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General Purpose: To investigate the types of health messages in
media and how these messages affect our health attitudes, beliefs,
and behaviors.
Unit Outline
I. Most Mortality and Morbidity are Preventable
500,000 deaths due to poor diet/exercise, most preventable
450,000 deaths due to smoking, all preventable
250,000 AIDS deaths since 1981, most preventable
10,000 traffic fatalities from alcohol, most preventable
50,000 breast cancer deaths with 1/3 preventable
A. The myth about breast cancer (Phillips, 1999)
1. Method
2. Results
3. The Role Media Plays
II. Safe Sex
A. Life, love, sex, and death (Joseph, 1992)
B. Fictional messages about safe sex - The movie, Skin
Deep, ridiculed the use of condoms.
C. Ad messages about safe sex - most teenage kids do
not understand the messages. All contribute to a
negative attitude toward condoms.
D. Ad messages about safe sex
E. Conclusions
a. Media ignores safe sex.
b. Media ridicules rather than taking it
seriously.
III. Smoking (Altman et al, 1987; Weis & Burke, 1986) - almost
1 1/2 million Americans quit smoking each year, one year
later only 5% are successful.
A. What Do We Know About Smoking Risks? Over 50
million Americans are regular users of tobacco (20-25%).
Younger people are more likely to smoke. In 1992, the
tobacco industry made $45 billion in sales.
B. Predict College Smoking
1. Methods
2. Results-Predictos and Correlates of Smoking
C. Effect of Messages on Smoking Rates - When the
tobacco industry increase the amount of
advertising, there is an increase in tobacco sales.
When advertising decreases, sales decrease as well.
D. How Tobacco Advertisers Suppress Bad News - Twice a
year, Newsweek comes out with a health and fitness
section but does not include the problems with
smoking. Tobacco advertisers would pull their ads
if the magazines included the smoking info. In
1970, the tobacco industry agreed to stop
advertising on TV yet the Government had to stop
anti-smoking campaigns as well.
E. Ad Strategies - They now target women and kids
rather than white males.
F. Addicting Kids (Pierce et al, 1998)
1. Methods
2. Results
a. Name Favorite Ad
b. Have or want the promo item
C. Ad/Promo effects
G. Conclusions
1. Tobacco kills
2. Messages influence us to start using tobacco.
3. People are making money off of your misery.
4. 2,000-5,000 die from second hand smoke.
IV. Nutrition Cultivation (Signorielli & Lears, 1992)
A. Effects of Diet (and Exercise) on Health - high fat
diet linked with high cholesterol and heart
disease. For the first time, the Government has
announced that a vegetarian diet is safe and
practical for all Americans.
B. Cultivation Revisited - people who watch a lot of
TV have different perceptions of diet and exercise.
C. Participants and Procedures - 200 fourth and fifth
graders completed a survey on TV usage and health
questions. They were also given a nutrition quiz
on the impact of sugar, etc.
D. Measurement (TV, Eating Habits, & Beliefs)
E. Results - the eating report showed a large effect
(if they watched a lot of TV, they ate lots of
cereal, etc.). There was a moderate effect on the
nutrition quiz (what they knew was linked to TV).
F. Conclusions
1. If you watch a lot of TV, you are more likely
to be misinformed on diet and exercise - the
cultivation effect occurs.
2. Media effects the young
V. TV and Obesity
A. Kubey's Beeper Study
a. the plug in drug, you zone out while watching TV
b. does this affect your metabolism? If so, TV might make you fat
B. The Plug In Drug and Your Metabolism
C. Study of Males in Health Professions
1. 22,000 adult males complete survey about TV, exercise, and obesity
2. 2 year study from 1986-88
D. Survey Questions
a. Amount of TV watching ---> risk of obesity
b. Amount of Exercise --------> risk of obesity
E. Results
a. highest TV watching versus lowest TV watching: 50% to 100% higher risk of obesity
b. effect occurs across all levels of exercise fitness
F. Conclusions
a. more TV, more obesity
b. metabolic effect, not simply eating in front of TV
VI. Conclusions About Health Messages
A. Media is hazardous to your health
B. Wide Range of effects
1. metabolic effects --- you slow down in front of TV
2. cultivation --- food ads, media sexy world cultivate false beliefs
3. modeling --- acquire risky behaviors concerning tobacco, sex
C. You do control your destiny - see page 190 in workbook
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