Marilee Long

News Coverage of Cancer in the United States: A National Sample of Newspapers, Television, and Magazines

A content analysis of cancer news coverage in a sample of local and national newspapers, television, and magazines was conducted for the years 2002 and 2003. Analyses compared proportions of mentions of cancer sites with proportional contribution to cancer incidence and mortality based on available epidemiological estimates. Analyses also examined relative attention provided to prevention, detection, treatment, causes, and outcomes of various cancers. Results indicated that coverage reflected incidence rates more closely than they did mortality rates, but in both cases coverage under-represented the contribution of lung cancer to morbidity and mortality and over-represented the contribution of breast cancer. Of greater public health concern was the limited coverage of prevention and detection even for highly preventable or relatively easily detected cancers. Implications of findings are discussed.

The thrill of everyday science: images of science and scientists on children's educational science programmes in the United States

Several media effects perspectives suggest that televised images can influence childrens perceptions of science and scientists. This study analysed images of science and scientists in four childrens educational science programmes. The images of science as truth, as fun, and as a part of everyday life, as well as the image that science is for everyone, were quite evident. Little evidence was found for the image of science as magical or mysterious. Support for the images of science as dangerous and science as a solution to problems was mixed. Images of scientists as omniscient and elite were quite prevalent; there was no evidence for the image of scientists as evil or violent. Some support was found for the image of scientists as eccentric and antisocial. Overall, the images were more constructive than detrimental. Predictions about the effect these images could have on children and on the scientific community are given.

Gender and racial counter-stereotypes in science education television: A content analysis

This study analyzes characters in four childrens science education television programs. Results indicated that these programs presented some counter-stereotypical images of scientists and people i...

A Lab of Her Own?: Portrayals of Female Characters on Children's Educational Science Programs.

Television teaches children gender-specific behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics. By observing male and female characters on television, children learn to label certain characteristics and behaviors as masculine or feminine and to assign traditional gender-role stereotypes to careers. This study examines the portrayals of female characters on four popular television series for children and discusses those portrayals in the light of other research on television and socialization. The study found that over twice as many male characters as female characters and twice as many male scientists as female scientists were shown on these series. Females were most often seen as pupils or apprentices, laboratory assistants, or science reporters, and less often as expert scientists. Of the 86 females appearing in these programs, 68 were portrayed in secondary roles as students or laboratory assistants.

Portrayals of Male and Female Scientists in Television Programs Popular Among Middle School-Age Children

This content analysis examined portrayals of scientist characters in 14 television programs popular among or likely to have been viewed by middle school—age children. While male scientists significantly outnumbered and appeared in significantly more scenes than did female scientists, males and females were depicted similarly in reference to professional position, marital status, and parental status. Gender-stereotyped behavior was largely absent in portrayals of scientist characters. Additionally, both male and female scientists were portrayed most often with the wishful identification attribute of intelligence. Implications for middle school—age children’s perceptions of scientists and for cultivating girls’ interest in science careers are discussed.

US news media coverage of tobacco control issues

Objective: To characterise the relative amount and type of daily newspaper, local and national TV newscast, and national news magazine coverage of tobacco control issues in the United States in 2002 and 2003. Design: Content analysis of daily newspapers, news magazines, and TV newscasts. Subjects: Items about tobacco in daily newspapers, local and national TV newscasts, and three national news magazines in a nationally representative sample of 56 days of news stratified by day of week and season of the year, from 2002 and 2003. Main outcome measures: Story theme, tobacco topics, sources, story prominence, story valence (orientation), and story type. Results: Tobacco coverage was modest over the two-year period as estimated in our sample. Only 21 TV stories, 17 news magazine stories, and 335 daily newspaper stories were found during the two-year sampling period. Noteworthy results for the newspaper data set include the following: (1) government topics predominated coverage; (2) government action and negative health effects topics tended not to occur together in stories; (3) tobacco stories were fairly prominently placed in newspapers; (4) opinion news items tended to favour tobacco control policies, while news and feature stories were evenly split between positive and negative stories; and (5) tobacco coverage in the southeast, which is the country’s major tobacco producing region, did not differ from the rest of the country. Conclusion: Results suggest mixed support in news coverage for tobacco control efforts in the United States. The modest amount of news coverage of tobacco is troubling, particularly because so few news stories were found on TV, which is a more important news source for Americans than newspapers. When tobacco was covered, government themed stories, which often did not include mentions of negative health effects, were typical, suggesting that media coverage does not reinforce the reason for tobacco control efforts. However, some results were encouraging. For example, when newspapers did cover tobacco, they accorded the stories relatively high prominence, thus increasing the chance that readers would see tobacco stories when they were published.

Obtaining Nationally Representative Samples of Local News Media Outlets

This article presents 1 approach to constructing a valid national sample of local news outlets. Using designated market areas that represent the dominant geographic area of influence for television stations, researchers can create a nationally representative sample of local media, including television and newspaper outlets. A method for adapting the approach to smaller geographic areas is also discussed. Data are provided to support the validity of the sampling method proposed in this study. The data analysis is based on a 2-year sample of TV newscasts and daily newspapers from across the country.

Scientese and Ambiguous Citations in the Selling of Unproven Medical Treatments

Unproven medical treatments are widely marketed, and are especially accessible via the Internet. Little is known about factors that may increase the persuasiveness of information used to promote such unproven treatments. This article examines the effect of scientese (use of scientific jargon) and attributed versus unattributed citations on message persuasiveness on science and nonscience majors. Scientese, as expected, increased message persuasiveness. Contrary to expectations, this effect was not moderated by science versus nonscience major, graduate versus undergraduate status, or potential involvement with the message topic. In addition, no effect was found for attributed versus unattributed citations either as a main effect or in interaction with science major, graduate or undergraduate status, or for an indicator of involvement with the health topic. These findings are consistent with Food and Drug Administration concerns about the ability of the public to critically discern the quality of evidence supporting use of unproven remedies and dietary supplements. Similarly, they raise questions about the judicial reasoning that presumes consumers can make such judgments, though replication with clinical populations would be desirable to strengthen policy-relevant inferences.

Scientific explanation in US newspaper science stories

Mass media are important sources of science information for many adults. However, this study, which reports a content analysis of science stories in 100 US newspapers, found that while 70 newspapers carried science stories, the majority of these stories contained little scientific explanation. Ten percent or less of content was comprised of elucidating (definitions of terms) and/or quasi-scientific explanations (explications of relationships among scientific concepts). The study also investigated the effect of production-based variables on scientific explanation. Stories in feature and science sections contained more explanation than did stories in news sections, perhaps indicating that science stories in feature and science sections have more of an explanatory mission. Additionally, the more time a writer had to compose a story, the more explanation in the story. This result suggests that writing explanations is cognitively demanding. Interestingly, longer stories did not contain significantly more scientific explanation than shorter stories.

Gender Differences in Adolescents’ Wishful Identification With Scientist Characters on Television

Adolescents’ wishful identification with televised scientist characters was examined as related to interactions among the following variables: gender of participant, gender of scientist character, program genre, and selected character attributes. Findings indicated some gender differences in adolescents’ wishful identification with scientist characters they viewed on television. Boys showed more wishful identification with male scientist than with female scientist characters for all character attributes, and girls showed more wishful identification with female scientist than with male scientist characters portrayed dominant or as working alone. Both girls and boys showed more wishful identification with scientist characters in drama programs than for those in cartoon and educational programs across all character attributes. Both girls and boys showed more wishful identification for some character attributes depending on the program genre viewed. Implications of these findings for producers of television programs and other media are discussed related to efforts to encourage adolescent girls’ interest in science careers.