Using Narratives to Promote Risks and Risky Products: Cautions and Considerations

Stories have long been a source of entertainment, but the strategic value of narratives to achieve learning and persuasion outcomes has gained widespread interest and recognition in a range of disciplines. Consequently, storytelling is nearly ubiquitous in advertising. Organizations are eager to share their origin story. Science and health communicators have embraced narrative techniques such as edutainment, patient testimonials, and other story-based interventions. While this is not unwarranted, the potential for negative consequences—intended or unintended—also exists. This can be especially significant when communicating about health and science or promoting products that carry risks.

A growing body of research supports the benefits of narrative communication. Story formats can enhance message engagement through heightened emotions and increased processing fluency while facilitating self-efficacy and perceived relevance through identification with characters. These markers of narrative processing aid in the comprehension of complex information and adoption of promoted behaviors.

However, insufficient attention has been paid to the potentially exploitative use of narratives. The immersiveness of stories consumes cognitive resources and can suppress critical evaluation of messages. This means narratives could distract attention from important information such as product disclosures and lend strength to disinformation or misinformation. By encouraging the mental simulation of outcomes and relation to characters as exemplars, narratives may skew outcome expectancies such as inflating perceived risk. One might extrapolate further to ponder whether a proliferation of narratives might cultivate an overreliance on anecdotal evidence that undercuts the impact of more rigorous forms of scientific evidence. Overall, this Research Topic aims to expand the existing literature that highlights the ethical implications of narrative communication, particularly when risk is a key element of the message.

We are particularly interested in the application of this topic to the following contexts:

• narratives appearing in user-generated content or professional campaigns that communicate risks related to health or science topics
• narratives used in marketing and/or advertising promoting products that mandate warnings or product risk disclosures.

Within these contexts, some potential subjects may include, but are not limited to:

• the interaction of narrative content and risk disclosures from social media influencers promoting health products and services
• the role and use of narratives in the proliferation of misinformation about health and science topics
• legal and moral issues concerning narratives in health marketing and product disclosures
• the impact of narratives on vulnerable audiences
• perspectives of health and marketing professionals on the influential power and ethical considerations of storytelling
• the identification of moderating factors and/or explanatory mechanisms indicating when and how narratives engage without distracting, yield accurate rather than distorted beliefs, persuade without suppressing critical thinking, etc.
• strategies to combat the inappropriate use of narratives.

We welcome the submission of articles of the following types: Original Research, Review, Policy and Practice Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Conceptual Analysis, Brief Research Report, Community Case Study, Mini Review, Opinion, Perspective, and Systematic Review.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: narratives, ethics, policy, risk, health, science, marketing, advertising, disinformation, misinformation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.