Use of mass media campaigns to change health behaviour

By M. Wakefield, B. Loken, R. Hornik. The Lancet, 2010

2,294 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mass media campaigns are widely used to expose high proportions of large populations to messages through routine uses of existing media, such as television, radio, and newspapers. Exposure to such messages is, therefore, generally passive. Such campaigns are frequently competing with factors, such as pervasive product marketing, powerful social norms, and behaviours driven by addiction or habit. In this Review we discuss the outcomes of mass media campaigns in the context of various health-risk behaviours (eg, use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, heart disease risk factors, sex-related behaviours, road safety, cancer screening and prevention, child survival, and organ or blood donation). We conclude that mass media campaigns can produce positive changes or prevent negative changes in health-related behaviours across large populations. We assess what contributes to these outcomes, such as concurrent availability of required services and products, availability of community-based programmes, and policies that support behaviour change. Finally, we propose areas for improvement, such as investment in longer better-funded campaigns to achieve adequate population exposure to media messages.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b85e10d3fc7ce06660e437cb13629422b9e918d6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Psychology

1. Kyra Hamilton
2. Massimo F. Piepoli
3. Martin S. Hagger
4. Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis
5. Ibrahim Al-Jubari
6. S. Hardcastle
7. Vassilis Barkoukis

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Massimo F. Piepoli
2. Martin S. Hagger

In Physiology

1. Massimo F. Piepoli
2. Kyra Hamilton
3. Martin S. Hagger
4. Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis
5. Ibrahim Al-Jubari

Citations in the corpus

• 2016 European Guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice (2017, positive): “Accompanying consumer awareness campaigns on healthy foods [505] and nutrition labelling can be effective.”
• Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 (2019, neutral): “186 Wakefield et al., 2010.”
• Drivers’ experiences during floods: Investigating the psychological influences underpinning decisions to avoid driving through floodwater (2017, background): “efficacy messages built into the campaigns are most effective in addressing behaviours that are less common (Tannenbaum et al., 2015; Wakefield et al., 2010), such as avoiding driving through floodwater.”
• Are Health Behavior Change Interventions That Use Online Social Networks Effective? A Systematic Review (2014, neutral): “This contrasts with the touted benefits of using online social networks for health intervention, such as the ability to recruit participants via social networks [37], and to virally disseminate interventions on a mass scale [38].”
• Health Disparities Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Older Adults: Results From a Population-Based Study (2013, background): “Although smoking and excessive drinking are leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality,(47) most prevention campaigns target only younger populations.(48,49) Intervention strategies that both identify and address distinctive cultural factors that may promote smoking and drinking among LGB”