Audience Responses to a Risk Communication Message in Four Media Formats

This study compared consumer reactions to four media formats — video news release, video public service announcement, print news release, and newsprint column — that contained a parallel message about the use of agricultural chemicals in the food supply. Eight message evaluation sessions were held in four regions of the United States with 86 women. Based on their responses to a background questionnaire, the women were distinguished by level of concern for pesticide use and food safety, urban versus rural residence, and farm versus nonfarm employment. While all formats were favorably received, Likert-type scale reactions, cognitive responses, and some focus group comments showed audience preference for the video news release and newsprint column approaches. Consumers who indicated high concern for the pesticide/food safety issue responded more favorably to the two print formats than did less concerned consumers. No such distinctions based on level of concern were found for the two broadcast formats. This work illustrates the dilemma communicators have in educating about controversial risk issues, that is, in creating messages that are considered objective and nonsensational, yet also maintain the interest of readers and viewers. Also, the study provides an example of combining quantitative research designs with qualitative message evaluation focus groups.     

Reading or Listening to a Gain- or Loss-Framed Health Message: Effects of Message Framing and Communication Mode in the Context of Fruit and Vegetable Intake

Gain-framed health messages are found to be more effective when targeting prevention behaviors. However, framing research has only minimally investigated the role of communication mode, another important factor in health communication. This study explored the role of communication mode in interaction with message framing, and the influence of two individual differences related to involvement as conditions under which gain framing can lead to health behavior change. Participants (N = 258) were exposed to either an auditory or written health message concerning fruit and vegetable intake, with either gain- or loss-framed arguments. In addition, the online experiment consisted of baseline and posttest measures, among which intention to consume sufficient fruit and vegetables. Moderating effects of perceived baseline fruit and vegetable consumption and baseline intention were assessed. A significant interaction between message framing and communication mode was observed: In case of a gain-framed message, an auditory message resulted in a higher intention than a written message. This pattern was most explicitly found among those with a lower perceived fruit and vegetable intake at baseline. Although further research is warranted in health persuasion research, the findings can possibly be used to target health interventions better at specific groups of people who behave less healthy.     

健康教育的媒体传播途径与效果

健康教育宣传作品若能被广大群众所接受、能成功地收到良好的宣传效果,作品设计时应该多贴近现实、贴近生活、贴近群众,尽可能多地提供科学知识背后的人文背景。在设计作品中要特别注意观众水平,要从观众出发,用适度的色彩、适度的形象和语言进行设计。量体裁衣,有的放矢,着重以人为本的设计理念的作品才会成功地收到良好的宣传效果。     

Optimizing the Presentation of Mental Health Information in Social Media: The Effects of Health Testimonials and Platform on Source Perceptions,Message Processing,and Health Outcomes

Using social media for the purpose of disseminating mental health information is a critical area of scientific inquiry for health communication professionals. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the presence of a first-person testimonial in educational mental health information placed in Facebook and Twitter messages influenced college students’ (N = 257) source perceptions, information processing, cognitive elaboration, health information recall, beliefs, and behavioral intentions. Results show that exposure to social media messages that featured mental health information embedded with a testimonial predicted less source homophily and more critical thoughts about the social media source, less systematic message processing, and less cognitive elaboration. Health information recall was significantly impacted by both the social media platform and message content such that participants in the testimonial condition on Facebook were more likely to recall the health facts in those messages whereas participants who viewed the testimonial in Twitter were less likely to recall the facts in those tweets. Compared to those who read Facebook messages, participants who read Twitter messages reported higher levels of systematic message processing. These findings suggest that the integration of health testimonials into social media messages might inadvertently provoke psychological resistance to mental health information, thereby reducing the persuasive impact of those messages.     

Social Media and Nutrition Education: The Food Hero Experience

Social media can be a quick, low-cost, direct way for nutrition educators to broaden the scope of their targeted programs. The authors' viewpoint is that for social media to be effective, strategies for its use should follow “best practices” guidelines. This viewpoint suggests social media best practices based on experience gained from the Food Hero social marketing campaign. Understanding of how nutrition educators can take advantage of social media as a new mechanism for reaching their target audience is needed, including best practices for implementation, management, and evaluation.     

老年人的营养与健康

随着社会经济的发展 ,世界人口老龄化已日趋明显。目前我国已步入老龄化社会 ,6 0岁以上人口约有 1.3亿。老年人的健康及其营养、合理膳食问题应引起高度重视。老年人的代谢和生理特点1 代谢减弱　表现为基础代谢降低 ,较中年人降低 10 %～ 15 % ;蛋白质分解多 ,合成少 ;体内酶活性降低 ,脂质过氧化物积聚 ,促进衰老 ;体内含水量降低 ,皮肤弹性减弱 ;瘦体组织减少 ;体脂增加 ,血管逐渐硬化 ;糖耐量减低 ,对糖的代谢能力下降 ;骨钙丢失较多 ,骨质密度降低 ,易发生骨质疏松症。2 组织器官功能降低　表现为视力和听力减退 ,反应迟钝 ,记忆力下…     

Changing the Face of Health Education via Health Interventions: Social Ecological Perspectives on New Media Technologies and Elementary Nutrition Education

ABSTRACT

The relationship between media use, family dynamics, and school environments on a child’s likelihood to be overweight or obese is an area of research with limited empirical evidence; however, reports have indicated that children are increasingly developing more negative habits related to their health. The purpose of the present study was to employ a social ecological perspective in determining the effectiveness of a longitudinal health literacy/health intervention program on children’s nutritional knowledge, attitudes toward healthy eating and exercise, food preferences, and eating behavior. Using a sample of elementary school children initially in Grades 2 and 3 and then in Grades 3 and 4, a field experiment was conducted using a new media technology to record their food intake at home and at school. Results from the study suggest that the health literacy program was successful with positive increases observed for cognition, attitudes, and behavior. From a perspective of social ecological model, the findings suggest that children’s eating behaviors need to be considered at the intersection of children’s health literacy/attitudes, community efforts, and media/screen time use.     

