News coverage is an important driver of public conversations about health and social justice issues. It influences not only what issues people think about but also how they think about them.
Time, newsroom budgets, and how diverse newsroom are — or aren’t — are just a few of the many factors that determine which issues get front-page or primetime coverage and which ones get buried or overlooked entirely. In spite of these challenges, media advocates can leverage the agenda-setting function of the news to capture the attention of decision-makers and opinion leaders, garner support for policy change and move people to take action. Advocates can do this through timely op-eds, letters to the editor and pitching stories to reporters, among other tactics.
Advocates can also use social channels to shape news conversations. While traditional news outlets remain a key source of information for the majority of news consumers, digital media platforms are quickly changing the way people consume the news. Because blogs, tweets and other social media content don’t have to go through the filter of an editor before being published, advocates can use digital venues to highlight voices that are often overlooked in mainstream coverage and shift the balance of power in the media landscape.
To learn more about the agenda-setting function of the media and how you can use it to promote equitable policies, check out the below resources or contact us.
Related resources
Making the case for health with media advocacy [pdf]
This training manual introduces media advocacy, describes the news media’s role in shaping debates on community health, and can help advocates clarify their overall strategy and learn how it relates to a media strategy, a message strategy and a media access strategy.