DOES DESIGN MATTER IN SOCIAL MEDIA HEALTH CAMPAIGNS? THE EFFECTS OF MESSAGE FRAMING, USE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN PRINCIPLES AND DIALOGIC COMMUNICATION ON ATTENTION AND INTEREST ON INSTAGRAM

Abstract

With the growing popularity of social media, health professionals are gradually looking into using social media as a potential health campaign tool for health promotion and disease prevention endeavours. Yet, there is little research on how to design social media health campaigns to best achieve public health outcomes. The objective of this research is to find out if specific design factors impact attention and interest in an Instagram diabetes campaign message. Therefore, a 2x2x2 experimental research was conducted with three different manipulated conditions: message framing (gain-framed versus loss-framed), use of graphic design principles (strong use versus weak use) and dialogic communication (dialogic versus monologic). The manipulated conditions were incorporated in a randomized experimental survey to measure the effects on the dependent variables of attention and interest as well as the moderating effect of prior knowledge of diabetes. A total of 120 Singaporean Instagram users participated in this experiment. The results revealed significant main effects for message framing, use of graphic design principles and dialogic communication on attention and interest. Additionally, a significant two-way interaction effect between message framing and the use of graphic design principles on attention was discovered. Another important finding of the study is a three-way interaction effect where a combination of a gain-framed message, strong use of graphic design principles and dialogic communication proved to receive more attention. These findings are discussed in terms of literature in areas of public health, design, and social media as well as Singapore’s context. This study contributes specific practical insights into how health professionals should design social media health campaign messages to better engage the public.