Lou Jay
COMM 3200
Journal Article Review

* ARTICLE INFORMATION: Yanovitzky, Itzhak, and Jo Stryker. "Mass Media, Social Norms, and Health Promotion Efforts: A Longitudinal Study of Media Effects on Youth Binge Drinking." Communication Research 28.2 (2001): 208-39. ProQuest. Web. 3 Sep. 2013.

* TOPIC/THEORY: The article is about the effects media has on society’s perception of binge drinking among young adults. “The study examines the validity of a norm-reinforcement approach as a complementary model to direct media effects on health behavior change.” The ideodynamic method and a time-series regression were applied in this experiment.

* RESEARCH QUESTION OR PROBLEM: The study was conducted to see if media’s efforts to persuade youth to stop drinking are effective. As stated in the article, alcohol is the most widely used and abused drug among youth in the U.S. The authors set out to address two concerns. First, the believability of the norm-reinforcement approach compared to other paths of media effects on health behaviors. Second, the credibility of a direct or indirect path from media representations of risky behaviors compared to social expectations.

* METHOD: The researchers considered four factors in order to test their theory. First, they surveyed high school seniors on their views of drinking. Second, they looked at news coverage of binge drinking between 1978 and 1996. Those newspapers were chosen to represent coverage of alcohol abuse in the national media environment. To avoid sampling errors, they tested recall and precision for each of the 19 years of news coverage. Third, they coded the news stories as favorable, unfavorable, and neutral. Finally, they collected data from the Library of Congress on federal legislation against youth binge drinking from 1978 to 1996. These records included the date, number, and content of bills introduced each year to the U.S. Congress.

* RESULTS: The researchers found that high school seniors involvement in drinking behavior decreased, approval of drinking among friends decreased, and their friends have an increased view of drinking being harmful. They also found that national news coverage of binge drinking has increased. The number of bills regarding youth binge drinking habits has also increased.

* DISCUSSION/LIMITATIONS: The researchers found that “although many public health communication campaigns focus on a direct association between information in the media and health behavior change, alternative routes of media effects may be equally or more promising venues of uncovering media effects.” It was suggested that the norm-reinforcement approach is a useful model of media effects. However, limitations exist because the links examined are mainly drawn from individual level processes that are not directly observed. They say that their analysis “cannot confirm the presence of these processes but can only speak to their plausibility.”

* YOUR REACTIONS: I’m surprised that the results stated that there was a decrease in acceptability among peers. However, the study was conducted in the 90’s and early 2000’s. If this study were conducted by the current generation, the results would be different. I am pretty positive that the acceptance among peers would have increased greatly since that study was conducted. Although media does report on youth drinking, it is usually only when a serious incident occurs. I feel that most of the media sheds drinking in a positive light. TV shows, movies, magazines, and music all portray drinking among youth to be an acceptable activity.