Persuasion in Covid-19 health messages on social media: A case study of China

Abstract

This study aims to examine persuasion strategies used in the Covid-19 prevention messages to find out what type of persuasive messages the government agencies and civil organizations in China used to promote to their target audiences, and whether both organizations used them differently. With the use of purposive sampling, health prevention messages published by 10 Weibo accounts of government officials and 10 Weibo accounts of private organizations during January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020 were quantitatively analyzed based on six persuasion strategies proposed by Ojanen (1996). The analysis results revealed that significant differences in the use of persuasion strategies were used by both government offices and private organizations to varying degrees. Government offices used more "Coercion", “Threat”, “Offer” and “Guidance” strategies than private organizations. And private organizations used more "Appeal" and “Appreciation” strategies than government departments. These findings provide useful implications not only for communication scholars and practitioners, but also for organizations responsible for disease prevention.