Attitudes of the audience towards media messages on face mask use regarding the COVID-19 pandemic: From compliance to slacking.

The article examines Nigerian audiences' attitudes toward media messages promoting face mask use during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the shift from initial compliance to subsequent slacking. Using survey and multimodal analysis grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the study found that social media was the primary source through which respondents first learned about COVID-19 and frequently encountered face mask messages. While short-term compliance was observed, attitudes and consistent mask-wearing declined over time, influenced by factors such as disbelief in the pandemic, discomfort with masks, and perceptions of government motives. The study concludes that media messages were largely top-down and lacked engagement with audience concerns, recommending a re-contextualization of health communication through a bottom-up approach combining traditional and modern media to sustain positive behavioral change.