Counterfactual thinking is the process of mentally undoing the outcome of an event by imagining alternate antecedent states. For example, one might think that if they had given up smoking earlier, their health would be better. Counterfactuals are more frequent following negative events than positive events. Counterfactuals have both aversive and beneficial consequences for the individual. On the one hand, individuals who engage in counterfactual thinking experience negative affect and are prone to biased judgment and decision making. On the other hand, counterfactuals serve a preparative function, and they help people reach their goals in the future by suggesting effective behavioral alternatives.
Counterfactual thoughts have been found to influence an array of cognitive processes. Engaging in counterfactual thinking motivates careful, in-depth information processing, increases perceptions of self-efficacy and control, influences attitudes toward social matters, with consequences for behavioral intentions and subsequent behaviors. Although it is a heavily studied matter in some domains of the social sciences (e.g., psychology, political sciences, decision making), counterfactual thinking has received less attention in the communication discipline. Findings from the few studies conducted in communication suggest that counterfactual thinking is a promising message design strategy in risk and health contexts. Still, research in this area is critically needed, and it represents an opportunity to expand our knowledge.
Article
Counterfactuals in Health and Risk Messaging
Irina A. Iles and Xiaoli Nan
Article
Creating Authentic and Lasting Community Relationships to Enhance Awareness and Understanding of Cancer Research
Linda Fleisher, Evelyn González, and Armenta Washington
Building and sustaining relationships fundamentally requires mutual trust based on authentic and reciprocal communication. Successful academic and community partnerships require a deep understanding of the needs of all stakeholders facilitated through dialogue and ongoing communication strategies. This dialogue is especially crucial to address health disparities and bridge the divide between academics and other professionals and the communities they serve. Innovative and sound health communications and community engagement approaches can help to address this divide. For those working with communities to improve health, Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles can serve as a compass to guide those efforts of building on the strengths and resources within the community and ensuring co-learning to address social inequities. Moreover, using innovative and interactive health communication strategies, such as community forums, photovoice projects, and the development of culturally sensitive and relevant messaging, can empower and engage the community, facilitating long-lasting relationships between the academic institutions and communities that ultimately address the unique concerns and values of those most in need.
Article
Cultivation in Health and Risk Messaging
Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Naomi Tan
Cultivation theory examines the effects of the media, mainly television on viewer perception over an extended period of time. Television is seen by people throughout the globe, with many spending considerable amounts of time watching the medium. The act of watching television has been described as the first leisure activity to cut across social and ethnic divisions in society. This made it a unique mass media tool because mass message dissemination to diverse groups in a population was made possible. Cultivation scholars have studied the effects of the medium, trying to understand how television content can alter one’s social reality. Heavy viewers are considered to be most susceptible to the effects of cultivation. The reality of these effects poses important questions for health communication scholars considering the role television plays in disseminating health messages. Health communication scholars became interested in studying cultivation to understand the health-related effects the medium could have on viewers. Understanding the health effects of television is pivotal, considering that television and the structures that constitute television content set the agendas for many health topics, often disseminating negative and positive messages that can impact society, especially the young and impressionable. With television content addressing health issues such as nutrition, diet, body image, tobacco, cancer, drugs, obesity, and women’s health, cultivation theory can offer health communication scholars a framework to understand how health behaviors are shaped by the mass media and the roles these media play in reinforcing unhealthy behaviors. By establishing a basis for studying how such portrayals have direct health-related effects on viewers, cultivation theory creates openings for questioning the structures of the media that put out unhealthy content and for interrogating the roles and responsibilities of media agenda in inculcating positive health messages. Directions for future research include looking at contextually contrasting populations that share different cultural and community values, and different ways of consuming television. Research questions exploring the roles of community structures with different sets of subjective norms, or with different roles of community norms, in the realm of cultivation effects offer new areas for exploration.
