The use of tropes (e.g., metaphors, ellipsis) in messages from health mass media campaigns may spark conversations. Tropes require additional cognitive elaboration to arrive at the intended interpretation, thereby providing the audience with ''the pleasure of text.'' This characteristic makes them useful for conversations in which ads are used to demonstrate one's interpretation abilities or to strengthen group identity through a shared appreciation of ads. Tropes can thus stimulate people to think and talk about information they might otherwise ignore. As a result, this information is primed, increasing the chance that it will influence relevant behavior. At the same time, the use of tropes may have undesirable side effects, such as yielding incomprehension or misunderstanding of the message's meaning.
The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that classical concept theories and hybrids thereof are empirically inadequate for the terminological analysis and description of concepts in a number of sciences. Examples of the classification and definition of minerals in the field of mineralogy are used to illustrate that the defining features of mineral species are typically the attributes of prototype categories; i.e., they are, amongst others, culturally, perceptually, and bodily based, idealized and essentially interactional and functional in nature. Furthermore, it is argued that classification in mineralogy is founded on an experientialist rather than an objectivist epistemology. These factors strengthen the argument for a prototype approach to concept analysis not only in the humanities and the social sciences but also in the so-called natural and pure sciences.
Media-based campaigns are critical tools in changing the behaviours that are fuelling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. However, given the absence of an effective behaviour-change response in the face of the epidemic, many have come to doubt the efficacy of these campaigns. Campaign designers who profess to using best-practice principles in designing HIV/AIDS campaigns also report that although some of these campaigns book changes in beliefs and attitudes, they seldom have a significant effect on the behaviours that are fuelling t/ie epidemic. Thi s situation raises a number of general questions with regard to South African HIV/AIDS campaigns: How effective are media-based campaigns in general in changing health-related behaviours? Are South African HIV/AIDS campaigns successful or not? If not, why not, and what could be done to optimise their efficacy? What aspects of South African HIV/AIDS campaigns contribute to their efficacy and could be up-scaled in future campaigns?Thi s article provides a critical analysis of the processes followed in the design of the Living Positively Campaign and of the design features of the messaging of the booklet living positively with HIV and AIDS. Thi s analysis clearly indicates that despite claims by campaign designers of adherence to bestpractice heuristics, very few of them are implemented in the design of HIV/AIDS campaigns.
This study investigates the persuasive power and cultural appropriateness of a personal agent in websites intended to persuade university students to go for Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT). Three versions of the same website were presented to Dutch and South African university students. The results show that visual personalization had more effect than verbal cues and that South African students estimated all versions of the websites as more persuasive than Dutch students. The huge intercultural differences make clear that personalization cues can be effective in sensitive health-related communication. The results stress the importance of cross-cultural research in developing culturally appropriate websites.
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