ABSTRACT

Message diffusion is associated with ‘going viral’ that many communicators strive for in spreading their words. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) provides a framework for the current study to understand the effects of emotions generated from a message on persuasion – how high- and low-effort processes of comprehending information influence people's decision in spreading societal issue-related Facebook posts. The researcher conducted a survey experiment to explore the effects of emotional response to societal issues on message diffusion. The findings suggest individuals’ diffusion decisions depend on issue controversy considering their imagined audience. Emotions trigger both cognitive and heuristic processing of information. The results reveal that message elaboration mediates the effects of both positive and negative emotion arousal on diffusing moderate-controversial issues to the more symmetrical audience. Positive and negative emotions were only directly associated with diffusion high-controversial issues to the symmetrical audience via Facebook. Theoretical contributions to ELM and practical implication of strategic communications were discussed.

摘要

消息传播与许多传播者在传播他们的话语时所追求的“病毒式传播”有关。细化似然模型 (ELM) 为当前的研究提供了一个框架，以了解信息产生的情绪对说服力的影响——理解信息的费力和费力的过程如何影响人们传播与社会问题相关的 Facebook 帖子的决定。研究人员进行了一项调查实验，以探索对社会问题的情绪反应对信息传播的影响。研究结果表明，考虑到他们想象的受众，个人的传播决定取决于问题争议。情绪触发信息的认知和启发式处理。结果表明，信息阐述在将适度有争议的问题传播给更对称的受众方面调节了积极和消极情绪唤起的影响。正面和负面情绪仅与通过 Facebook 向对称受众传播高争议问题直接相关。讨论了对 ELM 的理论贡献和战略沟通的实际意义。