Findings also highlight the ethical ramifications of hope messaging. Hope diminished ethical concerns about NIPT even though messaging did not discuss the ethics of NIPT.

By analyzing two narratives of encounters between family caregivers from minority ethnocultural groups and healthcare professionals, this paper explores the communicative and collaborative challenges involved in integrating diverse forms of caregiving expertise in healthcare, particularly in contexts where task-based medical expertise is prioritized over relational, experiential expertise. We then illustrate how a dialogic approach to caregiving partnership can support both healthcare workers and family caregivers, especially those from minority backgrounds, in building quality relationships and co-constructing a hybrid caregiving expertise that merges task-oriented and relationship-centered knowledge. For such partnerships to emerge, interactional partners must strengthen their relational collaboration skills by demonstrating respect, cultural humility, compassion, and trust. This kind of relational work provides the impetus for moving beyond fragmented care and creating more culturally appropriate care trajectories.

Guided by the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model, this study explores how conflicting information shapes individuals' relevant channel beliefs and trust in scientists, as well as how these two factors interact with perceived information gathering capacity to predict information seeking intention. The research context is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination, a novel environmental health risk. A one-way between-subjects experiment with 1,232 adult participants from the United States was conducted. Results indicated that exposure to conflicting information weakened relevant channel beliefs and trust in scientists. Through relevant channel beliefs, conflicting information was negatively associated with information seeking intention. Participants with the highest levels of relevant channel beliefs and perceived information gathering capacity exhibited greatest information seeking intention. These findings highlight the importance of providing consistent and credible information to the public to promote information seeking about a novel risk.