Communicating telecom fraud risk in anti-telefraud messages: The effects of metaphorical frames on attitudes

INTRODUCTION: With the frequent occurrences of telecom fraud crimes in China, it is very necessary and urgent to carry out effective anti-telefraud risk communication. In the present study, we investigated the role of metaphorical framing in shaping people’s attitudes toward telecom fraud in anti-telefraud messages through two experiments. METHODS: Participants (N = 547, Experiment 1; N = 604, Experiment 2) were randomly assigned to war-framing, disease-framing, or issue-framing conditions. They were asked to read anti-telefraud messages where metaphorical frames were realized through multiple metaphorical expressions in Experiment 1 and relatively shorter messages where metaphorical frames were only instantiated through one metaphorical word in Experiment 2. RESULTS: The results showed that participants without prior experience with telecom fraud perceived severity as significantly higher in the war-framing condition than in the issue-framing condition. Besides, the framing effects were only detected in Experiment 2 where the short anti-telefraud message with limited metaphorical information was provided. DISCUSSION: The study reveals that even one metaphorical word is sufficient to build a framework for thinking about complex concepts, like telecom fraud, and prior experience with a certain risk can serve as a moderator of metaphorical framing on people’s risk perceptions. It is also found that the effectiveness of metaphors may be more salient in the genres of a short length such as anti-telefraud banners. The study can shed light on public legal educators whose job is to use effective ways to communicate telecom fraud risk to citizens.