Wrapping up Message Strategies and the End of Module 3

I think the topics for this week were very important for health promotion practice, including framing, identity building, branding, etc. I thought that the readings and some of the student presentations related to this module were insightful, however, I would have liked more lecture time on these topics. I think framing messages is really important to understand when working on or implementing health promotion campaigns. The reading last week about gain- and loss-framed messages helped to define some of the basic concepts, and I think that will help me in the second group project. I also think these concepts make a good starting point for novice health promoters such as us in order to start building messages before we try them out with our target audience. I liked the graphics and examples in the lecture, but I would have liked a bit more expansion on them. For example, why is this a good illustration of an emotional message, how has the research shown this type of message to be beneficial, and with what kinds of audiences? In what other contexts would this also be a good example? For most of the examples given in class, it is easy for most of us to decipher the obvious message, but what is the depth behind it?

In terms of our group project on energy drink consumption, I'm having a hard time determining what our behavior is and how to frame it. We want to define 'over-consumption' and find out who's over-consuming EDs and why so that we can decrease consumption. So, our target behavior is ED consumption prevention or reduction? If our target behavior is prevention then we would want to focus on gain-framed messages by emphasizing the benefits of not consuming EDs. However, if our target behavior is reduction then that would be more like a "screening" or "detecting" behavior, and in that case we would want to emphasize the costs of consuming EDs. I think this is an important distinction for our group to determine before we move on to project 2 and creating message strategies.

However, given what we know from our gatekeeper and target audience interviews, ED consumption is not considered a very risky behavior, so reducing consumption is likely not a priority for this population. But when we're thinking about whether our target audience perceives the behavior as risky, this is supposed to refer to the behavior we are promoting. So, the question would be: Does our target population perceive not consuming energy drinks as risky? Obviously, that question doesn't make sense. So then would we just want to conceptualize their perception of "riskiness" in relation to ED consumption (which is not our target behavior)?? And would that mean, then, that we would want to take a preventative approach and emphasize benefits of non-consumption? On the other hand, if we're targeting current consumers, it seems to make more sense to take a reduction approach and emphasize the costs of ED consumption. Right? I feel like I'm caught in a mental maze... but I guess these are issues we'll work through later on in our project.