Project Summary

Exposure to information plays a significant role in patient behaviors and decisions across the cancer care continuum and also contributes to the public’s support for policy. Understanding the impact of messages that are conflicting or controversial in the media is critical to guide public health efforts to deliver accurate and timely information to the public and to correct potentially harmful messages related to cancer prevention and screening. The two cases explored in this project, breast cancer screening and the human papillomavirus vaccine, are significant public health challenges. Moreover, they continue to be presented to the public in ways that may compromise public understanding: with conflict and at times, heated controversy. The motivation for our project is to understand how these features of communication influence the public as these issues are communicated by researchers through the news media and translated by journalists.

Our research uses multiple methods to investigate the impact of news coverage of cancer screening and prevention, particularly controversial messages, on the public’s cancer-related beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. In particular, we use nationally representative surveys, survey-based experiments, news media content analysis, and interviews with communication stakeholders. This mixed-method study contributes a new understanding about the conflicting and potentially politicized information environment surrounding cancer. In order to intervene to aid the public, women, and parents in making decisions about cancer prevention, we must first grasp the ways in which a competitive media landscape shapes public understanding of cancer.