新媒体在埃博拉出血热应急健康传播中的使用状况分析

目的：了解和分析新媒体在埃博拉出血热健康传播中的使用情况。方法通过门户网站、新浪微博／腾讯微博、搜狗微信平台检索,分析埃博拉出血热宣传海报、宣传视频及宣传漫画在3种新媒体中的转载使用、阅读量等情况。结果漫画书被3种新媒体工具转载使用的数量最多,为225个;其次是宣传视频,为89个;宣传海报相对较低,为67个。埃博拉出血热宣传海报门户网站转载使用在3种新媒体工具中比例最高,为41.79％;埃博拉出血热视频微博转载量最多,为51.69％,但门户网站观看视频量最多。漫画书在微信公众号中转载量最多,为68.89％。结论应急健康传播中应重视新媒体的运用;不同类型传播材料应侧重使用不同的新媒体工具;在应急健康传播中手机微信在信息扑捉敏感性以及传播持续时间上均有先天优势。     

疾病预防控制机构公众媒介健康信息传播现状分析

目的：分析武汉市疾病预防控制中心通过不同媒介开展健康传播的信息状况,为今后更好开展健康传播提供依据。方法收集2012及2013年2年不同媒介开展健康传播的信息,采用内容分析法对传播信息时间分布、传播媒介分布和议题分布等进行分析。结果2年间发布媒介健康传播信息1012条,其中2012年397条,2013年615条。信息发布在时间分布上不均衡,内容与健康事件有关;在媒介分布上,传统媒介24．80％,其中纸媒占传统媒介的72．11％,新媒介75．20％,其中微博占新媒介的88．31％;议题以健康影响因素与防病知识为主,占78．26％。结论传统媒介仍是健康传播的重要载体,而新媒介已成为健康传播的新兴载体;健康传播的重点是健康知识普及、促进公众行为转变。在应对突发公共卫生事件时,应抓住机遇大力开展健康传播。     

Social Media Mining for an Analysis of Nutrition and Dietary Health in Taiwan

Dining is an essential part of human life. In order to pursue a healthier self, more and more people enjoy homemade cuisines. Consequently, the amount of recipe websites has increased significantly. These online recipes represent different cultures and cooking methods from various regions, and provide important indications on nutritional content. In recent years, the development of data science made data mining a popular research area. However, only a few researches in Taiwan have applied data mining in the studies of recipes and nutrients. Therefore, this work aims at utilizing machine learning models to discover health-related insights from recipes on social media. First, we collected over 15,000 Chinese recipes from the largest recipe website in Taiwan to build a recipe database. We then extracted information from this dataset through natural language processing methodologies so as to better understand the characteristics of various cuisines and ingredients. Thus, we can establish a classification model for the automatic categorization of recipes. We further performed cluster analysis for grouping nutrients to recognize the nutritional differences for each cluster and each cuisine type. The results showed that using the support vector machine (SVM) model can successfully classify recipes with an average F-score of 82%. We also analyzed the nutritional value of different cuisine categories and the possible health effects they may bring to the consumers. Our methods and findings can assist future work on extracting essential nutritional information from recipes and promoting healthier diets.     

Health Communication About Hospice Care in Chinese Media: Digital Topic Modeling Study

BackgroundHospice care, a type of end-of-life care provided for dying patients and their families, has been rooted in China since the 1980s. It can improve receivers’ quality of life as well as ease their economic burden. The Chinese mass media have continued to actively dispel misconceptions surrounding hospice care and deliver the latest information to citizens.ObjectiveThis study aims to retrieve and analyze news reports on hospice care in order to gain insight into whether any differences existed in heath information delivered over time and to evaluate the role of mass media in health communication in recent years.MethodsWe searched the Huike (WiseSearch) news database for relevant news reports from Chinese mass media released between 2014 and 2019. We defined two time periods for this study: (1) January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016, and (2) January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019. The data cleaning process was completed using Python. We determined appropriate topic numbers for these two periods based on the coherence score and applied latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling. Keywords for each topic and corresponding topics’ names were then generated. The topics were plotted into different circles, and their distances on the 2D plane was represented by multidimensional scaling.ResultsAfter removing duplicated and irrelevant news articles, we obtained a total of 2227 articles. We chose 8 as the suitable topic number for both study periods and generated topic names and associated keywords. The top 3 most reported topics in the first period were patient treatment, hospice care stories, and development of health care services and health insurance, accounting for 18.68% (178/953), 16.58% (158/953), and 14.17% (135/953) of the collected reports, respectively. The top 3 most reported topics in the second period were hospice care stories, patient treatment, and development of health care services, accounting for 15.62% (199/953), 15.38% (15.38/953), and 14.27% (182/953), respectively.ConclusionsTopic modeling of news reports gives us a better understanding of the patterns of health communication about hospice care by mass media. Chinese mass media frequently reported on hospice care in April of every year on account of a traditional Chinese festival. Moreover, an increase in coverage was observed in the second period. The two periods shared 6 similar topics, of which patient treatment outstrips hospice care stories was the most reported topic in the second period, implying the humanistic spirit behind the reports. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest stakeholders cooperate with the mass media when planning to update policies.