Abstract
This research was aimed to study the health communication of 5 types of local media; local newspapers, provincial broadcasting radios, community radios, news broadcasting towers, and cable televisions. The main objectives of this research were to study health communication content and presentations, health communicators’ procedures, audiences’ exposure and expectation of receiving health information and the tendency of local media use for health communication. The area of this research included six provinces; Prae, Nakhonpanom, Nakhonpathom, Chantaburi, Kanchanaburi and Stun. The sampling group of this research included five kinds of local media (16 titles of local newspapers or 95 pieces, 14 provincial radio broadcasting stations, 6 community radio stations, 6 news broadcasting towers and 5 cable television station), 45 communicators in 5 fields of media work (14 communicators of local newspapers, 14 communicators of radio broadcasting stations, 6 communicators of community radio stations, 6 communicators of news broadcasting towers, and 5 communicators of cable television stations) and 643 local media audience from 6 provinces mentioned above. The methodology conducted for this research involved surveys and interviews. The data of local media was analyzed by content analysis methodology and the data of communicators and audiences was analyzed by statistics methodology. As a result of the study, it was found that the health content presented by provincial radio was mostly related to “disease”, with the aim of making the audience know how to protect themselves from getting ill. The content was presented in 4 forms; health programs, radio spots, trifling information inserted into other programs, and advertisements. Regarding the community radio stations, the health communication management was mostly under the control of the station committee, supported by private organizations. The content was presented in the forms of health programs and pieces of information in other programs. The main issues of the content were mostly related to “disease” and “food” with the objectives of disease prevention and health promotion more than disease cure and rehabilitation. In the case of the news broadcasting towers, health content was not presented in the form of health programs but the announcement of health service and spots from official organizations were found being broadcast instead. Most of the cable television stations presented health information through local news programs to inform or report the events. The content was mostly related to “disease” and “food”. While small-size medium local newspapers, published from every five days to monthly, presented every type of health content in the forms of news reports, articles and advertisements. Regarding the health communicators, most of them were male, aged between 25-55, with 1 to 30 years work experience holding Bachelor degrees. They usually worked in many fields of local media and also worked as stingers for the media in Bangkok while some of them do this work as the second job. Most of these communicators had no knowledge of health so health columns and articles were brief with the use of many sources for health information. The local audiences, aged between 31 to 60, mostly were female, and graduated from secondary schools. They needed all 5 kinds of local media to communicate health information especially the provincial broadcasting radios. The audiences expected to receive health information from cable televisions least. However, they expected every local medium to increase the presentation of health content especially the continuous practical information which is easy to understand, correct and serious. The most needed content was information about “disease”. Although the communicators and audiences has desired an increase in the quantity of health content presentation, due to the limitation of knowledge, information, sources, budgets and also being attached to business interests of some media, the local media has been still unable to communicate health information with full-efficiency as they should do.
