Clarifications on mass media campaigns promoting organ donation: a response to Rady, McGregor, & Verheijde (2012)
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Clarifications on mass media campaigns promoting organ donation: a response to Rady, McGregor, & Verheijde (2012) Susan E. Morgan • Thomas Hugh Feeley
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract The current paper provides readers some clarifications on the nature and goals of mass media campaigns designed to promote organ donation. These clarifications were necessitated by an earlier essay by Rady et al. (Med Health Care Philos 15:229–241, 2012) who present erroneous claims that media promotion campaigns in this health context represent propaganda that seek to misrepresent the transplantation process. Information is also provided on the nature and relative power of media campaigns in organ donation promotion. Keywords Promotion
Organ donation Campaign Media
The influence of media on individuals’ attitudes related to organ donation is a complicated and frequently misunderstood relationship. An article published in Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy authored by Rady et al. (2012) draws several conclusions related to the role of mass media on the general public’s sentiments and subsequent donation decisions that are inaccurate and misrepresent the true state of affairs in this area of inquiry. The goals of the present essay are to provide clarifications on the role of media in its
S. E. Morgan (&) Department of Communication, Purdue University, 100 N. University Street, Beering Hall Room 2114, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. H. Feeley Department of Communication, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 359 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA e-mail: [email protected]
ability to shape organ donation attitudes and to also characterize the goals, characteristics and relative successes of communication campaigns designed to promote donation to the general public. Our vantage point is from experience in organ donation promotion and from a careful read of the extant research literature on media and media campaigns in relation to transplantation. The aim of this paper is to provide readers a clear picture of the nature of mass media campaigns and in so doing to allay some of the false claims levied by Rady et al. (2012) in their essay. As such, it is not in the purview of the current article to address our own interpretation of the definition of brain death. We defer to leading neurologists on this controversy (e.g., Wijdicks et al. 2010). Our treatment is confined to how donation is communicated in the mass media and the findings of research reports on mediated campaigns seeking to influence individuals’ intentions related to deceased donation.
The nature of communication campaigns Communication campaigns are designed to achieve a desired goal, and in the case of organ donation campaigns the goal is often to increase the number or proportion of individuals who enroll in the electronic state registry or who communicate their donation intentions to next-of-kin (Feeley 2007; Morgan 2012). Almost invariably, the primary aim in orga
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