Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Organizational Unit
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Media, Film, and Journalism Studies
First Advisor
Renee Botta
Second Advisor
Nadia Kaneva
Third Advisor
David Coppini
Fourth Advisor
Yavuz Yasar
Keywords
Audience segmentation, Ethics, Health promotion
Abstract
Audience segmentation is a crucial component of health promotion campaigns as it is believed to support health-related campaigns to achieve greater benefits. However, there are numerous concerns about the ethicality of audience segmentation. For instance, Newton, Newton, Turk, and Ewing (2013) stated that audience segmentation can create inequalities between different groups of audiences. In addition, unintended audience and consequences are often excluded from health campaign planning and execution. These factors can negatively affect the campaign by creating adverse impacts. As a matter of fact, the prominent challenge of health promotion is sustaining the connection between ethics and effectiveness for promotional activities and processes. Thus, it is important to investigate this relationship under a health-related lens to support health campaigns to be more audience-centric and contextually and culturally appropriate, and better providing fair health distribution and producing long-term beneficial outcomes. The study used a binge drinking prevention campaign on campus to test the hypotheses. It conducted an online survey with 360 participants from the students and employees at the University of Denver (DU) to examine three aspects: 1) The impacts of health messages on the intended and unintended audiences; 2) The effects of ethical segmentation on the audience; And 3) The relationship between audience, intended and unintended, and consequences, intended and unintended. In particular, there was not a distinguishing difference in the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral impacts between intended audience members who were assigned targeted messages and those assigned non-targeted messages or between intended audience members and unintended audience members. Additionally, non-consequentialist targeting can create the same level of impacts on the intended and unintended audiences as consequentialist targeting. Moreover, unintended audience members were less likely to stigmatize the targeted audience than intended audience members when consequentialist targeting was used. In conclusion, the study finds that non-consequentialism can be a useful tool to ensure the ethicality and effectiveness of audience segmentation in health promotion as it takes into consideration the intended and unintended effects health campaign may have on both intended and unintended audiences.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Uyen Lili Le
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
en
File Size
112 p.
Recommended Citation
Le, Uyen Lili, "Audience Segmentation Ethics in Health Promotion" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1789.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1789
Copyright date
2020
Discipline
Communication