Unraveling the Dark Side of Social Norms-Toward a Research Agenda on the Challenges of Social Norms in Health Communication.

Social norms are a promising means in health crisis communication because they can guide collective action to reduce risk. However, recent research on the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that social norms may have not fully supported strategic goals and even contributed to phenomena that hindered risk reduction, calling into question the potential of social norms campaigns. This became most evident during the COVID-19 pandemic in the emergence of alternative norms of measure opposition, stigmatization of norm-deviant individuals, and the issue of free-riding. The article analyzes these phenomena from a social identity and communication perspective and outlines areas for further inquiry in health and crisis communication. The goal is to pave the way for a research agenda dedicated to the dark side of social norms to unlock the full potential of social norms in times of (health) crisis.

The Effects of Alcohol-Related Social Media Content on Adolescents' Momentary Perceived Norms, Attitudes, and Drinking Intentions.

Research has shown that exposure to alcohol posts on social media can shape adolescents' alcohol-related normative perceptions and attitudes, which in turn play a role in their drinking intentions. However, these studies focused on content in general, neglecting the variety of alcohol posts on social media. Furthermore, they were mostly cross-sectional and studied behaviors at one-time point, thus not considering within-person/daily (co-)fluctuations in exposure to alcohol posts and drinking cognitions. Therefore, this daily diary study among 275 Belgian adolescents (Mage = 15.83, SD = .88, 56.2% girls, 43% boys, 1 X) adds to the literature by examining how two types of alcohol posts (i.e. alcohol-focused vs. friend-focused) differently predict adolescents' normative perceptions (i.e. descriptive and injunctive), alcohol-related attitudes and intentions to drink, both on the between- and daily within-levels. The results showed that alcohol-focused posts but not friend-focused posts predicted adolescents' drinking cognitions (i.e. injunctive norms, descriptive norms, and attitudes) on the daily within-level. Descriptive norms and attitudes also predicted the intention to drink, on the between and daily within-level for attitudes but only on the daily within-level for norms. Overall, the results highlight that specific types of alcohol posts differently shape adolescents' daily drinking cognitions, thereby informing future interventions.

COVID-19 vaccination and changes in preventive behaviours: findings from the 2021 vaccine roll-out in Switzerland.

BACKGROUND: Behavioural, environmental, social and systems interventions (BESSIs) remain important for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to vaccination. However, people's adoption of BESSIs may decrease as vaccination rates increase due to reductions in the perceived threat of disease, and changes in risk perceptions of behaviours that increase the chance of infection. Thus, we examined predictors of and changes over time in reports of mask wearing and physical distancing and whether changes in mask wearing and physical distancing differed by vaccination status during the main 2021 COVID-19 vaccine roll-out period in Switzerland. METHODS: Weekly online cross-sectional surveys (26 April 2021 to 1 August 2021) among people 18-79 years old in Switzerland, N = 6308 observations and 5511 cases. Logistic regression models using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS: Reports of being vaccinated increased, while mask wearing and physical distancing decreased over time. This decrease was similar regardless of vaccination status. However, the level of reported mask wearing and physical distancing remained higher among vaccinated people. Older, female, and Italian language region respondents also had higher odds of reporting mask wearing and physical distancing. CONCLUSIONS: Adoption of COVID-19 preventive behaviours is associated with demographics and vaccination status. Further research is needed to understand the reasons why people who are not vaccinated are less likely to adopt preventive behaviours, including that they may have fewer social and environmental opportunities to do so.

Social Distancing during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Switzerland: Health Protective Behavior in the Context of Communication and Perceptions of Efficacy, Norms, and Threat.

The success of health protection measures depends on public compliance. This paper aims to understand the influence of three different types of communication (i.e., news media, social media, and interpersonal communication) on people's engagement in health protective behavior during a public health crisis. Our C-ENT model of health protective behavior proposes that communication raises perceptions of efficacy, norms, and threat, which in turn influence health protective behavior (communication → efficacy, norms, threat: C-ENT). We test the model for the case of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a representative online survey during the first week of the lockdown in Switzerland (N = 1005). The results support the C-ENT model and illustrate the important role of communication engagement during a public health crisis. News media use was associated with perceptions of behavior-related efficacy and norms and disease-related threat, and these perceptions were positively associated with compliance with social distancing. Social media use and interpersonal communication were related with perceived norms. Social media use was negatively and interpersonal communication positively associated with health behavior-supporting normative perceptions. Our findings suggest taking the distinct pattern among communication types (i.e., news media, social media, and interpersonal communication), perceptions, and behavior into account in order to understand existing dependencies and design respective communication strategies.

