At the forefront of concerns about nutrition and public health in today’s society is the art of communication. With the rise of social media over the last decade or so, “it appears that corporate communication,” in the words of Jan Kietzmann and colleagues, “has been democratized.” In other words, information has become readily available to just about everyone, as opposed to the wealthy previously having an advantage. For this reason, companies can reach a broader audience through the use of social media and must take this edge and run with it. This current state of accessibility of communicating with the greater public is to the considerable advantage of health officials. In such a time of opportunity for knowledge and various health issues needing to be addressed, the public health sector can benefit from following the basic guidelines of effective communication.
The most important thing to note in the communication of important health topics is that the intention of producers of text, images, videos, etc., will often be different than the way viewers interpret it. Many things go into account for how a given individual, or a society as a whole, will think of something. The time period and social context that the image or text is born into mean everything. To ignore these factors as affecting interpretations would be dangerous. An image depicting Bill Cosby, for example, would have been taken differently thirty years ago when he was known as the beloved star of The Cosby Show, then it would be now that the general public is aware of his heinous actions. Social context is always an integral piece of communicating information as accurately as possible, and this applies to health concerns as much as anything else.
Individuals, too, will interpret works based on past experiences. An individual who had the flu last year in the extremely deadly flu season, might be more attentive to a poster about getting a flu shot this year than someone who didn’t have the flu last year. Every person viewing a certain text or image will be coming from a different background, social class, race, education, and many other socioeconomic factors that will influence how they view media. All of these factors are also significant influences on health, and that’s why it’s essential to address health concerns for a wide variety of populations and different types of people. While having control over these variables is close to impossible, they are, nevertheless, always important to consider. “Meanings of images,” as Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright put it, “are created in a complex relationship among producer, viewer, image or text, and social context.”
Another important concept to consider in communicating health concerns to the public is the power held by the viewer in allowing these images and texts to influence them, and the responsibility of the producer to make that influence meaningful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and the viewer is completely in control of whether or not they choose to be affected by a certain work. “By living in society,” say Sturken and Cartwright, “we live in ideology.” These texts and images produced by media outlets provide a platform for individuals to recognize themselves, and in turn, “we become the subject that we are addressed as.” Producers have that power to direct individual interest towards certain concerns. This is essential for impacting the health decisions of a community, because the whole idea behind public health outreach is to educate, inform, and empower people to make a difference in their lives. Effective communication skills allow health officials to do so.
Finally, the actual implementation of media is just as important to its impact as the meanings behind it. Brevity and precision are always key to creating content that is the most accessible to the largest amount of people. Most people, while scrolling through social media, don’t want to pause and take time out of their day to read a full academic essay. So in order to communicate health concerns, producers must learn to write succinctly and clearly. An active and imaginative setting for the text or image always increases interest and draws attention from viewers too. This is why communicators often use an inverted pyramid style of communication, where the most important information is at the beginning where readers are most likely to be paying closer attention. Knowing the audience and purpose of a particular text or image is also a key part of its effect. The stronger of a voice the writer has, the more comfortable the reader will be with connecting to what is being said or shown and will establish a level of trust. Overall, it’s important to tell an interesting story that will alert readers that a certain issue is putting the health of many, often including themselves, at risk.
Public health outreach professionals would be at a great disadvantage not to consider the current state of communication with the social media available and the wide variety of tools and resources for communicating. As with anything else, knowledge is useless if it can’t be communicated effectively enough to impact people. The overall health of our society, as a result, would be detrimental without communication.
Anne Boyd Kirby 