Article
Cultural Fusion in Physician–Patient Communication and Decision Making in Japan
Miho Iwakuma and Daisuke Son
The term “cinemeducation” was coined by Matthew Alexander in 2002, and according to P. Ravi Shankar, it refers to the use of clips from movies and videos to educate medical students and residents on the psychosocial aspects of medicine. As a counterbalance to the biomedicine-centric medical curricula, cinemeducation deals with the psychosocial aspects of medicine and sensitive topics in healthcare, including but not limited to depression, family and marital counseling, doctor–patient relationships, family systems, addiction, mental illness, cultural competency, and foreign patients and their healthcare beliefs. Cinemeducation is particularly useful when the viewing is followed by a discussion, which engages students in active learning of clinically relevant concepts such as informed consent (IC), palliative care, and patient-centeredness. In other words, cinemeducation provides students in the healthcare fields with opportunities to learn about the humanistic aspects of medicine by watching movies or clips that provide insight into human experiences and challenges in medicine. A famous Japanese medical TV series, Shiroi Kyoto (The Great White Tower) will be examined to discuss the cultural fusion that has occurred in Japan, specifically with regard to clinical communication. Based on a novel authored by Toyoko Yamazaki in the 1960s, this series is of interest because the novel was made into a drama twice, first in the 1970s and again in 2003. Accordingly, several significant changes in health communication are noticeable between the first and second versions. Social changes in paternalism in medicine, palliative care, and IC that were adapted from the West and localized in Japan, as cultural fusion are evident in several noteworthy scenes.
Article
Culture, a Social Determinant of Health and Risk: Considerations for Health and Risk Messaging
Juliet Iwelunmor and Collins Airhihenbuwa
We provide an overview on the role of culture in addressing the social determinants of health and risk. The fact that everyone is influenced by a set of locally defined forms of behavior means that while not overtly expressed, culture’s effects can be ubiquitous, influencing everything including the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping health and risk messaging. While the dynamic nature of culture is underestimated and often not reflected in most research, efforts to close the gap on social determinants of health and risk will require greater clarity on what culture is and how it impacts culture-sensitive health communication. Thus, the paper begins by reviewing why culture is so vital and relevant to any attempts to improve health and reduce health inequalities. We discuss what is meant by the term “culture” through a narrative synthesis of historical and recent progress in definitions of culture. We conclude by describing three distinct cultural frameworks for health that illustrate how culture can be effectively used as a vehicle through which to address culturally sensitive health communication in local and global contexts. Overall, we believe that culture is indispensable and important for addressing inequalities and inequities in health as well as for facilitating culture-sensitive health communication strategies that will ultimately close the gap on the social determinants of health and risk.
Article
A Culture-Centered Approach to Health and Risk Communication
Mohan Jyoti Dutta
The culture-centered approach (CCA) to health and risk communication conceptualizes the communicative processes of marginalization that constitute the everyday meanings of health and risks at the margins. Attending to the interplays of communicative and material disenfranchisement, the CCA situates health inequalities amidst structures. Structures, as the rules, roles, processes, and frameworks that shape the distribution of resources, constitute and constrain the access of individuals, households, and communities to the resources of health and well-being. Through voice infrastructures cocreated with communities at the classed, raced, gendered, colonial margins of capitalist extraction, the CCA foregrounds community agency, the capacity of communities to make sense of their everyday struggles with health and well-being. Community voices articulate the interplays of colonial and capitalist processes that produce and circulate the risks to human health and well-being, serving as the basis for community organizing to secure health and well-being. Culture, as an interpretive resource passed down intergenerationally, offers the basis for organizing, and is simultaneously transformed through individual and community participation. Culture-centered health communication, rooted in community agency, drawing upon cultural stories, resources, and practices in subaltern contexts, takes the form of organizing for health, mobilizing agentic expressions toward structural transformations.
Article
Deaf or Hard of Hearing Message Recipient Sociodemographic Characteristics
Michael McKee
Hearing loss is common, with approximately 17% of the population reporting some degree of a hearing deficit. Hearing loss has profound impacts on health literacy, health information accessibility, and learning. Much of existing health information is inaccessible. This is largely due to the lack of focus on tailoring the messages to the needs of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) individuals with hearing loss. DHH individuals struggle with a variety of health knowledge gaps and health disparities. This demonstrates the importance of providing tailored and accessible health information for this population. While hearing loss is heterogeneous, there are still overlapping principles that can benefit everyone. Through adaptation, DHH individuals become visual learners, thus increasing the demand for appropriate visual medical aids. The development of health information and materials suitable for visual learners will likely impact not only DHH individuals, but will also be applicable for the general population. The principles of social justice and universal design behoove health message designers to ensure that their health information is not only accessible, but also equitable. Wise application of technology, health literacy, and information learning principles, along with creative use of social media, peer exchanges, and community health workers, can help mitigate much of the health information gaps that exist among DHH individuals.
