The purpose of this study is to explore how to make persuasive messages effective to sufficiently motivate individuals to form good security practice through two aspects - affect valence-based message and message framing effect. The two emotional appeals examined in this study include traditional fear appeals and humor appeals. Fear appeals, arousing people's fear to persuade them to take precautionary actions, are predominant in the literature of information security. By contrast, humorous messages have been found to induce positive affect, reduce negativity, and enhance message acceptance. In addition, messages can be illustrated in a broader context or can be presented with particular examples tailored to individuals' decision-making. The effects of these two ways - thematic and episodic frames - are also investigated in the fear and humor appeals. A multi-group experimental design is adopted to examine the hypotheses. 577 valid responses were collected from college students at Mississippi State University via a professional platform. Followed by a number of rigorous analysis, the results indicate that a humor appeal is more effective when framed in a thematic frame. Furthermore, issue relevance and gender difference are salient factors that can influence the interaction between affect valence and message frame. Additionally, both abstract and concrete fear appeals demonstrated a stronger impact than concrete humor appeals on individuals' intent to follow the positive security practice. However, there is no evidence that concrete fear appeals are more superior to abstract ones. It's not found that humor appeals are more effective than traditional fear appeals when promoting cybersecurity threats.

<p>Housing is an issue that affects all individuals in society. People have firsthand experiences with housing daily. Housing is also a macro issue that is affected by and has implications for the nation’s economy and public policy. Despite the centrality of housing for individuals <i>and</i> society, few scholars have examined media coverage of housing issues and housing policy. This gap is especially problematic when considering the critical role of the housing market collapse in the 2008 Great Recession, the landmark housing policies instituted during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the media's potential to shape perceptions of housing policy and the economy. In this study, I use content analysis to examine the media agenda-setting and framing of housing and housing policies from 2005 to 2010 and 2020 in the <i>New York Times</i>. I investigate whether housing is framed in episodic or thematic ways and how housing media frames changed in response to the economic collapse and the pandemic. I also examine the context of media agenda-setting using housing topics. Lastly, I pay particular attention to whether housing media frames and housing topics are racialized. The data for this project was collected from the <i>New York Times</i> between 2005 - 2010 and 2020. The search terms used to identify relevant news articles were housing policy, subprime, affordable housing, foreclosure, homeownership, and eviction. The articles identified are all from the front page of the <i>New York Times</i>.</p>

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