Article

Behavioral consequences of conflict-oriented health news coverage: the 2009 mammography guideline controversy and online information seeking.

School of Communication, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Health Communication (impact factor: 0.97). 08/2011; 27(2):158-66. DOI:10.1080/10410236.2011.571757 pp.158-66
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT Building on channel complementarity theory and media-system dependency theory, this study explores the impact of conflict-oriented news coverage of health issues on information seeking online. Using Google search data as a measure of behavior, we demonstrate that controversial news coverage of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's November 2009 recommendations for changes in breast cancer screening guidelines strongly predicted the volume of same-day online searches for information about mammograms. We also found that this relationship did not exist 1 year prior to the coverage, during which mammography news coverage did not focus on the guideline controversy, suggesting that the controversy frame may have driven search behavior. We discuss the implications of these results for health communication scholars and practitioners.

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Keywords

1 year
 
breast cancer screening guidelines
 
channel complementarity theory
 
conflict-oriented news coverage
 
controversial news coverage
 
controversy frame
 
Google search data
 
guideline controversy
 
mammography news coverage
 
media-system dependency theory
 
practitioners
 
same-day online searches
 
study explores
 
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's November 2009 recommendations