“Closeup of doctor’s hands, vaccine, and arm” by SELF Magazine is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Analysis of a Public Service Announcement for Rural Americans
By Sarah Ann Wu
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people in the United States were reluctant to get vaccinated. This concerned public health officials, who were promoting the importance of getting vaccinated to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Politically conservative people in rural areas were among those refusing to be vaccinated, according to The Atlantic. As many as 35 percent of rural Americans were unwilling to get the jab, according to the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, and their reluctance may not have been entirely caused by their conservative political or religious views.
Rural people might have had additional hurdles to getting their COVID-19 vaccines, such as less access to healthcare than city dwellers. Farm workers could also have had difficulty getting time off during the day to get vaccinated.
But the initial reluctance turned into mistrust, according to The Counter. The Scientific American blames people’s vaccine hesitancy on an overload of misinformation during the pandemic. The magazine did not cite the sources of alleged misinformation that had caused people to be avoid vaccination.
To appeal to more rural Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the Ad Council produced and distributed a series of public service announcements (PSAs), in conjunction with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, targeting rural populations.
How to Target Rural Populations?
In their research paper, “Affect and Persuasion: Emotional Responses to Public Service Announcements,” James Price Dillard and Eugenia Peck (2000) suggest that humans hold a notion that we should believe the words of people we trust. This statement suggests that people we trust will have more power of persuasion over us.
In rural communities, farmers and ranchers are often trusted figures. These people are considered experts in their industry and local communities and have knowledge that is often passed down through the generations.
The Ad Council’s PSA series to promote vaccination in rural America enlisted farmers and ranchers. They sought out individuals who came across as sincere and that viewers should consider trustworthy.
The following PSA is one from the series. It features the story of rancher Brooks Hodges, who is a recent widower with two young children. His wife Amanda Hodges died while being treated for COVID-19 in a hospital that was 100 miles from their home.
Brooks Hodges could not be with his wife in the hospital, because of the social distancing restrictions that were in place at that stage of the pandemic. Despite not being allowed to be with her during her treatment, he was allowed to sit with her before doctors took her off life support.
Transcript
| 0:00 It’s only about half of them 30 brood 0:03 mares in this 0:04 pasture. She was in the third grade and I 0:07 was in the fourth grade literally became 0:10 my best friend. We lost her so young but 0:13 I’m blessed that I got to spend 30 years 0:15 with her. Amanda is 0:17 my queen. it was New Year’s Eve. Her and I 0:20 went to Fort Worth we had a steak dinner 0:23 and everything was fine. Sunday morning 0:26 there in the hotel room she couldn’t 0:28 hardly breathe. It never crossed our mind 0:31 I’ll never forget the whole drive home 0:33 she did not speak Monday morning. Brooks 0:35 Clay said, “Dad mom’s ready to go to the 0:37 doctor. But it’s a 200 mile round trip to the ER 0:41 Amanda tested positive for COVID-19 they 0:44 had her quarantined on oxygen. I came home 0:47 put the kiddos down that next morning I 0:49 called the hospital and some lady said 0:51 we’ve moved your wife into ICU. It’s COVID and 0:55 uh she’s not doing very well. They had 0:57 her on what they call a high flow respirator 0:59 trying to get consistent blood 1:02 oxygen levels. I would call every 4 hours 1:05 on the money. She’s on that respirator 1:07 for about 10 days, and the doctor said we have to 1:09 put Amanda on a ventilator now they’ve 1:11 induced a coma I’m still calling every 4 1:14 hours around the clock 28 days now in a 1:17 row I was never allowed in the hospital 1:19 COVID attacked her lungs kidneys liver at 1:23 the end she had swelling in the brain 1:26 and and she she just never woke up 1:33 decision was made on day 34, I was able 1:36 to to go up there and sit with her. She loved 1:39 Van Morrison and so I put a set of 1:41 headphones on her. God promises us 1:45 eternal life but we’re not guaranteed 1:48 tomorrow. All the C were her pallbearers at 1:50 her funeral. There’s a vacant spot on 1:53 this Ranch. It’s very obvious this is not 1:56 what I thought was in my cards at 38 2:00 there’s been way too many losses we can 2:03 argue whether it was the vaccine got 2:04 here quick enough or didn’t I don’t know 2:07 I do know this was my duty to get 2:10 vaccinated and that’s where I stand on 2:13 that. Amanda’s Legacy is these two 2:15 children I try to be the best father for 2:18 these two kiddos he’s a great father 2:21 plus he tries a lot tries a little too 2:24 hard. Don’t look up and wish you would 2:27 have should have could have squeeze them 2:28 and squeeze them hard and when you get 2:30 done squeeze them one more time |
The video evokes feelings of sadness and grief, but also portrays Hodges’ positivity. He briefly mentions his religious beliefs, something that probably many rural Americans can relate to, and his relationship with his two young children.
