Effects of media information on cancer patients' opinions, feelings, decision‐making process and physician‐patient communication

Abstract

The authors also thank Renata Todeschini, Francesca Diodati, and Eliana Valerani for their secretarial support and Kevin Smart (Link Srl, Milan, Italy) for his linguistic help in preparing the article.

The public’s enthusiasm for complementary and alternative medicine amounts to a critique of mainstream medicine

“…8,14,17,19 The attractions of CAM The reasons for the high level of CAM-usage are diverse and complex. Perhaps the most obvious one is that, persuaded by the media, 20 friends, relatives 21 , 22 or by past experience, many consumers are convinced that CAM is effective. 9,21,23,24,25,26,27 The association of CAM with nature appeals to many consumers 28 and this is reflected in the terminology: CAM is seen as natural rather than artificial, pure not synthetic, organic as opposed to processed, "low" rather than "high tech" and "hands on" while conventional medicine is more and more "hands off".…”

How do the media report cancer research? A study of the UK's BBC website

“…The way in which news media affect the public is complex and diverse. Recognised effects include informing audiences (Rees and Bath, 2000), agenda-setting, framing (Passalacqua et al, 2004) and persuading (Iyengar, 1997). There is now a substantial corpus of literature demonstrating the impact of media on shaping public opinion towards countries' health-care systems (Benelli, 2003;Collins et al, 2006), and how newspapers targeted at particular ethnic groups can vary in their approach (Hoffman-Goetz and Friedman, 2005).…”

Trick or treat? Australian newspaper portrayal of complementary and alternative medicine for the treatment of cancer

“…Some issues, such as the prevalence of CAM amongst cancer patients and their reasons for use, have been explored extensively [5]. However, although many cancer patients seek, and are influenced by, media reports on CAM [4,[6][7][8][9], few studies (and none in Australia) have examined how the media represents CAM use in the treatment of cancer.…”