Jessica Birthisel | Sept. 9, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Assistant professor Lesa Hatley Major was the first presenter for the fall Research Colloquium. She reviewed her recent experiments on how framing health stories affects audience perceptions of health issues. |
Assistant professor Lesa Hatley Major’s recent research considers just this question, and she says the presentation of news may influence the ways the public attributes responsibility for health problems.
Her presentation of this research Wednesday kicked off the School of Journalism Research Colloquium for the fall. In its second semester, the colloquium features biweekly research presentations by faculty members, graduate students and guests.
Major presented the preliminary results of several experiments she conducted last spring at the school. Using adult volunteers from a multi-county region, these experiments explored the ways that the presentation of news (referred to in research as the “framing” of news) influences the ways audience members think about health problem causes and solutions.
Most studies have considered only how single news frames affect audience members’ reaction to articles, but Major says she wanted to take framing research into new territory.
“The common sense question for me was, what happens when you combine news frames?” she explained.
She used several types of frames. First were the gain and loss frames. In a story about a health topic such as obesity, a gain frame would present the issue in terms of the benefits of treatment (for instance, longer life). A loss frame would consider present the issue in terms of the risks of inaction, such as heart disease, stroke or early death.
She also considered thematic and episodic frames. Thematic stories cover issues from a larger, societal level, such as national statistics for lung cancer cases, while episodic stories cover the experiences of individuals, such as a local bus driver who can’t work because he’s receiving treatment for lung cancer.
Her initial findings suggest that these combined frames do have a statistically significant effect on audience perceptions of who is to blame for illness. Stories that covered issues from a societal level and also talked about the risks and losses associated with a condition significantly increased participants’ likelihood of blaming societal factors and not the individual for the health condition.
Those same stories that covered issues from a societal level but talked about the benefits of treatment or healthier lifestyles had an opposite affect, however. They significantly increased participants’ belief that individuals were responsible for solutions to the health problem.
Major also found stories about individual experiences with health problems focusing on risks and losses significantly increased support for policies related to health.
These findings have implications for health policy makers who are trying to figure out how to create the most effective messages for the public, Major concluded.
The School of Journalism Research Colloquium continues Sept. 22 with doctoral candidate Bill Gillis. A full list of the semester’s speakers is available online.
