Qualitative Content Analysis of the most visited websites in Health: Persuasive Content for Changing Smoking Behavior

It seems that media and virtual spaces may persuade public to make change the smoking behavior as an interfering factor. This paper wants to recognize writing criteria in persuasive health related content, and to assess Iranian health websites which produce and distribute smoking related texts by regarding recognized criteria. For this, it synthesizes planed behavior theory (PBT) and persuasion theory to make distinguish persuasive criteria for changing behavior. Then, by considering these 16 categories as effective and by using qualitative approach and directed qualitative content analysis, the smoking related content in eight websites between April 2017 and December 2017 are analyzed. The overall number of smoking-related texts is 67 cases. Data are analyzed by MAXQDA 10. Findings show that health-related texts have low ability to make change in smoking behavior among smoker audiences. Fear, quotation, and brief-clear concluding have more frequency than other 13 criteria. So, their potential to make change in audience attitude is low. To increase their changing ability, it is needed that content providers consider other 13 criteria, too.