Persuasion Mechanism Of Opinion Leaders In Science Communication

At the beginning of the COVID-19 in 2020,a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine triggered a discussion among Chinese netizens on"whether scientists should prevent and control the COVID-19 first or publish papers".Many netizens questioned some scientists and groups,resulting in a crisis of public trust in scientists.Meanwhile,an opinion leader of science popularization named "Bi Dao" came out.He published an article on his WeChat official account and a video on the video website named bilibili.The theme of these two contents is the same which is"the lab,also the battlefield where they saved lives".The article and video were used for testimony of scientists.But has his two contents persuaded the audience?If so,what factors play a role?This study takes the Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM)as the theoretical framework,and uses the mixed research method of online experiment and in-depth interview to explore the influence path of persuasion effect of two popular science contents published by the opinion leader of science popularization from the two sides of communicator and audiences.The results show that the presentation style which belongs the peripheral route of ELM has a significant effect on the audience with lower eHealth literacy.Specifically,the audience with lower eHealth literacy is more likely to be convinced by the video,while the audience with higher eHealth literacy is more likely to be convinced by the article;on the other hand,the professional identity of the source which also belongs to peripheral route lose efficacy.The source persuasion effect of unprofessional authors is better.From the communicator side,through in-depth interview with "Bi Dao",we know his creative motivation of using two different information presentations to produce popular science contents,as well as his understanding of "professional identity".We discusses the possible explanation of the contradiction between the results and ELM and its application value to science communication in the context of social media.