Exploring metaphor's communicative effects in reasoning on vaccination

Chambers that echo hate, bubbles that distill fear: the constitution of Self and intolerance as roots of disinformation

Illusion and truth acquire indistinct faces in the virtual environment: xenophobia, misogyny and homophobia - among other systematic failures of discernment due to anger - are recurrent vices in the mass traffic of social networks. We witness physical and virtual "Justices" by people who appear and disappear due to intense and temporary hatred. This review-essay articulates theories in three segments: Genealogies in the psychic constitution: idea of threat to the "natural order", uncertainties and misinformation generating meanings, exploitation of resentments to alleviate impotence. Mediations: "echo chambers", "bubble filters" and adherence algorithms to bring together the resentful and disoriented. Political and health developments: ethics indifferent to deception, fanning intolerance with profits, publicizing insults, controversies and rejection of engagement, niches of political power and consequences for democracies and global health security. As conclusions, new and monumental challenges stand out in an increasingly hostile and incomprehensible mediosphere, as well as the urgent need for environments permeated by full communication.

Seatbelts and raincoats, or banks and castles: Investigating the impact of vaccine metaphors

While metaphors are frequently used to address misconceptions and hesitancy about vaccines, it is unclear how effective they are in health messaging. Using a between-subject, pretest/posttest design, we investigated the impact of explanatory metaphors on people's attitudes toward vaccines. We recruited participants online in the US (N = 301) and asked them to provide feedback on a (fictional) health messaging campaign, which we organized around responses to five common questions about vaccines. All participants completed a 24-item measure of their attitudes towards vaccines before and after evaluating the responses to the five questions. We created three possible response passages for each vaccine question: two included extended explanatory metaphors, and one contained a literal response (i.e., no explanatory metaphors). Participants were randomly assigned to receive either all metaphors or all 'literal' responses. They rated each response on several dimensions and then described how they would answer the target question about vaccines if it were posed by a friend. Results showed participants in both conditions rated most messages as being similarly understandable, informative, and persuasive, with a few notable exceptions. Participants in both conditions also exhibited a similar small-but significant-increase in favorable attitudes towards vaccines from pre- to posttest. Notably, participants in the metaphor condition provided longer free-response answers to the question posed by a hypothetical friend, with different metaphors being reused to different extents and in different ways in their responses. Taken together, our findings suggest that: (a) Brief health messaging passages may have the potential to improve attitudes towards vaccines, (b) Metaphors neither enhance nor reduce this attitude effect, (c) Metaphors may be more helpful than literal language in facilitating further social communication about vaccines.