Childhood Obesity

The readings assigned this week were very helpful in beginning to familiarize myself with the blogging-world. They addressed issues such as the blog-media relationship and ethics. These topics will be important for me to keep in mind throughout the semester as I work to develop this blog on childhood obesity.

Two excerpets from Mark Tremayne’s Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media were assigned, the Introduction (Examining the Blog-Media Relationship) and Chapter 5 (Blogging for Better Health: Putting the “Public” Back in Public Health). The introduction provided me with a good basis for the usefulness of blogging. A blog allows for a very fast spread of knowledge. It also provides the opportunity for networking. With this, information can be traced back through links. These can be to other blogs on the topic, information websites, etc. Blogs are ideal for research, aided by blog specific search engines. All of these things make blogging as a form of risk communication useful. By creating a blog on childhood obesity, I will be able to make my research, findings and ideas public. This seems to be a very effective way to spread the word such an issue that has a great affect on everyone in American society today.

Chapter 5 also provided with with useful information regarding blogging. Blogs “rely on individual users to generate and verity content on a continual basis. Bloggers and blog readers, therefore, are the creators as well as consumers of information on the Internet, embodying the ideal of ‘receiver as source’” (pg. 83). This gave me an insight on the usefulness of blogs; and why people blog. I was also able to parallel the examples given in this chapter regarding mental health with my topic of childhood obesity risk communication. While obesity in children and adolescents is not a mental illness, it is still a health related topic which people may seek information about on the internet.

What stood out to me the most was the discussion on the nature of blogging. The chapter talked about the difference between emotional and informational blogs. For my purposes, I think that both types of writing will be useful. Emotional writing is good because it helps to reach your audience and get their attention. With obesity rates among children, I’m sure that most people in our country are able to related to the issue. So many people know at least one child whose weight is a reason for concern. Using emotion is a great way to get people listening. Once their attention is grabbed, it will probably be best to switch to a more informational tone. I think that one of the biggest problems with childhood obesity is a general lack of knowledge on the issue. One of the main goals of my blog will to be to inform the public of the risks of obesity in children, possible causes, and many ways in which it can be avoided and helped.

Another reading assignment for the week was Chapter 5 (Ethical Issues) from R. Lundgren and A. McMakin’s Risk Communication. This excerpt can easily be related to the blogging I will be doing for the semester. They made it clear that ethics are often difficult to approach, mainly because each person has their own set of morals and ethical beliefs. The type of ethics I found to pertain most to my topic was social ethics. Lundgren and McMakin define social ethics as the “code of conduct by which a society judges our behavior” (pg. 74). They stressed the importance of knowing your audience. You must know to whom you are communicating, what you believe the audience needs to know, what they are likely to already know, and what risk communication methods are likely to fail. While creating this blog about childhood obesity I must keep in mind the ethical issues regarding the issue, and carefully account for my audiences concerns and perceptions.

They also included a section on personal ethics.  Here the use of persuasion was discussed.  Persuasion is a way of communicating risk which presents the information with the intent of forcing the audience to take on your opinions.  The chapter gave a list of criteria in which persuasion is most useful: in a crisis situation (where the audience is in immediate danger), when those at risk are not the same as those who are engaged in the behavior causing the risk, when the audience is fewer than 10 people, and when the audience has asked to be persuaded (pg. 90).  The topic of childhood obesity does not fall under any of these criteria.  Reading this helped me to learn that the best way to communicate my risk and ideas is most likely by presenting information and proposing probable solutions; not by using persuasion.