Frontiers: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Noncompliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cable news channels—and Fox News in particular—affected the extent to which viewers’ complied with experts’ social distancing guidelines early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Informative campaigning in multidimensional politics: The role of naïve voters

This paper aims to investigate the possibility that electoral campaigning transmits truthful information in a situation where campaigning has a direct persuasive effect on a subset of the electorate called “naïve voters.” To this end, we construct a multi-sender signaling game in which an incumbent and a challenger decide whether to focus on policy or ability in electoral campaigning, and a media outlet then decides whether to gather news. Voters are divided into sophisticated and naïve voters. We demonstrate that a candidate's strategy regarding their issues of focus (campaign messages) can signal his or her private information. Specifically, negative campaigning against the incumbent's ability signals the incumbent's low ability in all separating equilibria. It is also noteworthy that separating equilibria exist only when sophisticated and naïve voters coexist. This implies that a fraction of naïve voters has a non-monotonic effect on the possibility of transmitting truthful information.

A complex mode of screen translation: the case of advertisements on Spanish television

This study on the translation of television commercials explores several aspects of this very specific audiovisual translation subtype. Firstly, it looks into dubbing and the language policies on Spanish television, which are issues affecting the decisions on the translation of television advertisements. Secondly, it approaches the notion of a TV ‘spot’ as an audiovisual text whose main components, image and sound, form a cohesive unity that is meant to trigger a persuasive effect, but may vary in translation. Finally, it analyses an example of a television spot, in English and in Spanish, focusing on the manipulation of the text when it is translated for Spanish television channels.

Framing Effects and Evidence Type: Influence on the Persuasive Effect of Myopia Prevention Messages Among Elementary School Students in China

Background: The myopia is a public health issue that attracts much attention. However, limited attention has been paid to the effect of primary school students' acceptance of health messages. Previous studies have found that framing effects and evidence types influence the persuasive effect of messages.Purpose: This study explored whether framing effects and evidence type influence the persuasive effect of myopia prevention messages among elementary school students and the influence of children's myopia prevention cognition was considered.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1,493 elementary school students aged 9 to 13 in China from May to July 2020 by convenience sampling. Wilcoxon signed-rank test and multinomial logistic regression were used for data analysis.Results: Significant differences were found in the persuasive effect between statistical and non-statistical evidence messages (p < 0.001). Among non-statistical evidence messages, gain-framed messages showed a greater persuasive effect than loss-framed messages (p < 0.001). Among statistical evidence messages, loss-framed messages performed better than gain-framed messages (p < 0.001). Children's myopia prevention cognition exerted no significant effect on the persuasive effect of the messages (p > 0.05).Conclusion: This study demonstrated the influence of framing effect on the persuasive effect of myopia prevention messages among children aged 9 to 13 in China. Non-statistical evidence messages showed a better persuasive effect than statistical evidence messages. Different types of evidence influenced the persuasive effect of gain- and loss- framed messages. These findings have implications for strategies more or less likely to work in making myopia prevention messages for children.

The processing and evaluation of news content on social media is influenced by peer-user commentary

Contemporary news often spreads via social media. This study investigated whether the processing and evaluation of online news content can be influenced by Likes and peer-user comments. An online experiment was designed, using a custom-built website that resembled Facebook, to explore how Likes, positive comments, negative comments, or a combination of positive and negative comments would affect the reader’s processing of news content. The results showed that especially negative comments affected the readers’ personal opinions about the news content, even in combination with other positive comments: They (1) induced more negative attitudes, (2) lowered intent to share it, (3) reduced agreement with conveyed ideas, (4) lowered perceived attitude of the general public, and (5) decreased the credibility of the content. Against expectations, the presence of Likes did not affect the readers, irrespective of the news content. An important consideration is that, while the negative comments were persuasive, they comprised subjective, emotive, and fallacious rhetoric. Finally, negativity bias, the perception of expert authority, and cognitive heuristics are discussed as potential explanations for the persuasive effect of negative comments.

Totality of Means of Interaction with the Reader in the Footnotes of A.D. Cantemir to the Russian Translation of Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds

The article deals with functional totality of means of interaction with the reader in the footnotes by A.D. Cantemir to his Russian translation of Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. The content, the language and the genre of the footnotes prove them to be addressed to the Russian reader. On the linguistic level, it is expressed by actualization of modus categories and metatextual means that do not only point at the addresser indirectly, but also highlight the reader’s figure in the footnotes’ text. Actualization of modus categories allows Cantemir to bring him closer to the reader in the same textual space and time, whereas metatextual units control the reader’s attention by structuring information. Interaction of these linguistic means within the text of footnotes provides interaction between Cantemir and the Russian reader: their common space and time increase the persuasive effect of explanations and examples introduced by metatextual means.

Semantic deviation in Arabic and English proverbs of love

Proverbs are a type of idiomatic expressions that are commonly used in everyday spoken language. They concisely and figuratively summarize everyday experiences and common observations (Borowska, 2014). The proverbs of love often contain various stylistic features that are worthy of analysis. The present paper hypothesizes that semantic deviations in the Arabic and English proverbs of love facilitate pleasurable and enjoyable delivery of the didactic messages conveyed by these proverbs and maximize their persuasive effects. Semantic deviations (such as simile, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche) represent an important type of stylistic deviation in proverbs because of their figurative features and aesthetic values. Such stylistic devices make the content of these proverbs more appealing the audience and maximize the persuasive effect of their contents. This study examined 50 proverbs of love (25 in each language) from stylistic perspective, based on the semantic deviation model developed by Leech (1969). The analysis showed that the extensive use of various types of semantic deviations maximize the persuasive effects, and eventually efficient transmission of cultural wisdom. Additionally, such deviations were found to reinforce and facilitates the pleasurable delivery of the didactic function of proverbs.