Media Advocacy Strategies Research Articles

Rethinking digital media use for diasporic political participation: An investigation into journalism advocacy, digital activism, and democratic divides (Dissertation summary)

By presenting five studies on connected research questions, this cumulative dissertation develops a novel understanding of the concept of Hybrid Diasporic Public Sphere by examining how three groups of diasporic exiles, including journalists, activists, and ordinary refugees settled in democratic states, use digital media to engage in transnational conflicts and advocate for political and social change in their homelands. The study demonstrates that the roles of the three diasporic political actors are highly interactive, overlapping, and complementary and their digitally-empowered collaborations blur boundaries between their normative role distinctions creating new interchanging political logics, norms, and practices. The novel contribution of this thesis lies at three levels. First, it redefines diaspora journalism in conflict contexts by examining the Syrian journalists’ media advocacy strategies and digital networks that blend activism, human rights advocacy, and social movements. Second, it further identifies five barriers to the digital diasporic political participation of ordinary refugees demonstrating new forms of democratic divides. Third, the study develops the concept of connected diaspora activist identifying the current challenges that undermine the potential of social media use for mobilizing a political change in non-revolutionary times. The dissertation employs four qualitative research methods including digital ethnography, content analysis, metajournalistic discourse analysis, and a total of 94 in-depth interviews.

Rural Print Media and a Tailored Advocacy Intervention for Smoke-Free Policy.

To examine frequency, prominence, and content of local print media after a 4-year policy advocacy intervention. This was a controlled community-based trial. The study took place in 39 rural counties (22 intervention, 17 comparison). Subjects consisted of 2525 newspaper articles monitored over 18 quarters (July 2007 to December 2011). One key element of the tailored policy advocacy intervention delivered by community advisors was building demand for smoke-free policy via media advocacy strategies. Media clips were coded to assess number of articles; percent of tobacco-related articles on the front page or bold heading section; percent of pro-health articles; and percent of articles with secondhand smoke (SHS)-relevant topics or themes. Coded data were entered into Atlas.ti software. Article frequencies and attributes were compared between groups and over time using negative binomial regression for longitudinal data, with county-level demographics as covariates. In the last 3 years, there were approximately twice as many articles in intervention than in comparison counties. Media clips from newspapers in intervention counties were between 1.4 and 2 times more likely to have front page placement and percent of relevant topic or theme than were those in comparison counties. There was no difference in rate of pro-health articles by group. The policy advocacy intervention to promote smoke-free policy increased media attention to SHS and may have increased public awareness of issues related to smoke-free policy.

Clinic Consortia Media Advocacy Capacity: Partnering with the Media and Increasing Policymaker Awareness

Media advocacy is a popular means of crafting and disseminating messages broadly and has been used by advocates to increase policymaker and public awareness of key health policy issues, such as the large number of uninsured. Some media advocacy activities are more effective than others, however, requiring increased sensitivity to the media environment and adequate resources and expertise. This article describes the results of media advocacy activities undertaken by 19 clinic consortia funded under The California Endowment's Clinic Consortia Policy and Advocacy Program from 2002 to 2006. The consortia used different media advocacy strategies and venues, including newspaper, television, radio, video, brochures, newsletters, and websites. The findings indicate that consortia may have influenced the media agenda and increased the likelihood of securing coverage of key issues, such as the role of clinics in supporting the health care safety net. There is evidence that suggests that clinic consortia media advocacy activities, such as front-page coverage in local and major daily newspapers, increased public and policymaker awareness of key clinic policy issues. Although grantees rated media advocacy overall as less effective than other advocacy activities and few reported that it had directly achieved a policy change or increased funding to clinics, nearly all thought it was effective in increasing policymaker awareness. We conclude that media advocacy is a useful tool for partnering with the media and increasing stakeholder awareness more broadly, but it should not be solely relied upon to achieve a policy change.

The Health Buck Stops Where? Thematic Framing of Health Discourse to Understand the Context for CVD Prevention

Using a constructed week methodology, we analyzed media summaries for the type of health discourse (health care delivery, disease-specific prevention, lifestyle risk factors, public/environmental health disease, social determinants of health) portrayed over a 5-year period as a means of describing the context within which health staff worked to prevent heart disease in one Canadian province. The results reveal that heart disease received very little media coverage, despite provincial health data revealing it to be the leading cause of mortality, morbidity, and health care costs. Coverage of the health care system dominated the media landscape over the 5-year period. The study findings also suggest that the health discourses in the media summaries were represented as primarily thematic, rather than as episodic narratives, relieving any one level of government as entirely responsible for the health of its constituents. Media advocacy strategies may be a means to redress the imbalance of health discourses presented by the media.

Media Advocacy and Underage Drinking Policies: A Study of Louisiana News Media From 1994 Through 2003

The communications literature firmly establishes the significant role of media advocacy in setting public agenda and influencing the direction of public opinion on social issues. Recent public health campaigns embrace media advocacy as an integral part of efforts to change public health policies, yet further studies are needed on the best strategies to promote legislative action. This article examines press coverage in the Baton Rouge Advocate and the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspapers and Louisiana State legislation pertaining to underage drinking from January 1994 to June 2003 and focuses on evidence of media priming and framing of underage drinking and four related legislative policies. High press coverage of alcohol bills during the legislative process was associated with defeated legislation, whereas little or no press coverage was associated with bills successfully passed into law. The authors conclude that more work is needed to understand how media advocacy strategies may hinder enactment of bills.