Drinking Buddies: The Importance of Proximal Norms in Emerging Adults' Alcohol-Related Private and Public Social Media Use.

Exposure to alcohol posts on social media has been found to be associated with emerging adults' alcohol use. An important mechanism through which this association seems to occur are social norms. Thus far, however, research has not differentiated between proximal and distal norms and has not accounted for the private (e.g. Instagram private features, Snapchat) and public media outlets (e.g. Instagram public features) through which these norms might have been constructed. The results of our online survey among emerging adults (N = 789, Mage = 21.46, SDage = 1.88, 56.4% female), therefore, showed that exposure to alcohol posts on private SNS features in combination with descriptive proximal norms, instead of more public SNS features and distal norms, played an important role in emerging adults' alcohol use. As such, future research should focus more thoroughly on the interrelations between SNS private features and proximal normative perceptions and try to better understand on which social cues normative perceptions of proximal other's alcohol consumption are based.

Social Media Use in the Context of Drinking Onset: The Mutual Influences of Social Media Effects and Selectivity.

The article aims to provide a profound understanding of the multifaceted role of adolescents' social media use in the context of drinking onset. It differentiates between exposure and sharing effects from social media content on drinking behavior and, conversely, exposure to and sharing of alcohol-related content due to drinking in the initiation phase of regular alcohol consumption. We tested our hypotheses based on a two-wave survey among adolescents aged 13 to 17 and focused on those who had not yet been regular drinkers at the first wave of data collection (n = 406). Based on a cross-lagged panel model, we found that exposure to alcohol-related content (exposure effect) as well as the sharing of such content (sharing effect) affected drinking behavior, and that drinking behavior resulted in the sharing of alcohol-related content on social media (selective sharing). We discuss a self-concept verification spiral at the individual level and a social influence spiral at the social level to assess possible risk-reinforcing dynamics.

Driven to succeed: Improving adolescents' driving behaviors through a personal narrative-based psychosocial intervention in Serbia.

Globally, more adolescents die from road traffic fatalities than from any other cause, and males are significantly more vulnerable than females. Driver education interventions directed at males are less likely to succeed than those directed at females, and stronger optimistic bias and overconfidence bias have been implicated as likely reasons. We report results from a quasi-experiment conducted in Serbia, targeting male and female adolescents. Stratified by size, forty schools were randomly assigned to either a personal-narrative intervention or a no-intervention control arm. Data were collected before the intervention (N = 1449) and again six months later (N = 1072). Risk perceptions improved for both males and females, and injunctive norms improved for females. Improvements in overconfidence bias and descriptive norms were predictive of improvements in high-risk driving behaviors. A significant interaction between improvements in injunctive norms and the intervention revealed that males whose injunctive norms improved were significantly more likely to be affected by the intervention, compared to the other groups. Implications for interventions are discussed.

Tailoring in risk communication by linking risk profiles and communication preferences: The case of speeding of young car drivers.

Speeding is one of the most relevant risk behaviors for serious and fatal accidents, particularly among young drivers. This study presents a tailoring strategy for anti-speeding communication. By referring to their motivational dispositions toward speeding derived from motivational models of health behavior, young car drivers were segmented into different risk groups. In order to ensure that risk communication efforts would actually be capable to target these groups, the linkage between the risk profiles and communication preferences were explored. The study was conducted on the basis of survey data of 1168 German car drivers aged between 17 and 24 years. The data reveal four types of risk drivers significantly differing in their motivational profiles. Moreover, the findings show significant differences in communication habits and media use between these risk groups. By linking the risk profiles and communication preferences, implications for tailoring strategies of road safety communication campaigns are derived. Promising segmentation and targeting strategies are discussed also beyond the current case of anti-speeding campaigns.