Article
Development and Effects of Internet Addiction in China
Qiaolei Jiang
Internet addiction is a growing social issue in many societies worldwide. With the largest number of Internet users worldwide, China has witnessed the growth of the Internet along with the development and effects of Internet addiction, especially among the young. Originally reported anecdotally in mass media, Internet addiction has become an issue of great public concern after more than 20 years. The process of Internet addiction as an emerging risk in the Chinese context can be a showcase for risks related to information and communication technologies (ICTs), health, and everyday life. The term Internet addiction was first coined in the Western context and has since been recognized as a technology-driven social problem in China. Plenty of anecdotes, increasing academic research, and public awareness and concerns have put the threat of Internet addiction firmly on the policy agenda. Therefore, for prevention and intervention, research projects, rehab facilities, welfare services, and self-help programs have spread all over the country, and related regulations, policies, and laws have changed accordingly. Although controversies remain, through the staging of, and coping with, Internet addiction, people can better understand China’s digital natives and contemporary life.
Article
Diffusion of Innovations from the West and Their Influences on Medical Education in Japan
Mariko Morishita and Miho Iwakuma
In the 19th century, Western medicine spread widely worldwide and ultimately diffused into Japan. It had a significant impact on previous Japanese medical practice and education; it is, effectively, the foundation of contemporary Japanese medicine. Although Western medicine seems universal, its elements and origins as it has spread to other countries show localized differences, depending on the context and time period. Cultural fusion theory proposes that the culture of a host and influence of a newcomer conflict, merge, or transform each other. It could shed light on how Japanese medicine and medical education have been influenced by and coevolved with Western medicine and culture. Cultural fusion is not assimilation or adaptation; it has numerous churning points where the traditional and the modern, the insider (indigenous) and the outsider (immigrant), mix and compete. In Japan, medicine has a long history, encountering medical practices from neighboring countries, such as China and Korea in ancient times, and Western countries in the Modern period. The most drastic changes happened in the 19th century with strong influence from Germany before World War II and in the 20th century from the impact of the United States after World War II. Recently, the pressure of globalization could be added as one influence. Since cultural fusion is ubiquitous in Japanese medical fields, examples showing how the host and newcomers interact and merge can be found among many aspects of Japanese medicine and medical education, such as curricula, languages, systems, learning styles, assessment methods, and educational materials. In addition, cultural fusion is not limited to influence from the West but extends to and from neighboring Asian countries. Examining cases and previous studies on cultural fusion in Japanese medicine and medical education could reveal how the typical notion that Japan pursued Westernization of its medicine and medical education concealed the traditions and the growth of the local education system. The people involved in medicine in the past and the present have struggled to integrate the new system with their previous ideals to improve their methods, which could be further researched.
Article
Diffusion Theory in Integrative Approaches
Gary L. Kreps
Diffusion is the process through which new ideas, technologies, products, or processes are spread through communication among members of a social system via communication channels over time. Diffusion is a specialized form of communication that focuses on disseminating information about new ideas, products, technologies, services, or regulations. It is an especially important form of communication because it promotes social progress in the evaluation and adoption of important new ideas to address social issues. Diffusion helps to reduce uncertainty about how to address difficult issues and provides direction for achieving social goals.
A large body of research has been conducted from many disciplines on the diffusion of innovations since the original publication of Everett M. Rogers’ seminal book The Diffusion of Innovations in 1962, which is now in its fifth edition (2003). In this book, he introduced the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) model, which describes a general process of adopting new ideas across multiple populations, cultures, and applications. This research has examined innovations in fields such as agriculture, engineering, sales, education, architecture, technology, public policy, and health care, and has been applied to a range of different issues, such as the adoption of new technologies, consumer purchasing behaviors, and public support for political issues and candidates, but has been especially influential in guiding strategic health promotion. The DOI model has contributed to a greater understanding of health behavior change, including adoption of health promotion recommendations. The model has led to a broad scope of practical applications for promoting public health.
