MEDIA AND HEALTH COMMUNICATION: AN OVERVIEW

Disseminating health-related messages to people is very important. Health communication as a field of study ensures that such information get to the target audience. Over time, issues have been raised on who should write health reports and how they should be written. Even though, there are other sources of health information, media have significant role to play in the dissemination of health messages. This is because they have the capacity to reach a scattered, heterogeneous audience at the same time. These media outlets have proven to be dependable, but are however constrained by the following factors: presentation style; the kind of stories they choose to make public; frames and interpretations given to health stories by journalists and finally media ownership and control pattern. One of the suggestions is that researchers should shift from studying contents of the health reports to studying if health reports are given adequate coverage by the media. Media practitioners are also encouraged to concentrate on stories that are people-oriented and not the dramatic ones