ABSTRACT
As the previous chapters have demonstrated, researchers have published thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of books, papers and reports examining the myriad ways in which mass media technologies and content can and do affect our health, both directly through impacts on our own health-related knowledge, beliefs, expectations, attitudes and behaviors, and indirectly through media effects on health policy. And yet, in spite of all the information and insights those scholars have provided, there is still much we do not fully understand about how interacting with mass media influences individual and public health. Fifty years from now, regardless of how many more media health effects studies have been conducted and published, that last statement will remain true. New media technologies, new types of content and new patterns of interacting with those technologies and that content are developing every day and will continue to do so. New health issues arise or gain prominence every year. For example, in January 2015, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, published his list of “America’s 9 Biggest Health Issues” for the coming year. It included brief discussions of such issues as the shortage of doctors in the United States, deadly hospital errors and infections, antibiotic resistance, food deserts, the cost and expected increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, the likely shortage of caregivers for our aging population, the absence of an acceptable work-life balance in the lives of most American adults, and the growing use of “do-it-yourself ” health care applications and technology (Gupta, 2015). Each of these issues has appeared, to a greater
or lesser extent, in some type of media content, primarily news, and, of course, DIY health apps and technology could be considered healthrelated media in their own right. Yet none has been addressed to any significant extent in the preceding chapters, not because the issues are unimportant but because other issues have garnered the majority of attention from media effects researchers. My point here is that the need to investigate both positive and negative, intended and unintended effects of media use will continue. Some important questions, based on the preponderance of research, have been settled. Exposure to cigarette advertising does increase the likelihood of smoking initiation among young people; the same relationship almost certainly exists for alcohol advertising and the initiation of alcohol use. Consumption of violent media content increases the likelihood of aggressive and even violent behavior among some children and adolescents. News media attention to health issues significantly influences public ratings of the importance of those health issues. And yet, there is more work to be done if we are to understand more completely who is most vulnerable to these and other media effects and how best to enhance media’s positive health effects and reduce or even eliminate negative health effects. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is not to list every important research question that remains to be answered in relation to media effects on health; that is an impossible task. Rather, the chapter examines some general observations one can make about gaps in the existing research and suggests some additional specific issues that would be useful to investigate.