Article
Digital Communication Effects on Loneliness and Life Satisfaction
Philipp K. Masur
The question of whether and how digital media use and digital communication affect people’s and particularly adolescents’ well-being has been investigated for several decades. Many studies have analyzed how different forms of digital communication influence loneliness and life satisfaction, two comparatively stable cognitive indicators of subjective well-being. Despite this large body of empirical work, the findings remain ambivalent, with studies resulting in positive, negative, or nonsignificant effects. Several meta-analyses suggest that the overall effect of digital communication on life satisfaction is probably too small to suggest a detrimental effect. The net effect of digital communication on loneliness, by contrast, is positive, but likewise small. Yet the studies on which these meta-analyses are based suffer from several limitations. They often adopt a limited perspective on the phenomenon of interest as a disproportionate amount of work focuses on interpersonal differences instead of intra-individual, contextual, and situational effects, as well as their interactions. Furthermore, studies are often based on cross-sectional data, use unvalidated and imprecise measurements, and differ greatly in how they conceptualize digital communication. The diversity in studied applications and forms of digital communication also suggests that effects are most likely bidirectional. Passive digital communication (e.g., browsing and lurking) is more likely to result in negative effects on well-being. Active and purposeful digital communication (e.g., posting, liking, conversating), by contrast, is more likely to result in positive effects. Future research should therefore investigate how the various levels of digital communication (including differences in devices, applications, features, interactions, and messages) interact in shaping individuals’ well-being. Instead of expecting long-term effects on comparatively stable cognitive indicators such as life satisfaction, scholars should rather study and identify the spatial and temporal boundaries of digital communication effects on the more fluctuating affective components of well-being.
Article
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Health and Risk Messaging
Kimberly A. Kaphingst
Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs (DTCA) is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States, affecting the health-care landscape. DTCA has been controversial, since a major increase in this type of advertising resulted from re-interpretation of existing regulations in the late 20th century. Health and risk communication research can inform many of the controversial issues, assisting physicians, policymakers, and the public in understanding how consumers respond to DTCA. Prior research addresses four major topics: (1) the content of DTCA in different channels, (2) consumers’ perceptions of and responses to DTCA, (3) individual-level factors that affect how consumers respond to DTCA, and (4) message factors that impact consumers’ responses. Such research shows that the presentation of risk and benefits information is generally not balanced in DTCA, likely affecting consumers’ attitudes toward and comprehension of the risk information. In addition, despite consumers’ generally somewhat negative or neutral perceptions of DTCA, this advertising seems to affect their health information seeking and communication behaviors. Finally, a wide range of individual-level and message factors have been shown to have an impact on how consumers process and respond to DTCA. Consumers’ responses, including how they process the information, request prescription drugs from providers, and share information about prescription drugs, have an important impact on the effects of DTCA. The fields of health and risk communication therefore bring theories and methodologies that are essential to better understanding the impact of this advertising.
Article
Dis/Ability and Critical Cultural Studies
Diane R. Wiener
While there are many contestations surrounding the significance, meanings, and interpretations of dis/ability in the field of critical cultural studies, the author presents a variety of foundational as well as emergent concepts, structures, and histories in order to situate these debates. The 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2020, increasingly frequent criticisms of the “sea of whiteness” in disability critique, and an attendant call for equitable attention to intersectional theorization and practice, accompanied by a variety of frameworks, are employed to introduce the relevance of these contestations as well as to equip readers with opportunities to engage and study further.
Article
Disasters and Communication about Health
Rebecca Cline and Andrea Meluch
Health consequences and key communication processes that emerge during disasters vary by type of disaster. The types of disasters that researchers have most investigated are rapid-onset natural disasters and slowly-evolving human-caused disasters. Three types of communication processes occur in disasters that have implications for health.
The first set of communication processes involves the social dynamics of affected communities. Communities that experience natural disasters tend to exhibit an emergent altruistic community; community members join together to support each other in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. In contrast, community conflict is the hallmark of slowly-evolving environmental disasters. That conflict triggers a cascade of social dynamics that infests close personal relationships with interpersonal conflict, stigmatization of victims and advocates, and pressures to avoid open communication (i.e., social constraints) regarding the disaster and its traumatic effects. These dynamics contribute to elevated mental health problems.
