MASS MEDIA VISIBILITY OF MEDICAL SCHOOL RESEARCH: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION INITIATIVES, SCIENTISTS' PUBLISHING ACTIVITY, AND INSTITUTIONAL PRESTIG

The process whereby institutional research becomes "news" is little understood. Whereas the research of some institutions is highly "visible" in the news media, that of others is seldom mentioned. What accounts for these differences? In an initial attempt to answer this question, the author compared the relative influences of three characteristics of medical schools on the visibility of their research in the national press: Public information initiatives, the publishing activity (or productivity) of scientists at the institutions, and the reputation (or prestige) of the institutions among scientists.;Public information initiatives were assessed using a questionnaire sent to public information officers of 85 American medical schools; officers were asked how many initiatives (news releases, tips and other efforts) were directed to national news media during 1979. Publishing activity was measured by counting publications listed in Excerpta Medica during 1979. A recent study of medical school reputations provided the prestige scores for the institutions. The dependent variable (media visibility) was measured using every issue of the three major news magazines for 1979 (Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report) and a sample of four of the nation's "elite" newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune); a school's visibility score consisted of the number of medical research stories in which it was mentioned.;In a standard multiple regression analysis, public information initiatives were found to have no relationship with media visibility independent of the prestige of the schools and the productivity of their scientists. Scientists' publishing activity, by contrast, had a strong independent relationship with media visibility. Institutional prestige was also positively and independently related, though to a much lesser extent once geographic locations of schools were taken into account. Schools located in the northeast region of the United States were more likely to get coverage in national news stories about research than were schools located elsewhere.;The relevance of the findings for scholars who study news values, public relations activities, and social constructions of news were noted. Practical implications for journalists and scientific institutions were also discussed.