Director Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, and researchers Frances Barg, PhD, Carolyn Cannuscio, ScD, Amy Jordan, PhD, and Jason Karlawish, MD, discuss their approaches to health behavior change research in a video about research methods at the UPenn PRC.
PRC Communication and Dissemination Core Director Amy Jordan presided over the 66th Annual International Communication Association Conference held in Fukuoka Japan from June 9th to 13th. Her presidential address, entitled “Digital Media Use and the Experience of Childhood”, argued that it is essential to include less visible, marginalized, and refugee children as we seek to understand the role media can play in children’s development.
Dr. Jordan and colleagues in the Children, Adolescent, and Media Division celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the Journal of Children and Media.
Left to right: Sun Sun Lim (National University of Singapore), Sonia Livingstone (London School of Economics), Dafna Lemish (Southern Illinois University), Jan van den Buick (University of Leuven), Moniek Bujzien (Radboud University Nijmegen), Renee Hobbs (University of Rhode Island), Claudia Riesmeyer (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), Michael Rich (Boston Children’s Hospital), Ellen Wartella (Northwestern University), Srivi Ramasubramanian (Texas A & M University), Amy Jordan (University of Pennsylvania) and Vicky Rideout (VJR Consulting).
UPenn PRC Core Lead and Researcher, Amy Jordan, PhD, was invited to speak at the dedication of The Elihu Katz Collection in Communication Studies at the Zalman Aranne Central Library of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Elihu Katz, PhD, Distinguished Trustee Professor of Communication, retired from The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2014. The title of her talk was “Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants: Media use and Generational Identity.”
Dr. Jordan holds a teaching appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also Director of Graduate Student Professional Development. She is the 2015-2016 President of the International Communication Association.
UPenn PRC’s Amy Jordan PhD, Amy Bleakley, PhD, MPH, Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH, and Andrew Strasser, PhD, using a novel experimental approach, identifying the effectiveness of distinct persuasive strategies used in audiovisual (television-format) public service advertisements (PSAs) designed to encourage parents to reduce their children’s sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption. Evaluation of existing SSB-related PSAs is vitally important because it can provide insight into which persuasive appeals are most effective for audiences, particularly those most at risk for overweight and obesity
Their findings suggest that anti-SSB campaigns targeting parents should include strong arguments for sugar-sweetened beverage reduction, invoke feelings of empowerment and hope, and be clearly directed at distinct parent audiences. At the same time the authors recognize that while individual actions may be helpful, the obesogenic environment that surrounds children may subvert even the most involved and well-intentioned parents. Appeals to personal parenting responsibility should be made in concert with efforts to create healthier structural, nutritional, and preventative environments.
Read the article here.
Jordan A, Bleakley A, Hennessy M, Vaala S, Glanz K, Strasser AA. Sugar-Sweetened Beverage-Related Public Service Advertisements and Their Influence on Parents. American Behavioral Scientist. 2015;59(14):1847-1865.
A new study at Penn has been published in the Journal of Health Communication. PRC researchers Amy Bleakley, Amy Jordan, Karen Glanz, and Andrew Strasser, were the first to test the effect of persuasive strategies used in public service ad campaigns aimed at sugar-sweetened beverages, which include non-diet soda, sports and energy drinks, sweetened teas and fruit drinks.
The researchers found that public service advertisements (PSAs) appealing to fear – and warning of the health consequences of too much sugar, such as obesity, diabetes, amputations, cancer, and heart disease – had the greatest effect on teens’ intention to cut back on sugary drinks. The study also examined ads that appealed to humor and to nurturance (protective, parental instincts).
The fear-based ads worked directly to influence the adolescents’ intentions, as well as indirectly by affecting the perceived strength of the message. All three kinds of emotional appeals – fear, humor, and nurturance – affected other emotions and cognitions as well, but not all of those were shown to be related to teens’ intention to cut back on sugary drinks.
Read the study here.
Bleakley A, Jordan A, Hennessy M, Glanz K, Strasser A and Vaala S. Do Emotional Appeals in Public Service Advertisements Influence Adolescents’ Intention to Reduce Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages? Journal of Health Comm, Jun 2015, online, 938-948.
Dr. Amy B. Jordan, lead of the UPenn PRC Communication and Dissemination Core, assumes the Presidency of the International Communication Association.
