Exploring Methods to Persuade Users to watch Social Problem Films through the Case Study of Race-related Films

The present study reports on the success of persuasive techniques and recommendation engine on persuading participants to choose a race-related movie. The study used a technical component as well as an experimental study to see how users respond to certain persuasive techniques. The technical component included a content-based filtering recommendation engine to recommend lists of movies to participants based on films they already enjoy. Persuasive techniques were then applied to those lists and results were measured and analyzed. This project aims to explore the relationship that recommendation engines and persuasive techniques have on users and their willingness to branch out in the content they consume. This study allowed me to get a baseline for how users respond to certain techniques if this study were to be done on a larger scale