Mario Žuliček, Darijo Čerepinko, Željka Bagarić: RATIONAL AND EMOTIONAL APPROACH IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION IN THE TIMES OF PANDEMICS: A CALL-TO-ACTION MESSAGE RESEARCH
Scientific papaer
Mario Žuliček, Sveučilište Sjever, Doktorski studij Mediji i komunikacija
Darijo Čerepinko, Sveučilište Sjever, Odjel odnosa s javnostima
Željka Bagarić, Sveučilište Sjever, Odjel odnosa s javnostima
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59014/ZRDR4587
Keywords:
Rational and emotional messages, selfishness, vengefulness, honesty, empathy, COVID-19
Abstract
For over a decade, a number of scholars and scientific papers emphasized the continual
decline of trust in public institutions, mainly in the democracies of “the West”.
Some associated the observed phenomenon with the rise of social media and digital
environments, while others attributed it to the rise of economic and political power
of less democratic regimes of “the East”, such as China and Russia. In times of crisis,
trust in government institutions could be of crucial importance for the appropriateness
of the institutional response to the problems facing the nation. Across the EU, it
is obvious that citizens of certain member states express higher trust in government
and state institutions than others. This division has been even more apparent during
the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when vaccination rates of particular EU countries
are compared. In Croatia, the Government’s main message concerning COVID-
19 vaccination was modeled to appeal to the receivers’ empathy towards others.
However, emotional appeal is just one of the possible courses of action. Theories of
rational choices and exchange theories emphasize other, often ulterior motives, such
as selfishness and revenge, as equally effective purposes to undertake certain actions.
In this paper, we have examined four different types of messages, based on selfishness,
revenge, honesty and empathy, and their power to persuade research subjects to
get vaccinated. Message reception results are compared to other socio-demographic
and behavioral factors to define which message type would be most appealing to
different demographic groups.
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