Cultivating Campaign Outcomes Through a Cooperative Media Environment: Increasing Issue Salience to Improve Perceptions of Campaigns to Prevent Sexual Violence

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: Evaluating Communication Campaigns and Mechanisms of Effects

Abstract

A two-part study was used to test the Societal Risk Reduction Model prediction that the broader media environment increases the effectiveness of mass-media campaigns through mobilizing audiences to address a salient problem. Study one (N = 333) provides cross-sectional evidence that the issue salience of sexual violence mediates the ability of a popular television program (Law and Order Special Victims Unit) to reduce rape myth acceptance (i.e. denial of sexual violence). Part two (N = 89) then manipulates the salience of sexual violence through exposure to SVU or a control episode. We then tested a serial mediation model revealing that exposure to SVU increased the salience of sexual violence, leading to more systematic processing of a subsequent rape prevention campaign, and greater perceived effectiveness of the campaign message. Implications for the media environment’s role in increasing the issue salience of campaign topics to increase message effectiveness are discussed.

Authors

• Nathan Aaron Silver, The Ohio State U

• Dinah Adams, The Ohio State University