Every day, BMSG monitors the news to understand how public health issues are circulating in mainstream and social media. As we do our daily news scans, memorable media bites often catch our eye. Here are 10 of our favorites from 2016.
It will be easier to make the big changes our communities need to prevent violence if we change the narrative around it and make prevention a visible part of the conversation. In this report, Berkeley Media Studies Group, in partnership with the Prevention Institute and with support from the Northern California Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit Department, explores news portrayals of community violence and makes recommendations for how to shift one piece of the discourse — the news media — to elevate prevention and multi-sector collaboration.
The news media have historically presented a distorted view of violence – one that ignores the role of the community conditions that foster it and overlooks prevention. Advocates can use a new BMSG study to broaden the conversation and show that community safety is achievable.
Environments play a large role in influencing the public’s health. Yet, in the United States, most people think that individuals are masters of their own destiny. Advocates can use this resource to learn how to create messages that broaden individual responsibility frames and help people see that environments affect health. When people understand that connection, they are more likely to support policies that improve those environments.
Each year, advocates use well crafted media bites to make their policy issues relatable to readers and reporters — and to produce outrage or prompt action. Here are BMSG’s top picks for 2015.
Understanding how sexual violence appears in the media is important for advocates working to prevent it because news coverage offers insights into how the public and policymakers view the issue and what to do about it. In this Issue, BMSG explores how journalists characterize sexual violence, whether prevention is discussed, and what steps advocates and reporters can take to improve coverage.
Like other public health problems, community violence is preventable — but it’s not often understood that way. As a first step toward changing the discourse around it, we analyzed California news reporting on community violence to understand how the issue is portrayed, who speaks in news coverage, and how solutions are discussed. View the analysis, or read related BMSG research on news about community safety.
How advocates can make dense data meaningful for reporters, policymakers and the public.
Public health issues have been a dominant part of the news this year, and advocates played a major role in shaping their coverage. Out of these efforts emerged many memorable media bites. Here are 10 of BMSG’s favorites.
A new study from BMSG explores the tobacco industry’s use of personal choice messaging to shift blame for its products’ health harms onto consumers. Now Big Food is taking a page from tobacco’s well-worn playbook. How similar are the two industries and what does this mean for advocates?
