This chapter shows how public health advocates can make better use of the mass media to address significant public health problems. It lays the foundation for such an approach, known as media advocacy, and it offers a 10-step guide to using media advocacy.
Californians made history in 1996. Across the state, 29 cities and counties voted to ban “junk guns” — the small, cheap handguns used disproportionately in crime. This Issue analyzes the arguments used during that debate in the 18 newspapers covering the regions where the bans were first enacted.
What is media advocacy? And how does it differ from the other ways groups use the mass media? Issue 1 shows how local groups use media advocacy to focus upstream on policy change and explains why that’s so important.
This handbook shows how journalists can adopt a public health approach to violence — one that views violence as preventable, not inevitable, and seeks to alter the basic conditions in our society that give rise to and sustain its unacceptably high levels. It also suggests different questions that reporters can ask to help illuminate the issue of violence prevention and give people better information to develop more effective policy and programs.
Affirmative action was a significant issue in the 1996 national and state elections. This framing memo, based on a news analysis of the issue, shows how affirmative action supporters and opponents framed their arguments and how supporters could have done a better job of making their case.
The purpose of media advocacy is to promote public health goals by using the media to strategically apply pressure for policy change. It emphasizes public policy rather than personal behavior. This article uses two case studies to illustrate key aspects of media advocacy. The first is a 5-year statewide violence prevention initiative for young people in California. The second focuses on the activities of a mothers’ group working to improve public housing.
This article describes one effort to help prevent violence against women by addressing some of the larger societal factors involved. The Dangerous Promises campaign is based on the premise that sexist advertising images contribute to an environment conducive to violence against women. Using the community organizing and media advocacy, the campaign pressures the alcohol industry to change how they portray women in much of their advertising. The article examines the strategies and outcomes of the campaign and makes a case for using media advocacy in the policymaking process.
Although drug use in the U.S. was declining in the late 80s and early 90s, “drug war” rhetoric and punitive solutions continued to run rampant. A large body of literature suggests that media played a large role in that. This article reports on a content analysis of network news reports on illegal drugs to see how portrayals of their usage stacked up against reality.
This article investigates how local television news reported on health system reform during the week President Clinton presented his health system reform bill. The authors find that although health system reform was the focus of a large number of local television news stories during the week, in-depth explanation was scarce.
Using the mass media to improve public health can be like navigating a vast network of roads without any street signs — if you are not sure where you are going and why, chances are you won’t get there. The purpose of this article is to provide an abbreviated road map of three approaches that incorporate mass media in their strategies to advance public health goals.