The second set of communication processes focuses specifically on social support. Supportive communication processes and networks are important resources for coping with ongoing disasters and for mitigating their longer-term mental health effects. Due to differences in community-level social dynamics, patterns of social support evolve differently in natural versus human-caused disasters. Natural disasters are typified by immediate intra-community social support. Community members support each other in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Ultimately this social support is overwhelmed by the disaster’s needs and deteriorates. As a result, communities are largely dependent on internal and external institutional sources to meet community members’ needs. In contrast, slowly-evolving human-caused disasters tend to exhibit the emergence of corrosive communities. In these communities, those most affected by the disasters (those whose health is harmed or who claim other harmful or potentially harmful effects, and those who function as advocates) tend to experience failed or diminished social support. Whereas the community may previously have been altruistic, mutual help either fails to emerge or is withdrawn in the disaster context. Failed social support contributes to the relatively worse mental health consequences of slowly-evolving human-caused disasters when compared to natural disasters.
The third set of communication processes relate to institutional responses in disasters. In natural disasters, institutional communication is driven largely by widely disseminated and applied models that are intended to prevent harm and to provide resources to address harm and to reduce further negative consequences to health and well-being. Institutions and their agencies provide resources immediately following the disaster to meet basic human needs and, thereafter, to restore normalcy to the community and thereby protect community members’ physical and mental health. These efforts assume that natural disasters unfold in predictable stages (i.e., preparedness, warning, post-disaster, recovery) and that institutions’ responses should vary according to the stage of the disaster. In contrast, no such response models exist for slowly-evolving human-caused disasters. Moreover, community members experiencing such disasters often encounter what they perceive as institutional failures by both community-based and external responding institutions. Often community institutions (e.g., business, government) are perceived as causing the disaster and/or minimizing it, if not denying its existence or covering it up. As a result, communities experiencing this class of disasters tend to develop substantial distrust for local and responding institutions.
Article
Disruption Information Seeking and Processing Model Applied to Health and Risk Messaging
Joshua A. Braun
The disruption information seeking and processing (DISP) model is a variation on the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model. While both the DISP and the original RISP models seek to predict how individuals will search for and attend to information in response to a perceived hazard, DISP aims to broaden analysts’ view of the sorts of information individuals may seek in such situations. It does so by expanding the repertoire of social psychology theory on which the model is constructed to include ideas from the literatures on sensemaking and identity maintenance.
A major argument of DISP is that on many occasions the information that people seek in response to a risk will not be directly related to the risk itself. For example, if you hear a news bulletin on an outbreak of food poisoning associated with ground beef, the next thing you look for may not be information on the risks of E. Coli, but a recipe for chicken. While the observation that people seek non-risk-related information in response to risks is a broad one, the DISP concerns itself with one particularly important aspect of this idea.
Specifically, based on research in the sensemaking and identity maintenance traditions, the DISP model proposes that, for information seekers, the self and the various identities in which individuals are personally invested are often as much the objects in need of interpretation as the hazardous environment. The implication of this is that when faced with a risk, individuals are likely to pay attention not just to information on the risk itself (the sort of information prioritized by RISP), but on the identities impacted by the hazard—for example, how a person’s acceptance of or strategy for coping with the risk might affect her self-image as being a good parent, a conscientious employer, etc.
The DISP also proposes that some hazard situations are likely to be more disruptive to individuals’ sense of self than others—namely instances where the individual has a high vested interest in a particular identity that is challenged by the hazard combined with a low sense of self-efficacy with respect to remediating the hazard. A typical example would be a parent who prides herself on keeping her kids safe, who finds out about an environmental risk to children in her neighborhood, but who cannot afford to move.
According to the DISP model, in such a circumstance the individual would likely become more attuned to information about the countervailing positive aspects of the neighborhood, such as good schools or a low crime rate. These sorts of information, which do not pertain to the risk directly, but are nonetheless sought as a consequence of the risk, exemplify the manner in which DISP seeks to expand the focus of the original RISP model. In the parlance of DISP, the model adds a “self-relevant” information dimension to RISP’s original focus on “risk-relevant” information.
Finally, the DISP model proposes the notion of “norm trumping,” suggesting that individuals experiencing disruption in the face of a hazard—who run afoul of the set of social norms associated with an identity in which they are highly invested—are likely to pay particular attention to self-relevant information that emphasizes alternative sets of norms that help to preserve or reconstitute a desired sense of self.
This model has yet to be tested empirically.