This PSA seems an effective method for spreading the word of his family’s loss, and would resonate with local people who are also religious, but its effectiveness at persuading people to change their attitudes about vaccination is questionable. Hodges only real statement about the vaccine is that he felt it was his duty to get vaccinated, after his wife’s death.
Dillard and Peck (2000) conducted research on PSAs to examine the effects of positive and negative emotions on persuasion. The researchers stated that if PSAs evoked feelings such as guilt, happiness, or fear, the message recipient would likely find the PSA more effective.
But for a PSA to truly to effective, it would need to be able to persuade people to change their attitudes.
If a person who does not want to get vaccinated watches the video, would it convince them to get vaccinated? Probably not. The video is the story explaining that a man’s wife died so he felt he should get vaccinated. The PSA does not provide information about how vaccination prevents deaths, or other information that would encourage an anti-vaxer to get the jab.
Changing Attitudes Through Persuasion
Dillard and Peck (2000) state that people used to think that attitudes were very difficult to change, but research has since shown that attitudes do change over time, particularly because people care about what other people think.
To me, this means that people may gradually change their attitudes about certain issues. Perhaps, flooding social media and television ad segments with PSAs about ranchers and farmers who are pro-COVID vaccination could gradually help change hesitant rural people’s attitudes toward the vaccinations. This idea would resonate with people who have studied cultivation theory. Cultivation theory suggests that what we watch on television gradually alters our perceptions and we gradually come to see what we have been watching as a reflection of reality.
Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) suggests that central route for persuasion rests on high levels of elaboration, putting in effort, considering alternatives, and one’s motivation, while the peripheral route relies on appealing to people’s emotions or mental shortcuts, so the effects of this type of persuasion may not be as long-lasting (Yu et al., 2023). The central route can produce long-lasting persuasion, while the peripheral route is often only momentary, not prompting any real action on behalf of the message recipient.
The PSA about the rancher appeals to our emotions, but does not attempt to elaborate or discuss alternative views. The rancher’s motivation for being part of this PSA series appears to be to honor his wife’s memory, rather than to persuade people to get the vaccine.
Affordances and Limitations of Online Streaming Audiences
The Ad Council’s PSA videos are posted on YouTube, which is the second most-visited website on the planet after Google. YouTube is a streaming platform that provides many technological affordances to its users, such as being easy to navigate, and providing audiences with their preferred content based on its algorithms.
This PSA video was probably shared a lot in the widower’s local community, because people would be curious about this family’s story because of their proximity to them. Videos from YouTube are easily shared on social media and through forwarding the link via text message, social media apps, or email to family and friends.
Though a video on YouTube is easily shared far and wide, I do not believe that the content of this PSA is persuasive enough to change anti-vaxers attitudes to the COVID-19 vaccine. Other videos in the series had farmers talking about their expertise in vaccinating their herds being the reason that they are pro-COVID-19 vaccination.
To be persuasive the literature suggests that a video shown to an online streaming audience would need to have cognitive and motivational affordances (Tian et al, 2023). Cognitive affordances would help the audience understand the issue more clearly by increasing their knowledge about an issue, while the motivational affordances would help the audience gain motivation. For example, the audience would decide that it would be beneficial to them in some way to be persuaded by the message.
In my opinion, the current video lacks information to persuade someone that it would be beneficial to change their attitude. This could be due to the limitations of online streaming, whereby the audience can’t directly communicate with the messenger. Thus, additional information that could have helped persuade someone to get vaccinated is not available on demand.
Videos lack the back and forth of interpersonal interactions that can help each party gain insights into the other’s views. Having knowledge of where views differ can make someone who is trying to persuade another better positioned to remove barriers to attitude change.
Further Reading
Dillard, J. P., & Peck, E. (2000). Affect and Persuasion: Emotional Responses to Public Service Announcements. Communication Research, 27(4), 461–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365000027004003
Yu, T., Chen, Y., Luo, X. (2023) How do live-streaming platforms facilitate persuasion in political campaigns? Theory and empirical evidence from the perspective of affordance actualization. Information & Management, (60)3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2023.103775.