Using humor to promote directives: public service announcements during a protracted crisis

Humor in public service announcements (PSAs) can reassure the audience, influencing the public’s adoption of directives when managing crises of public health significance. However, the relevance of different humor types in public health emergencies, which are marked by uncertainty and change, remains largely uncharted. Through the lens of three humor theories, this study explored how humor was applied to advertise public health crisis directives on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of high-engagement humor-containing COVID-19 PSAs from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Australian health departments’ Facebook, Twitter (now X), and YouTube accounts was extracted. Through content analysis, we identified seven humor types employed by the organizations to promote 12 crisis directives. WHO’s PSAs were based mainly on multiple humor mechanisms (76.5%), while Australian health departments’ PSAs were more contingent on single humor mechanisms (60.2%). A high level of media richness accounted for social media user engagement, which persisted after repeated exposure to the same PSA. Prosocial content was more instrumental in generating high user engagement than self-focused posts. Through temporal analysis, we found that the PSAs were more frequent during periods of minimal direct public health impact of the crisis and when multiple humor types were employed. Our study demonstrates that a range of humor types could be applicable in generating public engagement across multiple phases of a public health crisis. The findings offer theoretical and practical insights to health authorities and practitioners seeking to promote crisis directives and influence health behaviors.