Amanda Hinnant

Health News Agenda Building: Journalists' Perceptions of the Role of Public Relations

This study uses a nationwide survey of health journalists (N = 774) to explore the agenda-building process in health news, examining how journalists develop story ideas, value expert source characteristics, and perceive the acceptability of using public relations materials. Results indicate that intermedia agenda setting may be a stronger influence on agenda building than are information subsidies, and that journalists rate characteristics associated with public relations training as important in expert sources. Also, journalists who take an audience advocate role are more accepting of news releases than those who take a skeptic role.

Tacit Understandings of Health Literacy: Interview and Survey Research With Health Journalists

This research offers both qualitative and quantitative data about how health journalists approach health literacy practically and conceptually. Using interviews with 20 writers and editors for magazines and newspapers coupled with a national survey ( N = 396), this analysis uncovers journalistic techniques and tacit theories for making information understandable. The journalists evince a basic understanding of how health literacy can be enhanced through certain story elements (such as nontechnical word use), but they also maintain false ideas about appropriate comprehension aides (such as statistics). Findings show that journalists struggle to maintain scientific credibility while accommodating different audience literacy levels. Journalists’ definitions of health literacy strategically carve out a place for their work as translators.

Toward a Social Framework for Information Seeking

Since the increasing spread of the Internet across the population at large, there has been much commentary about how we live in an information age (Castells, 1996). The idea that we live in a knowledge society predates the 1990s mass diffusion of information technologies (IT) and has been of interest to social scientists for decades (Bell, 1976; Reich, 1992). However, it is only recently that a myriad of IT have spread across all segments of the population, branching to every imaginable daily activity, putting them in the forefront of academic and popular discussions and debates alike (Howard & Jones, 2003; Katz & Rice, 2002; Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002). Given this wide-ranging significance and relevance, it is of utmost importance to focus research on the specifics of how people seek, search for, access, find and make use of information, or human information behavior (HIB) (Spink & Cole, in press). Undoubtedly, the rapid spread of IT to an increasing portion of the population has made more information readily available to people than ever before. This aspect of IT prompted early commentators to express much enthusiasm for these technologies (Barlow, 1997; Dizard, 1997). Concurrently, however, others expressed concern that the riches provided by the new resources would not be distributed equally among different segments of the population (Anderson et al., 1995; DiMaggio et al., 2004). These concerns are related to the idea that mere availability of information does not equal accessibility, nor does it necessarily provide a realistic chance that people may come across the types of information of most interest or use to them (Hargittai, 2000). Consequently, to ensure equal access and that people find the information they need, library and information science (LIS) researchers must strive for a better understanding of how people are accessing information and how this may differ across populations. HIB broadens our understanding of how people react to information by focusing in on specific groups and trying to understand the social framework of their information condition. In this chapter, we then focus on new directions in the development of a social framework for understanding the information behavior of well-targeted groups in society. That is, we explore how one’s social positioning influences one’s information behavior which, in turn, influences the information-seeking behavior of the populations studied. We concentrate especially on HIB through IT, but base our discussion in a more general

Climate Change in the Newsroom Journalists’ Evolving Standards of Objectivity When Covering Global Warming

This study investigated how highly experienced environmental journalists view the professional norms of objectivity when covering climate change over time. Elite journalists were sought, and all had a minimum of 10 years of experience in climate coverage. In-depth interviews revealed a paradox: Most still profess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it. Participants said that journalists should use objective practices and refrain from revealing their own biases, including advocating for the environment. However, participants have radically redefined the component of objectivity known as “balance.” They now advocate a “weight-of-evidence” approach, where stories reflect scientific consensus.

JOURNALISTIC USE OF EXEMPLARS TO HUMANIZE HEALTH NEWS

Health journalists often use personal stories to put a “face” on a health issue. This research uses a sociology-of-news approach, based on data collected from 42 in-depth interviews and three surveys with health journalists and editors (national, N=774; state, N=55; and purposive, N=180), to provide a first look at how important journalists think exemplars are to their stories. Results show journalists select exemplars to serve the purposes of informing, connecting, and getting attention. Some of the strategies journalists use to locate exemplars pose ethical concerns. Further, journalists rank the use of exemplars lower in aiding audience understanding compared with the use of experts, data and statistics, and definitions of technical terms.

