Mass Media and Health

Dr. Kim Walsh-Childers is a former newspaper health reporter who teaches courses in mass media and health, along with courses in journalism and media ethics, at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Her research focuses on news coverage of health issues, the effects of health news coverage on individual health and health policy, cancer communication, and individuals’ use of online health information. Her work has been published in Health Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal, Science Communication, Communication Research, Pediatrics, AIDS Education and Prevention, and the Journal of Adolescent Health Care, among others. Her research has been supported by grants from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, and the Department of Defense. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Ireland during the 2004-2005 academic year, studying the impact of news coverage on Irish health policy.

Preface

Chapter 1: The media environment, U.S. health and the media-health effects matrix

Section 1 Introduction

Chapter 2: Health information online – Building a web to improve health behavior

Chapter 3: Tobacco advertising – The paradox of marketing to shorten customers’ lives

Chapter 4: Predictable negative effects – Marketing alcohol misuse and abuse

Chapter 5: Take a pill for "better health" – Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising

Chapter 6: Fun and glamour through smoking, drinking and drugs – Entertainment media portrayals of substance use

Chapter 7: Do the media make us fat? Advertising and entertainment portrayals of food, nutrition and exercise

Chapter 8: Showing us what we should (and cannot) be – The mass media mirror and body image

Chapter 9: Lust, love and romance with few consequences – Media portrayals of sex

Chapter 10: The mean and scary media world – The impact of media violence

Chapter 11: Reporting on health for better or worse – News media effects on knowledge, beliefs and behaviors

Chapter 12: Peer-to-peer health – The good and bad news about Facebook, Instagram, blogs and other social media

Section 2: Policy-level effects introduction

Chapter 13: How health news can affect non-news consumers – News media and health policy

Chapter 14: Focusing the spotlight on problems upstream – Media advocacy to influence policy

Chapter 15: Big spenders in the marketplace of ideas – Political issue advertising effects on health policy

Chapter 16: Media effects on health – What we still need to know