ABSTRACT
The mass media are one of the many important factors known to exert influence on people’s knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding health-related issues. Media depictions, whether fictive or factually grounded, hold great potential to inform and influence the public about a variety of health issues, including the risks of certain behaviors for one’s physical and mental well-being, as well as the benefits of different actions for achieving optimal health (Brodie et al., 2001; Brown & Witherspoon, 2002). This potential, coupled with the sheer volume of time the average American spends with media, has created a situation whereby studying patterns of media content is vital to understanding health attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Thus, in an increasingly media-rich era, researchers from a range of disciplines have expanded their efforts at studying media messages about health-related topics (Kline, 2003). They pose questions such as: How often do TV portrayals show drinking and driving? How many of the characters who have sexual intercourse in films are shown talking about or using condoms? They answer these questions by quantifying their observations of media messages using the method of content analysis.
