The study examined the psychological drivers of information-seeking behaviors during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Employing a two-wave (from April 16, 2020, to April 27, 2020) survey design (N = 381), the study confirmed that both risk perceptions and uncertainty were important antecedents to information seeking and that their effects were linked to emotional appraisals of the risk situation. Findings revealed nuanced relationships between these two constructs and emotional appraisals. Danger appraisal was positively associated with perceived susceptibility and susceptibility uncertainty but negatively related to severity uncertainty; hope appraisal depended on the interaction between uncertainty and risk perceptions. Implications of the study findings on risk and health communication were discussed.

In the strategic communication field, native advertising has been hailed as the next big trend. However, this type of marketing technique may negatively affect the perceptions of brands as well as media outlets that provide such content due to its obscurity of persuasive intent and ambiguity of the content source. The current study examined these issues by conducting a 2 (priming: presence vs. absence) × 2 (media credibility: high vs. low) × 2 (corporate credibility: high vs. low) factorial between-subjects experiment. A total of 500 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the online experiment. Findings suggested that priming of native advertising information would significantly improve users’ ad recognition and change their content perception. In addition, a series of three-way interaction effects suggested that the interaction between the two types of source credibility (media and corporate) tend to work as a function of priming of native advertising information, which could completely change individuals’ perception of the ad content and evaluation of the media source in the future, but not their future corporate evaluation. Important theoretical as well as practical implications have also been discussed in this article.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of message source and types of corporate social responsibility (CSR) message on stakeholder’s perception toward CSR and behavioral intention toward the company. Design/methodology/approach: A 2 (message source: CEO’s Facebook account vs organization’s Facebook account) × 3 (types of CSR messages: internal CSR vs external CSR vs control) between-subjects online experiment (n=242) was conducted online. Findings: Internal CSR message elicited greater perceptions of trust, satisfaction, control mutuality, and commitment toward the organization among the stakeholders than the external CSR message and the CEO’s personal life message. A significant two-way interaction between the message source and the type of CSR message on behavior intention toward the organization was obtained. Originality/value: Internal CSR message does matter when it comes to social media posting. The general public do pay attention to what the CEO and the organizations are posting on their social media accounts. Message source does not matter when it comes to social media message posting. However, organizations and CEOs should try to stay consistent when it comes to creating a public CSR message.

The study examined the effects of message format (narrative vs. nonnarrative) and correction mechanism (social vs. algorithmic correction) in correcting e-cigarette related misinformation on social media. Two experimental studies were conducted. In study 1, correction mechanisms explicitly endorsed the message corrective (n = 235). As an explicit endorsement may reveal persuasive intent and influence narrative persuasion, Study 2 replicated the design and employed a manipulation for correction mechanism with a more implicit endorsement (n = 235). Findings generally suggest that nonnarrative correction is more effective when it is suggested by social media contacts; narrative correction may have merit when it is prompted by algorithms with explicit endorsement. Credibility evaluations and narrative transportation highlight the psychological mechanisms for understanding this interaction effect.