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This study examines a national survey of U.S. health journalists (N = 774) to ascertain how journalists' perceptions of audience use of health news shapes their journalistic practices. We establish a framework through attribution theory and expectancy-value theory for how journalists choose to fulfill their roles as providers of health information. Using these theoretical lenses, we look at whether health journalists' audience orientation is associated with their use of accessibility-oriented or credibility-focused practices. Our findings show that, overall, journalists believe readers are individually responsible for their health outcomes and that journalists focus on providing accessibility-oriented information when they feel their audience's ability to understand information may be compromised. Journalists' beliefs about audience behavior are associated with their attitudes toward communication practices.

The move of news audiences to social media has presented a major challenge for news organizations. How to adapt and adjust to this social media environment is an important issue for sustainable news business. News bots are one of the key technologies offered in the current media environment and are widely applied in news production, dissemination, and interaction with audiences. While benefits and concerns coexist about the application of bots in news organizations, the current study aimed to examine how social media users perceive news bots, the factors that affect their acceptance of bots in news organizations, and how this is related to their evaluation of social media news in general. An analysis of the US national survey dataset showed that self-efficacy (confidence in identifying content from a bot) was a successful predictor of news bot acceptance, which in turn resulted in a positive evaluation of social media news in general. In addition, an individual’s perceived prevalence of social media news from bots had an indirect effect on acceptance by increasing self-efficacy. The results are discussed with the aim of providing a better understanding of news audiences in the social media environment, and practical implications for the sustainable news business are suggested.

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.

Using survey data from 2000 and 2007, this study examines individual-level variables influencing the hostile media perception (HMP). Specifically, the study explores how HMP in election coverage is determined based on people's political party identification and its strength, electoral engagement, and media use. HMP was greater for Republicans compared to Democrats in 2000 and 2007. Higher levels of partisanship as well as electoral engagement encouraged HMP.