Title: Content and Effects of News Stories About Uncertain Cancer Causes and Preventive Behaviors
Abstract: Abstract This article presents findings from two studies that describe news portrayals of cancer causes and prevention in local TV and test the effects of typical aspects of this coverage on cancer-related fatalism and overload. Study 1 analyzed the content of stories focused on cancer causes and prevention from an October 2002 national sample of local TV and newspaper cancer coverage (n = 122 television stations; n = 60 newspapers). Informed by results from the content analysis, Study 2 describes results from a randomized experiment testing effects of the volume and content of news stories about cancer causes and prevention (n = 601). Study 1 indicates that local TV news stories describe cancer causes and prevention as comparatively more certain than newspapers but include less information about how to reduce cancer risk. Study 2 reveals that the combination of stories conveying an emerging cancer cause and prevention behavior as moderately certain leads to an increased sense of overload, while a short summary of well-established preventive behaviors mitigates these potentially harmful beliefs. We conclude with a series of recommendations for health communication and health journalism practice. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported entirely by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station federal formula funds, project number NYC-131432, received from the National Institutes for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), U.S. Department of Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We are grateful to Danielle Bartolo, Faheem Fazili, Bonnie Frazier, Jessica Kendra, Tae Kyoung Lee, Sooyeon Kim, Regine Mechulan, Sungjong Roh, Isha Saini, and Joe Steinhardt for their assistance with data collection, codebook development, and/or analysis, to James Pribble and Ken Goldstein for making the original local news collection possible, to James Fowler and CommIT for providing access to streaming video of the local TV stories, and to Cornell's Survey Research Institute for transcribing the local TV news stories.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-06-21
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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Cited By Count: 60
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