Examining the Impact of Communicative Processes of Civic Engagement Among College Students during a Public Health Crisis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals have been encouraged to wear protective masks in order to reduce the likelihood of contracting and/or spreading the virus. Public health messaging is an important part of the COVID-19 crisis response strategy, and mask wearing has been portrayed as an act of civic duty or engagement.

This study is investigating the impact of messaging that encourages civic engagement among university students and how that communication occurs during times of crisis. It examines the likelihood of adherence to a call to action based on message characteristics and intention to adhere to recommendations (engage civically) based on the congruence of messages from sources outside (outgroup) and within (ingroup) the social network.

This involves the collection of baseline data on how message framing and descriptive and injunctive norms impact college students’ responses to preventive behavior calls to actions (i.e., mask-wearing as an act of civic engagement) in regards to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and how these responses are exacerbated when they interact with individual differences. We seek to investigate how/when messages are processed and either accepted or rejected.

This study also seeks to provide insight into the impact of communicative efforts on civic engagement among university students and how that communication occurs during times of crisis. In this study, civic engagement is linked to adherence to public health recommendations, particularly when such recommendations are so closely associated with political positions. Specifically, mask wearing is operationalized as an act of civic and community involvement given its potential impact on the health and well-being of community members, which is clearly an issue of public concern.

Understanding the relationship between the likelihood to accept a message or call to action (e.g., adherence to a public health recommendation such as mask wearing) based on message characteristics/channels and civic engagement will allow for the development of more efficacious health crisis messages that mitigate harm and increase prosocial attitudes and behaviors in the student community, more specifically those that bridge individual actions to collective and civic wellbeing.

Research team:  Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, PhD, and Patrick Merle, PhD (co-PIs), Tracy Ippolito (doctoral student).
Funded by:  Institute of Politics at Florida State University
For more information about this study, email PeaksLab@cci.fsu.edu.

Related Studies

Civic engagement as a health behavior: Mobilizing individuals through civic-oriented appeals

Research Team: Wendorf Muhamad, J.; Ippolito, T.A.; Merle, P.

The effects of emotional appeals in persuasion (e.g., DeSteno et al., 2004; Nabi, 2002; Witte, 1992) are well-defined and widely studied. Additionally, there is ample literature examining the role of culture, specifically cultural characteristics (Jansen & Verstappen, 2014) – collectivist or individualist – and their role in efficacious message design. Yet, there seems to be a gap in understanding appeals as orientations not to macro-level cultural groups – often vaguely defined merely by nationality or ethnicity – but to co-cultural-level identification. When tailoring messages or targeting specific populations, researchers tend to examine trait variables (Winter et al., 2021). However, it may not always be possible to segment audiences by trait to streamline the reach of a message. During a health crisis, there is a greater need for messages that appeal to mass audiences and garner minimal reactance from opponents. The question then becomes, can we develop messages aimed at certain cultural orientations that activate individuals’ schemata to adopt prosocial attitudes and behaviors but serve as non-obtrusive messages for those who would most likely resist the message?  During a health crisis when emotion-based appeals may trigger reactance and cognitive appeals may lead to information overload, it is imperative to promote collective participation for societal wellbeing using deeper belief heuristics such as collectivism. It has become increasingly important to ensure that information presented—particularly that which is focused on a call-to-action—is reliable, given the waning trust in sources (Baron & Berinsky, 2019). Heuristics can be useful to determine a course of action during a crisis, and it is suggested to present in-group members as psychological anchors in call-to-action messages. Mental shortcuts may be activated by presenting images that foster greater levels of identification (“this is a member of my group”). Coupled with call-to-action, this may enhance perceived benefits to collective wellbeing that the individual may have an affinity for based on their group orientation. In this way, mask wearing in the images and the call-to-action manifest sociomaterial (shared meaning and tangible artifact) representation of civic engagement. Use of civic engagement among young people and their contributions to improving the conditions of life for their community is well-documented (Adler & Goggin, 2005). In political science and public policy, the term “civic engagement” is closely tied to political

participation, but also encompasses “individual and collective actions designed to identify and

address issues of public concern” (APA, 2009). According to Rogers, Goldstein, and Fox (2018), civic engagement behaviors are promoted by socially mobilizing individuals to comply with actions that provide negligible benefit unless performed by masses. In this context, this study seeks to provide insight into the impact of communicative efforts on civic engagement among young adults. We conceptualize civic engagement in terms of public health recommendations such as mask-wearing, given its potential impact on community health outcomes. Via a 2 x 2 between-subjects design of ~1,400 individuals from the U.S. and India, this study examines the relationship between likelihood to accept a call-to-action (implicit/explicit) embedded in civic appeal-based messages and source (ingroup/outgroup). 

Leveraging Sense of Community Responsibility (SOC-R) to Connect Individual Actions
to Collective and Civic Well-being

Research Team: Ippolito, T.A., Wendorf Muhamad, J.; Merle, P.

Beyond fulfillment of basic human needs (e.g., the need for belonging or group identification), sense of community as a responsibility-based construct (as put forth by Nowell & Boyd, 2010) seeks to explain why individuals take actions to protect others in their community absent a direct benefit to themselves. Sense of Community Responsibility (SOC-R) theory (Nowell & Boyd, 2010; 2014) proposes that people develop personal belief systems through their involvement in social institutions – such as family, friend, and faith groups – and that these belief systems govern what they deem to be appropriate behavior in certain social contexts. In other words, it is not just what can be gained through community affiliation, but also what an individual is responsible for doing within and for the collective that reinforces sense of community.  The willingness to engage in behaviors that are not normative or preferred, when considered to be appropriate actions, may also foster feelings of accountability for community well-being. Thus, a desire to achieve consistency between the personal belief systems (the wellbeing of my community matters) held by an individual and their personal actions (preventive behaviors that benefit the whole) may lead to the adoption of prosocial attitudes and behaviors (Nowell & Boyd, 2010).  As part of a larger study on the impact of responsibility-based communicative efforts among university students and how that communication occurs during a health crisis, we looked at how identification within a community context can evoke personal beliefs, specifically beliefs about the appropriateness of adopting certain prosocial behaviors. Key areas of inquiry included: What about the community context triggers a sense of community responsibility? What specific message characteristics activate an individual’s sense of community (e.g., message source, content)? Once achieved, can SOC-R be leveraged to motivate prosocial behaviors?  And are messages from community members more convincing than those from individuals who are not viewed as members of a shared community?  To address these questions, we measured study participant responses to a series of social media messages designed to trigger SOC-R and a willingness to adopt specific prosocial attitudes and behaviors. Data on source characteristics (e.g., gender, race, age) was collected and respondents were asked to identify the extent to which the message source and content appear to come from a peer (i.e., someone they consider to be a member of their community). Positioned within SOC-R scholarship, this work conceptualizes one’s perceived peer group as a community setting. This research advances our understanding of what it means to experience a sense of community, what connects individuals to the communities to which they belong, and how that can be leveraged to promote behaviors that protect and/or benefit society at large. Specifically, it explores the relationship between likelihood to accept a message or call to action by a source perceived to be a member of one’s own community, which will allow for the development of effective messages that connect individual actions to collective and civic well-being.