Authors: Camelia Cmeciu
Abstract:
Humor has been employed by (inter)national authorities in order to simplify complex issues and toencourage behavioral changes toward certain health issues. Focusing our analysis on the cartoons em-ployed by two Romanian authorities (The National Committee for Coordination of anti-COVID-19Vaccination Activities, CNCAV, and The European Commission’s Representation in Romania), theaims of this study are threefold: to determine how Health Belief Model (HBM) constructs and humorresources were associated with online users’ online engagement behavior towards the cartoons on vac-cination in Romania; to identify how multimodal modes were employed in the cartoons on COVID-19vaccination; to determine how knowledge resources help in the interpretation of humor in the overper-forming multimodal cartoons. The exploratory analysis showed that self-efficacy was a salient HBMconstruct in the cartoons but it was less engaging than cues to action and perceived barriers. Variousforms of puns and visual metaphors as humor resources prevailed and displayed the highest level ofengagement. The qualitative analysis revealed that situational irony and Horatian satire, presented ina playful tone, were mainly targeted towards anti-vaxxers and the undecided. The study also showedthat a cartoon-based communication strategy should combine generalized humorous situations withsocio-cultural specificity.