Media Agenda-Building in Health: Perceptions of Public Health Information Officers and Health Journalists

The purpose of this study is two-fold. The first purpose is to investigate how public health information officers and health journalists perceive media agenda-building differently. The second is to examine how medical jargon usage in a press release can affect their media agenda-building perception and perceived credibility. An experiment with 28 pairs of public health information officers and health journalists who work with closely each other showed that both professions’ media agenda-building perception is similar, however, they wrongly estimate each other’s perception. Each of the profession also thinks that their own perception will be different from their own perception. Based on coorientation model, the results showed high agreement, low accuracy, and low congruency between public health information officers and health journalists toward media agenda-building.