| News media coverage of health topics has been shown to influence health behaviors and perceptions of health and safety risks (Combs & Slovic, 1979; Finnegan & Viswanath, 2002). Therefore, news media coverage of current health research could help provide the public with accurate, up to date health information with which individuals will be more capable of making informed health decisions. News media coverage of health research is routinely generated through the efforts of public relations professionals from academic journals and research institutions (Woloshin & Schwartz, 2002). As such, the effectiveness of public relations efforts, namely press releases, for health research may have major implications for public health outcomes. The current work first presents an exploratory study, a focus group of science communication public relations professionals held to gain an understanding of the decision making processes regarding the promotion of research publications through press releases. Currently, limited research is available to public relations professionals relative to press release characteristic effectiveness for promoting scientific work. Considering that over 500,000 Americans die from cancer and another 300,000 die from issues related to obesity each year (CDC, 2012; U.S. DHHS, 2001), the present work examines press releases promoting research on these health topics. Specifically, the press releases are utilized to test a proposed modified gatekeeping model, evaluating the effectiveness of press release characteristics in garnering journalist interest and news media coverage. Drawing on four theoretical perspectives, the present content analysis investigated the impact of six key press release characteristics on journalist interest and news media coverage. The impact of these characteristics is discussed. |
