Prevention and screening efficacy messages in newspaper accounts of cancer

Abstract

The news media are a primary source of cancer prevention and detection information for the general public, but little is known about the content of cancer prevention and detection messages in mainstream media. This study examines how cancer prevention and screening efficacy messages are presented in cancer news media coverage. Efficacy messages provide information about skills related to prevention and screening behaviors. Analysis of cancer-related stories in 44 major US daily newspapers during 2003 (n = 2448) reveals that efficacy messages were rarely present in cancer stories. Efficacy messages were less likely to appear in stories that had a 'local' angle, but efficacy messages were more likely to appear in stories that contained 'mobilizing information' (additional resources for readers) or stories that mentioned highly preventable cancers (lung, skin, esophagus and bladder). The discussion includes a theory of norms for effectively influencing cancer-related behaviors through news reports. Implications of this work extend to the lack of efficacy messages when highly detectable cancers are mentioned, thus the lack of actionable information when health risks are presented, and a dearth of efficacy messages when localized information is present, each of which represent key areas for encouraging health journalists to include more efficacy statements.

Cancer coverage in a mainstream and Korean American online newspaper: Lessons for community intervention

“…One difference between our findings and previous work is that we reviewed a sample of all articles containing the word cancer and did not limit ourselves to those ''primarily'' about cancer [21] or a specific type of cancer [24]. This allowed us to have a more complete picture of newspaper coverage, as well as evaluate the proportion of total articles about cancer and the proportion of those where cancer was a primary focus.…”

“…Specific themes assessed included epidemiology/ statistics; primary prevention and risk factors; detection and diagnosis; treatment; policies; and people or organizations. A category was also included for ''action steps'' based on Moriarty and Strykers' [21] suggestion that news media are a possible source of self-efficacy, defined as one's capability to produce valued outcomes and prevent undesired ones [22]. Because, to the best of our knowledge, the length of words and sentences in Korean is not a measure of comprehension difficulty as it is in English [23], we did not evaluate this aspect of the content.…”

“…They serve as an important source of information for their readers and promoter of health priorities for the community. In this context, one thought-provoking result of our study is how few articles in either newspaper contained what Moriarty and Stryker [21] categorized as self-efficacy information, defined as specific information, strategies, or resources about how to perform healthy behaviors. Even among the articles in our analysis that had cancer as a major theme, less than 10% provided readers with additional information sources (e.g., Websites, telephone numbers) or instructed them in specific behaviors.…”

Predictors of Perceived Ambiguity About Cancer Prevention Recommendations: Sociodemographic Factors and Mass Media Exposures

“…Their associations with perceived ambiguity may be attributable to media-specific differences in the content of information pertaining to cancer prevention. For example, some evidence suggests that newspaper coverage of skin, colon, and other cancers tends to focus on disease risks, to the exclusion of presenting information about effective prevention and screening strategies (Moriarty & Stryker, 2007; Stryker, Solky, & Emmons, 2005). Further content-focused research is needed to explore how these and other aspects of the way in which different media sources present information may influence ambiguity perceptions.…”

Frequently cited sources in cancer news coverage: a content analysis examining the relationship between cancer news content and source citation

“…The present study is part of a larger project that replicated, updated, and expanded the 1980 NCI content analyses [8,19,26]. Available data from the larger project provides the most recent glimpse of the current state of cancer news coverage.…”