The Cancer on Your Coffee Table

Womens magazines are a significant resource for information about womens health, but there are important variations in how they address health issues. A discourse analysis of 148 health articles and coverlines that appeared in nine top-circulating US womens magazines reveals how the magazines configure health problems of all types and how these messages engage with various feminist discourses. By looking at how agency, autonomy, and subjectivity are constructed, and identifying whether health problems and solutions are cast as individual or collective, the paper found reflections of postfeminist, liberal-feminist, and radical-feminist discourses. Findings indicate that health emerges as a metaphor for life in control through individual-oriented postfeminist wellness mandates, which dominate health coverage. Health as a decontextualized individual issue is especially suitable within the contexts of a consumerist reading environment and of the broader US neoliberal health policy. Alternately, women who suffer from disease confound the “will to health” and thus are allowed liberal-feminist agentic subjectivity and can question the system from a radical-feminist perspective. There are also a few examples of articles that deal with political health issues, reflecting radical-feminism. Text that engages with liberal- and radical-feminist discourses is much less prevalent than text that espouses postfeminist hyperindividualism.

What makes African American health disparities newsworthy? An experiment among journalists about story framing

News stories reporting race-specific health information commonly emphasize disparities between racial groups. But recent research suggests this focus on disparities has unintended effects on African American audiences, generating negative emotions and less interest in preventive behaviors (Nicholson RA, Kreuter MW, Lapka C et al. Unintended effects of emphasizing disparities in cancer communication to African-Americans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008; 17: 2946-52). They found that black adults are more interested in cancer screening after reading about the progress African Americans have made in fighting cancer than after reading stories emphasizing disparities between blacks and whites. This study builds on past findings by (i) examining how health journalists judge the newsworthiness of stories that report race-specific health information by emphasizing disparities versus progress and (ii) determining whether these judgments can be changed by informing journalists of audience reactions to disparity versus progress framing. In a double-blind-randomized experiment, 175 health journalists read either a disparity- or progress-framed story on colon cancer, preceded by either an inoculation about audience effects of such framing or an unrelated (i.e. control) information stimuli. Journalists rated the disparity-frame story more favorably than the progress-frame story in every category of news values. However, the inoculation significantly increased positive reactions to the progress-frame story. Informing journalists of audience reactions to race-specific health information could influence how health news stories are framed.

Social representation of cyberbullying and adolescent suicide: a mixed-method analysis of news stories

ABSTRACT Cyberbullying has provoked public concern after well-publicized suicides of adolescents. This mixed-methods study investigates the social representation of these suicides. A content analysis of 184 U.S. newspaper articles on death by suicide associated with cyberbullying or aggression found that few articles adhered to guidelines suggested by the World Health Organization and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to protect against suicidal behavioral contagion. Few articles made reference to suicide or bullying prevention resources, and most suggested that the suicide had a single cause. Thematic analysis of a subset of articles found that individual deaths by suicide were used as cautionary tales to prompt attention to cyberbullying. This research suggests that newspaper coverage of these events veers from evidence-based guidelines and that more work is needed to determine how best to engage with journalists about the potential consequences of cyberbullying and suicide coverage.

HEALTH JOURNALIST ROLE CONCEPTIONS

Using interview methodology, this research examines the role conceptions of US health journalists. Asking journalists from different types of media to define their roles as they relate to public health, inequalities, responsibility and news values reveals the external demands on journalists as well as internal processes that shape professional identity. This paper considers professional and normative role conceptions. Interviews with experienced health journalists revealed that they do not identify with any one of these roles in particular but operate on a spectrum, navigating competing pressures resulting from individual, organizational, and societal influences. Through the process of analyzing and categorizing health journalists’ goals, responsibilities, and ideals, we explore how topics and tasks specific to covering health relate to the democratic functions of the press. The findings of this study advance knowledge about the sociology of newswork and shed light on the professional identities of health journalists.

Health Literacy and Numeracy: A Comparison of Magazine Health Messages

This content analysis of Cosmopolitan and Latina magazines (N = 348) examines health news stories read by millions of young U.S. women for factors related to health literacy. Findings show that the majority of magazine stories were brief and replete with technical language. Alternative explanations were provided only 41% of the time. More than half of stories in both magazines contained numbers, yet provided few figurative illustrations. Although a majority of stories had accompanying images, these images seldom added to the understanding of the health news. Latina included more culturally relevant information and had more coverage of diabetes and obesity.