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Communicating about Alzheimer’s disease: Designing and testing a campaign using a framing approach

Abstract The prevalence of negative representations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) reinforces the stigma and negative attitudes toward this dementia. To mitigate these negative views, campaigns have been launched by several organizations. This study aims to explore the effect of framing in AD campaigns on attitude change. For this purpose, several posters were designed with framed messages defining dementia (dualism, unity, and control) and 189 participants were shown the posters. In order to analyze the effect of the different frames, a repeated-measures design was used, in which attitudes toward dementia were measured three times. The impact of the campaign and the emotions it produced were recorded as well as the effects of the participants’ experience with AD and the importance they attached to it. Posters with unity-framed messages produced a positive and lasting change in attitudes toward dementia and higher levels of happiness, while dualism-framed messages had a greater impact and produced feelings of sadness, anger, and fear but did not change the audience’s attitude. Although more research is needed on persuasion in campaigns, the findings can serve to guide the design of AD campaigns.