Article
Ehealth Communication
Gary L. Kreps
Ehealth, also known as E-health, is a relatively new area of health communication inquiry that examines the development, implementation, and application of a broad range of evolving health information technologies (HITs) in modern society to disseminate health information, deliver health care, and promote public health. Ehealth applications include (a) the widespread development of specialized health information websites (often hosted by government agencies, health care systems, corporations, professional societies, health advocacy organizations, and other for-profit and nonprofit organizations); (b) the widespread use of electronic health record (EHR) systems designed to preserve and disseminate health information for health care providers, administrators, and consumers; (c) an array of mobile health education and support applications that have often been developed for use with smartphones; (d) mobile health behavior monitoring, tracking, and alerting equipment (such as wearable devices and systems imbedded in vehicles, clothing, and sporting equipment); (e) interactive telemedicine systems for collecting health data and delivering health care services remotely; (f) interactive adaptive tailored health information systems to support health education, motivate health behaviors, and to inform health decision making; (g) online social support groups for health care consumers, caregivers, and providers; (h) health promotion focused digital games to engage consumers in health education and train both providers and consumers about health promoting procedures; (i) dedicated computer portals that can deliver a variety of digital health information tools and functions to consumers, caregivers, and providers; and (j) interactive and adaptive virtual human agent systems that can gather and provide relevant health information, virtual reality programs that can simulate health environments for training and therapeutic purposes, and an ever-increasing number of digital applications (apps) for addressing a range of health conditions and activities. As information technology evolves, new ehealth applications and programs are being developed and introduced to provide a wide range of powerful ehealth systems to assist with health care and health promotion.
Ehealth technologies have been found by many researchers, practitioners, and consumers to hold tremendous promise for enhancing the delivery of health care and promotion of health, ultimately improving health outcomes. Many popularly adopted ehealth applications (such as health websites, health care portals, decision support systems, and wearable health information devices) are transforming the modern health care system by supplementing and extending traditional channels for health communication. The use of new ehealth applications enables the broad dissemination of relevant health information that can be personalized to the unique communication orientations, backgrounds, and information needs of individuals. New ehealth communication channels can provide health care consumers and providers with the relevant health information that they need to make informed health care decisions. These ehealth communication channels can provide this information to people exactly when and where they need it, which is especially important for addressing fast-moving and dangerous health threats. Yet, with all the promise of ehealth communication, there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to make the wide array of new ehealth applications as useful as possible for promoting health with different audiences. This article describes the current state of knowledge about the development and use of HITs, as well as about strategies for improving ehealth communication applications to enhance the delivery of health care and the promotion of public health.
Article
Embarrassment and Health & Risk Messaging
Spring Chenoa Cooper and P. Christopher Palmedo
Embarrassment, according to Fischer and Tangney, is an “aversive state of mortification, abashment, and chagrin that follows public social predicaments.” It is usually related to our perceptions of how others perceive us as well as their judgments of us, and it is associated with a loss of self-esteem when we perceive that others have judged us as inadequate or incompetent. However, even mere exposure or attention publicly placed on someone can elicit embarrassment (think of someone pointing at you and laughing).
Embarrassment is considered a self-conscious emotion. Self-conscious emotions include those that are evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation: embarrassment, shame, guilt, and pride. Shame, an intense form of embarrassment, also has structural and larger social contexts, while embarrassment is more individually experienced. Self-conscious emotions play an important role in regulating behavior; they assist us in behaving according to social standards and guide us in responding when those rules are broken. While these emotions provide feedback in social situations, they also provide feedback for anticipated outcomes.
Embarrassment can play an important role in health, both in communication and behavior, and occurs through different forms. Primary embarrassment is the first rush of blood to the face and increased heart rate that usually lasts a few moments. Secondary embarrassment is the after-effect that shapes future behavior. Anticipatory embarrassment is the emotion surrounding the potential for embarrassment in an upcoming situation. Solitary embarrassment is the one that no one actually observes.
Three stigmatized areas of health—mental health, healthcare, and sexual health—may be assessed as case studies through which to understand the literature around embarrassment, as both an affect and an emotion.
