Understanding and optimising health-related press releases as complex public health interventions

Public perception and understanding of science is crucial to society's ability to respond today's challenges, such as climate change, aging, and the rising cost of health care. It is therefore crucial to optimise the communication of new science so it is both accurate and engaging, and to avoid misleading readers or creating scares that harm public health (such as the MMR vaccine scare). The national press represents the greatest opportunity for promoting better understanding of health concerns and the science behind treatments and lifestyle improvements.

Since the majority of science news is communicated to journalists via press releases from academic journals and universities, we will focus on how to optimise this critical link in the chain. Our project aims to identify features of press releases that cause inaccurate press coverage and/or influence press uptake. For example, we hypothesise that some words used by scientists are routinely interpreted with stronger meanings by journalists and lay readers (such as 'predict' meaning 'statistically correlate with' for scientists, but 'causes' for lay readers). We will conduct experiments on these features, to gather empirical evidence on whether and how such features do cause misinterpretation. At the same time, we will conduct surveys of scientists, press officers and journalists to gather information about how they interact and what difficulties they experience. From this, we will produce evidence-based guidelines for optimising press releases.

Who will benefit from this research and how?

The UK public. The aim of the project is to benefit the public both in their decisions about illness and health - both everyday lifestyle choices and more serious deliberations about illness or health. The national news frequently carries stories relevant to such decisions, and therefore our aim is to improve the accuracy and framing of these stories by understanding and optimising the influence of their main source: press releases (PRs). In this way, PRs are complex health interventions.

Journalists. The majority of journalists wish to report science and health news accurately and fairly. Modern time pressures often mean that they cannot carry out as much investigation and background research as they would like, which forces them to increasingly rely on pre-packaged PRs. Journalists will thus benefit from improvement to PRs that help them both quickly extract the key points relevant for newsworthiness, but at the same time do not mislead and provide important contextual information in a way that will be easily noticed and understood.

Press officers. Like journalists, the majority of press officers wish to communicate new science and health findings accurately and fairly. Thus press officers will benefit from improved understanding of the how different factors in PRs influence news uptake and content, encouraging journalists to take an interest in new findings, but without misleading them into exaggerated reports.

Scientists. The majority of scientists also wish to communicate new science and health findings accurately and fairly, but can be seduced by the pressures of 'impact' and the belief that findings must be spun to gain attention. Better understanding of how phrasing and presentation of science influences news interest and content will enable effective collaboration between scientists and press officers to optimise PRs, and is also likely to benefit any direct interaction between scientists and journalists. In turn, the scientists will feel happier that their media interactions are fairer and better founded in evidence.

Doctors. The national press has been shown to influence doctors both directly by priming their awareness of diseases/conditions, and indirectly through the behaviours of their patients. Improved accuracy in health-relevant stories should make both these influences beneficial rather than detrimental.