Youth Radio is dedicated to bringing the voices of youth to young and adult audiences. This is a story of young people using radio to create their own representations as a mechanism for violence prevention.
Violence is a perplexing and multi-dimensional problem, about which the public remains largely misinformed. TV news is important to violence prevention because it heightens awareness of the issue and because it is the most consumed news source. This article examines whose voice is represented in local TV news stories about youth and violence.
The leading environmental threat to children’s health is lead poisoning. This Issue assesses the claims made by various sides of the issue during 1993 and 1994 in the nation’s major newspapers.
Alcohol is infrequently mentioned in the news. The occasional portrayals rarely depict problems or prevention, instead reinforcing the idea that alcohol is part of the good life or, at best, neutral. Substantive alcohol stories that do appear often report on research or advocacy. Researchers could, and should, have a stronger presence in the news.
In the late 1990’s, children’s health began to receive more attention in the news media. But was the coverage meaningful? In this Issue, we find out by examining three months of coverage from newspapers and National Public Radio.
Knowing that the media can be very powerful in shaping how voters perceive social issues, BMSG analyzed news coverage of Houston’s Proposition A and other affirmative action issues during the fall of 1997.
In September 1993, a small but dedicated group of prevention advocates in Oakland, Calif., had the alcohol industry running scared. This Issue describes how the coalition used media advocacy successfully in its four-year struggle to rectify the over concentration of alcohol outlets in Oakland.
This study departs from the traditional perspective that televised violence directly affects viewers’ behavior and instead examines how news stories about violence influence public and policymaker opinion. The study employs the concept of framing, which posits that media tell people not only what issues to think about but also how to think about them.
This chapter shows how public health advocates can make better use of the mass media to address significant public health problems. It lays the foundation for such an approach, known as media advocacy, and it offers a 10-step guide to using media advocacy.
Californians made history in 1996. Across the state, 29 cities and counties voted to ban “junk guns” — the small, cheap handguns used disproportionately in crime. This Issue analyzes the arguments used during that debate in the 18 newspapers covering the regions where the bans were first enacted.
