- Message #1: Uses a fear-inducing message. It explains all of the negative consequences that can occur as a result of binge drinking. The negative consequences (such as possible car accidents, health risks, loss of license, etc.) are likely to occur if the individual does not drink responsibly. If an individual does not engage in binge drinking, it is likely that the negative consequences will not occur. There are also specific steps that can be followed, such as setting a limit of how many drinks you will have in one night, not playing drinking games (a form of binge drinking), which is likely to make a person drink more than they normally would.
- Message #2: Uses a simple message, paired with distractors in order to induce peripheral route processing. Peripheral route processing is when an individual barely thinks about the message and makes a snap decision. One way of achieving this is by using distractors. In our message, we decided to use several pictures of car crashes in order to distract the viewer and used the simple message of "Don't Binge Drink." This makes the viewer really pay attention to the images and jsut simply accept the message for what it is.
- Message #3: Uses a complex, two-sided message in order to appeal to central route processing. Central route processing involves thinking a lot about the message and then making a decision. We decided to use common myths about binge drinking (one side) and then disprove the myths (the other side). This will force the person to think about the message a lot, because it is probably things that they have been told in the past and believed to be true and finding out that they are not will hopefully make them look at binge drinking differently.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Explanation of Messages - Peripheral & Central Route Processing
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Though binge drinking is an overwhelming problem in our society that often leads to catastrophes, casual drinking can potentially have the same lethal outcome. Understandably, the whole point behind binge drinking is to get drunk quickly by an enormous intake of alcohol in a very short period, but so is casual drinking, since you can get as drunk just over a longer amount of time.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I absolutely agree that binge drinking is a prevalent problem among college students as well as in our society. Since this type of drinking has been dramatically on the rise these past two decades, I think it’s important to construct more efficient ways for prevention and awareness programs to illustrate the consequences of drinking.
Some people might be skeptical as to how efficient getting a point across to college students is. Well, this blog demonstrates well enough that there are in fact efficient ways of doing so. We all know that getting the point across with college students about drinking tends to be a difficult task, since most students are constantly surrounded with alcohol. Nonetheless, we cannot give up on opening the minds of our future generations to the negative effects of alcohol consumption. Interestingly, in your blog, you created different types of messages about binge drinking directed to college students. While most of these seemed effective, I found the explanations of the messages to be most intriguing. I think it is as important to understand how you can reach out to students as well as what you reach them with in order to efficiently illustrate the dangers of drinking. Nonetheless, you do a great job showing how to do so throughout your entire blog.