Rebekah Wicke

Biographic Data

ID4257897
NAMERebekah Wicke
GIVEN NAMESRebekah
FAMILY NAMEWicke
SIGNATUREWICKE R
AFFILIATIONSCornell University
ORCID0000-0003-4047-4748
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS8
TOTAL CITATIONS0
AUTHOR COUNT8
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2022
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX0

  • Testing message strategies that minimize White Americans’ backlash to racial equity information

    Open AccessRebekah Wicke, Jiawei Liu et al.ARTICLEHuman Communication Research2026References: 53

    Scholars have worried that messages about racial equity can produce backlash from White respondents. Drawing upon psychological reactance theory, we compared cognitive and affective responses to a message emphasizing how a redistributive policy would benefit everyone (universalist message) to a message that also emphasized how the policy would especially benefit minoritized racial groups (targeted universalist message) among a sample of 871 White…

  • Public understanding of preprints: How audiences make sense of unreviewed research in the news

    Open AccessAlice Fleerackers, Chelsea L Ratcliff et al.ARTICLEPublic Understanding of Science2025

    News reporting of preprints became commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the extent to which the public understands what preprints are is unclear. We sought to fill this gap by conducting a content analysis of 1702 definitions of the term “preprint” that were generated by the US general population and college students. We found that only about one in five people were able to define preprints in ways that align with scholarly conceptualiza…

  • Using Preprint Sources in Science News: Do Transparent Disclosures Enhance Credibility

    Open AccessChelsea L Ratcliff, Alice Fleerackers et al.ARTICLEScience Communication2025References: 9

    This study tested whether the transparent use of preprint sources affects the perceived credibility of science news and scientists. In an experiment, U.S. adults read a news report describing COVID-19 research as a “preprint” (with varying levels of detail) or as simply a “study.” There were no main effects of disclosing preprint status, but indirect effects emerged. For those who noticed the disclosure, both brief and fuller depictions of a stud…

  • Visual attention and memory retention of cannabis warning labels: An Eye-Tracking Experiment With Young Adults

    Open AccessJiaying Liu, Ranran Z Mi et al.ARTICLEAnnals of Behavioral Medicine2025References: 39

    BACKGROUND: Cannabis use is rising among young adults, while their perceived risks are declining. Existing cannabis warning labels (CWLs), often dense, generic, and text-only, struggle to sustain attention or promote effective risk recognition. Drawing on construal-level theory, this study investigates whether the concreteness of textual and pictorial elements improves CWL effectiveness. PURPOSE: This study examines how specific (vs. generic) tex…

  • Framing Covid-19 Preprint Research as Uncertain: A Mixed-Method Study of Public Reactions

    Open AccessChelsea L Ratcliff, Alice Fleerackers et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2024

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists were encouraged to convey uncertainty surrounding preliminary scientific evidence, including mentioning when research is unpublished or unverified by peer review. To understand how public audiences interpret this information, we conducted a mixed method study with U.S. adults. Participants read a news article about preprint COVID-19 vaccine research in early April 2021, just as the vaccine was becoming wi…

  • Understanding public preferences for learning about uncertain science: Measurement and individual difference correlates

    Open AccessChelsea L Ratcliff, Blue Harvill et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2023

    Although uncertainty is inherent in science, public audiences vary in their openness to information about preliminary discoveries and the caveats and limitations of research. These preferences shape responses to science communication, and science communicators often adapt messaging based on assumed preferences. However, there has not been a validated instrument for examining these preferences. Here, we present an instrument to capture preferences…

  • How the public evaluates media representations of uncertain science: An integrated explanatory framework

    Open AccessChelsea L Ratcliff, Rebekah WickeARTICLEPublic Understanding of Science2023

    Understanding how to portray uncertain science to the public is a pressing goal for science communication. This study compared US public audience reactions to a news article depicting a novel discovery in neurogenomics as certain or uncertain, with statements of (un)certainty attributed to either affiliated or unaffiliated scientists. The uncertainty disclosure had no main effect on perceived news article credibility, scientist trustworthiness, o…

  • Communicating uncertainty to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic: A scoping review of the literature

    Chelsea L Ratcliff, Rebekah Wicke et al.ARTICLEAnnals of the International…2022

    Pandemics are characterized by extreme uncertainty and effective communication is critical to help the public manage this uncertainty. We summarized scholarship on public communication related to uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, synthesizing insights published from January 2020–February 2022. We reviewed key findings and arguments from 39 empirical papers and 21 nonempirical papers with a particular focus on the theories and concepts tha…