Chapter published in:
Science Communication in Times of Crisis
Edited by Pascal Hohaus
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 96] 2022
► pp. 119–142

Chapter 6
Persuasion in health communication

The case of Saudi and Australian tweets on COVID-19 vaccination

| College of Humanities & Sciences, Prince Sultan University

This study examined the persuasive strategies employed by the Saudi and Australian departments of health to encourage the public to take the COVID-19 vaccines. I analysed 200 tweets using an adaptation of Dontcheva-Navratilova, Adam, Povolná and Vogel’s (2020) model of persuasion. The results showed that Australian tweets included significantly more logos strategies while the Saudi tweets were the only ones that employed pathos strategies. As for ethos, the Saudi and Australian tweets included similar numbers of appeals although their use of the relevant strategies varied. A qualitative analysis of the tweets revealed additional differences, such as more frequent use of questions by Australians, more frequent use of performatives by Saudis and the inclusion of religious discourse in the Saudi tweets.

Keywords: persuasion, health communication, COVID-19, social media, culture
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical background
  • Literature review
  • Methodology
    • Data collection
    • Data coding
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 10 August 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.96.06eld
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