Article
End of Life Communication
Maureen P. Keeley
End of life communication includes both verbal and nonverbal messages that transpire following a diagnosis of a terminal illness and death. The circumstances that occur at the end of life create opportunities for unique and important communication. Specifically, communication at the end of life is impacted by numerous and complicated factors: First, cultural views on death and dying often determine what is talked about, when it can be talked about, and who is included in the conversations. Second, the fears, desires, and needs of the terminally ill must be taken into account at the end of life as it is their personal end of life journey. Third, the nature of the relationships between the terminally ill and their family and friends have tremendous influence on the nature and topics of conversations that will be shared. Fourth, interactions with healthcare professionals (preferably with palliative care specialists) tend to be more task focused, emphasizing end of life decision making and comfort care for the terminally ill. Fifth, as people are tending to live longer with terminal illness and often doing so far from their family, professional caregivers and hospice volunteers are also engaging in meaningful and significant communication with the terminally ill.
Communication at the end of life often determines whether or not the dying are allowed to die with dignity, with some control over their final wishes, and whether they are ultimately able to obtain some peaceful closure. Within close relationships communication at the end of life has the potential for authentic conversations that bring people closer, heal old wounds, and allow the terminally ill and close others to create some final memories and to say goodbye to one another. Communication at the end of life with health professionals has the potential for both the terminally ill and their family members to have greater satisfaction with end of life decisions and control of pain for the terminally ill, as well as better outcomes regarding grief and bereavement following the death for family members. For hospice volunteers and professional caregivers, communication at the end of life teaches the necessity and complexities of interactions at the end of life for the larger society.
Article
Entertainment-Education and Health and Risk Messaging
Suruchi Sood, Amy Henderson Riley, and Kristine Cecile Alarcon
Entertainment-education (EE) began as a communication approach that uses both entertainment and education to engender individual and social change, but is emerging as a distinct theoretical, practice, and evidence-based communication subdiscipline. EE has roots in oral and performing arts traditions spanning thousands of years, such as morality tales, religious storytelling, and the spoken word. Modern-day EE, meanwhile, is produced in both fiction and nonfiction designs that include many formats: local street theater, music, puppetry, games, radio, television, and social media. A classic successful example of EE is the children’s television program Sesame Street, which is broadcast in over 120 countries. EE, however, is a strategy that has been successfully planned, implemented, and evaluated in countries around the world for children and adults alike. EE scholarship has traditionally focused on asking, “Does it work?” but more recent theorizing and research is moving toward understanding how EE works, drawing from multidisciplinary theories. From a research standpoint, such scholarship has increasingly showcased a wide range of methodologies. The result of these transformations is that EE is becoming an area of study, or subdiscipline, backed by an entire body of theory, practice, and evidence. The theoretical underpinnings, practice components, and evidence base from EE may be surveyed via the peer-reviewed literature published over the past 10 years. However, extensive work in social change from EE projects around the world has not all made it into the published literature. EE historically began as a communication approach, one tool in the communication toolbox. Over time, the nascent approach became its own full-fledged strategy focused on individual change. Backed by emerging technologies, innovative examples from around the globe, and new variations in implementation, it becomes clear that the field of EE is emerging into a discrete theoretical, practice, and evidence-based subdiscipline within communication that increasingly recognizes the inherent role of individuals, families, communities, organizations, and policies on improving the conditions needed for lasting social change.
Article
Equity and Distributive Justice in Health and Risk Message Design and Processing
Dani Filc and Nadav Davidovitch
The medical encounter is one of the most important channels of communication between the patient and his or her caretaker. Apart from its therapeutic effect, the medical encounter serves to convey information about a symptom or disease; construct a diagnosis and give information about the expected course of a disease (“prognosis”); and discuss treatment plans, including risks and benefits. The centrality of the medical encounter makes ethical considerations fundamental, not only within the clinical context but also within the broader context of health promotion. Furthermore, since the medical encounter is characterized by asymmetry and dependence, it can create problems of abuse of power or subordination. The current dominant liberal bioethical approach tends not to take into account the power relations within the medical encounter, or the social context in which the medical encounter takes place. It is in this sense that a republican egalitarian approach to bioethics can be of use. Instead of traditional bioethics emphasis on the individual and on personal autonomy, a radical egalitarian health rights approach will stress the importance of social structures, and the need for a different institutional framework that works toward making a universal right to health possible. Such an approach also emphasizes the centrality of politics in building adequate institutions and in modifying those social structures that cause inequities in health. These considerations have important consequences on how the medical encounter should be constructed, such as in the case of conveying risk and disclosing medical errors.
