Intro to Health Comm Exam #3

Health Literacy

Individuals ability to access health information to understand it and to apply it in ways that promote good health.

Tips for Public Health Professionals when Communicating

• Use everyday language

• Use multiple formats

• Pilot message

• Make it easy to get help

• Determine literacy levels

• Explain routines

• Use metaphors and pictures

• Teach back technique (teach me what I taught you)

• Adopt universal precautions

Mass Communication

• Dissemination of messages from one person/group to large #’s of people via media

• Increase in time spent consuming digital media

  • Media multitalking

Third Person Effect

People perceive media to have effects on others, not themselves

Social Mimicry/Mass Psychegenic Illness

• Group of people become sick at same time with no discernible cause

Cultivation Theory

Long-term repeated exposure to mass media message shapes our beliefs in ways consistent with how reality is portrayed in media

Social cognitive theory

People learn social behaviors by imitating others

Social comparison theory

People judge themselves to others

Media Literacy

Awareness and skills that allow a person to evaluate media content in terms of what is realistic and successful.

Types of message stages

• Informative

• Analytic

• Experiential

Informative Stafe

Learn types of messages, strengths and weaknesses, production techniques

Analytic Stage

Talk perceptions and deconstruct

Experiential

Write own ads, news stories, better understand process

Entertainment-Education Programming

Designed to educate and entertain by weaving health issues into storytelling

Body language

• Pathologizing the human body, making natural functions seem weird and unnatural.

• Unattainable media depictions and body dissatisfaction

  • Desire for thinness and drive for muscularity ‘

  • Heavy media users more likely to suffer from disordered eating

Mental illness

Trivialized and stigmatized in media/film

• Concealment, humor, belittled, rejected

• Use of dehumanizing language

• Characters with mental health conditions portrayed as violent

Disabilities

People with them are often underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream media

• Disadvantages: unhealthy victims, superheroes)

Most successful way to diminish negative attitudes is utilizing regular and realistic exposure to people with disabilities.

Sex

• Objectification (treating women mostly as an object of desire)

• Violence: Media glorification

• Safer Sex practices rarely depicted in media

Violence

Media Violence may impact agression (thoughts, feelings, behaviors)

• Not everyone reacts the same way

Pharma Advertising

DTCA: Promotes drugs through print and electronic media

• Guideline of fair balance

• FDA provides ovesight, reg. to 3 forms

  • Product claim

  • Reminder

  • Help seeking

• Advantages: Provides patients with health info, competition can contribute to product development

• Disadvantages: Primary purpose is to boost profits, consumers have unrealistic expectations

Advertising and Nutrition

Heavy TV Viewers linked to obesity

• Sedentary behavior: Snacking, unhealthy food commercials

• Effects on children: Direct effects of exposure to food ads on young people’s diet and health

Tobacco advertising

• MSA: Master Settlement Agreement. Established restrictions on tobacco marketing

• Changing promotional efforts: implicit marketing

• Vaping

Product Placement, Advertising

Marketing appeals that are built into the media programming itself

Alcohol Advertising

• It’s the leading cause of death in people 15-49

• Ads emphasize fun and ignore risks

• Youth who see more ads drink more

News Coverage, accuracy and fairness

• Exaggerated claim, unsupported generalizations, overgeneralizations

• Sensationalism: sometimes sensationalized health news favored rather than everyday health concerns

• Adv. of health news: Media can increase people’s awareness of health

• Nature of news/science presents difficulties for acc. news coverage.

• Med. News coverage may be difficult to repost

Health Promontory Behaviors

Behaviors that enhance health and wellbeing, reduce health risks and prevent disease

Health promotions campaign

Systemic efforts to influence people to engage in health enhancing behaviors

Human behavior is…

• Complex

• Motivated by many factors

Health promoters must take a range of factors into account

Primary Prevention Campaign

Encourage adoption of beneficial practices to avoid future health crises

Teritary Health Campaigns

Discourage existing unhealthy behaviors to avoid future undesirable outcomes

Motivating factors

• Intention

• Absence of constraints

• Skills to perform behavior

• Attitude

• Social norms

• Consistency with self image

• Emotions

• Self discipline

Channel

Means of communicating information

Nudges

Small tweaks to surrounding or wording that steers behaviors

Reach

#of people who will be exposed to a message via a particular channel

Specificity

• How accurately the message can be targeted to a specific group of people

• Impacts how influential a message is more likely to be

Arousal

How emotionally stimulating/exciting a message is.

Involvement

Amount of mental effort to understand a language

Tailoring

• Fitting messages to individual characteristics

• These messages general have greater impact on behavior than more generic messages

Ecological Perspective

Multiple levels of influence

Reciprocal causation

Individual Behavior both shapes and is shaped by the social environment

Perceived susceptibility:: Health Belief model