| With the improvement of people’s material living standard and the popularization of health knowledge,health communication has become one of the hot research directions in the academic field of journalism,communication and public health.For the general public,researches on health communication can help optimize the content and the form of health communication and promote the popularization of health knowledge;for academics,researches on health communication can help enhance the effectiveness of health communication and improve the supply of health communication content and its system construction;for the state and society,researches on health communication can help explore efficient methods and channels to improve the health literacy of the whole population and help implement the Healthy China 2030 Plan.The emergence and development of new media have greatly enriched people’s lives and gradually become a non-negligible driving force of contemporary health communication.Among various new media platforms,WeChat official accounts have gradually grown into a health communication channel with high communication power and high professionalism in China,by virtue of their large user base,wide communication range and strong interactivity,and have been paid a lot of attention and studied by health communication scholars.Among them,WeChat official accounts of pharmaceutical enterprises have not received much research so far due to the fact that they do not account for the mainstream.However,due to the professional support of pharmaceutical enterprises,their WeChat official accounts are characterized by strength in knowledge,closeness to the frontier and wide coverage of diseases;on the other hand,the commercial nature of pharmaceutical enterprises leads to their complexity and peculiarity in the field of health communication,which have become their unique research value.Carl Hovland’s persuasion theory holds that there are two persuasive strategies in media messages: fact appeal and fear appeal.In the field of health communication,fact appeal strategy is to present objective information about the prevalence,mortality,symptoms and treatment of a disease,while fear appeal strategy is usually the description of the pain and the physical and psychological damage caused by a disease,or the description of possible serious consequences of a disease by people who haven’t experienced it.In health communication,fear appeal strategy are often used to enhance persuasion effects in order to achieve better health communication effects.However,previous studies have shown that excessive use of fear appeal strategy may lead to excessive fear in the audience,which may lead to resistance to subsequent preventive measures or loss of hope and abandonment of positive health behaviors,ultimately resulting in the failure of health communication.Therefore,how to use fear appealing strategy to optimize health communication content and methods and to achieve better health communication effects has become an issue in academic field.The extended parallel process model is a classic model in the field of health communication.It argues that after receiving health information,the audience will assess the severity of the disease and their own ability to resist the disease,and only when they believe they have the ability to resist the disease will they assess the subsequent prevention.If the audience believes that taking the subsequent prevention can help them resist the disease,they will actively prevent or treat it,which is to adopt the risk control behaviour,and in this case,health communication effect is achieved.Based on Hofland’s persuasion theory and the extended parallel process model,this study uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze the media contact behavior of pharmaceutical companies’WeChat official accounts,to explore the correlation between demographic factors and health communication effects.Taking the WeChat official accounts of Merck Sharp&Dohme“默沙东中国”as an example,the study analyzes how it uses the persuasive strategies of media message to realize health communication,how are its health communication effects and what are the implications it brings to the health communication of other WeChat official accounts.The main findings of this study include:i Under the extended parallel process model,age,education and professional background are correlated with health communication effectiveness,while gender and living area are not.ii“默沙东中国”effectively enhanced the audience’s perceived threat and their response efficacy in perceived efficacy,prompting the majority of the audience to adopt risk control behaviour,which means that its health communication effects are generally good;however,the effect of boosting the audience’s self-efficacy is insufficient and needs to be improved.iii The effectiveness of health communication by resorting to fear appeal strategy is significant,but only if the intensity is properly controlled,and if its content is ensured to be scientific and professional to gain the audience’s recognition and trust in its fear appeal message.Based on the results of the analysis,this study summarizes the implications for health communication of WeChat official accounts:(1)Rational use of fear appeal strategy to ensure scientific and interesting content,balancing perceived threat level and risk control.(2)Enhance health confidence,reduce resistance to disease prevention,and improve user self-efficacy.(3)Strengthen the quality of content to meet the needs of a broader audience,and to realize a wider and more sustainable health communication. |
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