Campaign-Induced Interpersonal Communication: Identifying Turn Types and Exploring Their Interdependencies

Media campaigns produce effects when audience members discuss the campaign messages. Fundamental to the understanding of how talk bridges exposure and effect is a knowledge of its content. However, prior attempts to measure talk content have largely been limited to gross characteristics of the interactions. We argue that advances in this line of research require representing post-exposure talk as campaign-induced interpersonal communication (CIC), with a focus on how individuals produce and exchange messages in conversations. Interaction data were gathered in two experiments in which pairs of participants co-viewed, then discussed health-related public service announcements. Analysis of the data produced (a) an empirically-derived typology of talk turns that provided a comprehensive, content-based description of message production and (b) evidence that turn pairs are associated in theoretically meaningful ways in exchanges that displayed properties of deliberative interactions. These findings lay a foundation for future research on the antecedents and outcomes of CIC.