This book presents a comprehensive approach for designing messages to influence beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors.
Divided into three sections, each focusing on key components of persuasive message design, the book outlines the conceptual and theoretical foundations for investigating message effects and then goes on to present a working list of message design elements and best practice guidelines for message-focused research design and reporting. It offers an intensive examination of literature from fields including health, environmental and political communication, advertising, and marketing to investigate the content, structure, and format of persuasive messages. The authors establish a common vocabulary for message design and testing, conveying the broad applicability of message design principles.
By focusing extensively on specific aspects of message content, structure, and format that can be drawn on to build persuasive messages for a variety of contexts, this book fills a critical gap in the communication science literature. This book is ideal for social science researchers engaged in persuasive message design research, scholars engaged in graduate education and their students, and practitioners who design campaigns and interventions to promote behavior change.
Table of Contents:
Section I: Foundational Issues in Message Design 1. Conceptual and Methodological Issues 2. Theory 3. Audience, Source, Channel, Behavior Section II: Message Elements 4. Argument 5. Evidence 6. Framing 7. Emotional Appeals 8. Grammar 9. Language Style 10. Rhetorical Strategies 11. Visual 12. Audio Section III: Putting It All Together 13. Message Development 14. Research 15. Practice
About the Author :
Nancy Grant Harrington is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky, USA. Her recent books include Health Communication (2nd ed., Routledge, 2024) and The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication (3rd ed., Routledge, 2022).
Katharine J. Head is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Indiana University Indianapolis, USA. She has published over 90 academic journal articles and book chapters.
Review :
“Having studied and taught health communication and persuasion for 50 years, as well as editing the journal Health Communication for 35 years, I should have been well prepared for the power and value of this new volume on persuasive message design. Nonetheless, it astounded me. Harrington and Head have carefully and critically synthesized a goldmine of research on message design from multiple fields of study in a manner that will prove highly productive for researchers and practitioners and will prompt much development in scholarship and action. This much-needed volume is not only thoroughly grounded in relevant scholarship but is also replete with interesting and helpful examples of messages that make their critique, synthesis, and recommendations clear to readers. The book closes with an especially useful rubric for message design! What is perhaps most unusual is that the book is written in a witty and amusing manner that will reach and interest even the most inattentive student and jaded scholar.”
Teresa L. Thompson, Founding Editor, Health Communication
