Persuasive Communication and Engaging Communication for Health Promoting healthy behaviors with media, the Internet, and serious games.

Summary A better understanding of the influence of advertising, public health communication and therapeutic education using the media allows us to design more effective actions to change risk behaviors and promote healthy behaviors. This chapter first explains how the processes of receiving and influencing public health media messages designed to change cognitions (thoughts), affects and intentions of action operate. After giving some practical recommendations for health professionals, we explain that this type of persuasive communication is based on the principle that such changes should be followed by behavioral changes. However, a large body of research shows that traditional persuasive communication is not always effective in changing behavior. It is to counteract these limitations that the concept of engaging communication has been proposed, and its recent application to the Internet medium would seem to show good effectiveness in the health field. Digital engaging communication is the subject of the second part of the chapter. In the third part, we explain the influence processes of serious games for health, recent ludic means of digital communication on the Internet or via mobile applications.