The effects of narrative transportation and character identification on persuasion in the medium of comics
Date
2017
Authors
Minich, Matt, author
Plaisance, Patrick, advisor
Christen, Cindy, advisor
Lacy, Michael, committee member
Journal Title
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Abstract
Though narrative messages have been used to persuade audiences for centuries, scholars have only recently begun to investigate the mechanisms behind the narrative persuasion process from a media effects perspective. Research has indicated that the processing of persuasion through narrative differs from the processing of persuasion through rhetorical messages (Slater & Rouner, 2002). Several models of the narrative persuasion process have emerged in the past 15 years (e.g., Slater & Rouner, 2002; Moyer-Guse, 2008; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009), but no one is yet preferred among scholars. This study tested the extended-Elaboration Likelihood Model (Slater & Rouner, 2002), which posits that narrative persuasion is the result of engagement with a narrative and its characters, as applied to comics that address a local controversy: hydraulic fracturing or "fracking". A group of 236 undergraduate CSU students participated in a 2x2 pre-test/post-test experimental design, in which subjects were presented with one of two persuasive comics (one pro-fracking, one anti-fracking) and levels Narrative Transportation, Character Identification, and Persuasion were assessed. Statistically significant levels of Persuasion were reported by those subjects presented with the anti-fracking comic, but a regression model did not find that Narrative Transportation or Character Identification predicted Persuasion to a statistically significant degree. Though their validity is limited in some ways, these findings suggest that the e-ELM may not adequately explain the narrative persuasion process in the context of comics.