Role of Media in Healthcare

Running head: ROLE OF MEDIA IN HEALTHCARE
ROLE OF MEDIA IN HEALTHCARE IN AUSTRALIA
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1ROLE OF MEDIA IN HEALTHCARE
Integrated health is not about promoting healthcare, but it also connects societies. It is a
one long strand of a large social fabric, which is the responsibility of every individual and every
profession living in the society. This service is a culturally sensitive concern in a country like
Australia, as it is a multicultural country (Moorhead et al., 2013). Spreading awareness and
informing the governmental laws about healthcare is important, as many people did not have the
privileged to acquire quality healthcare. Here comes the role of media in healthcare, which helps
to spread the important informations throughout the country. They fulfill their responsibility by
spreading the news in populations. Starting from multimedia, mass media, social media and print
media, these all help the Australian government by influencing the diverse population with great
responsibility (Germov & freij, 2013). This essay is going to discuss the role, power and
responsibility of media in healthcare sector of Australia with critically analyzing some
literatures. The assignment will discuss print and mass media communication and its positive and
negative aspects of this on healthcare and will discuss the influence of media on culturally safe
healthcare. Further, the essay will provide examples of incidences in which the media has
influences the healthcare sector of Australia positively or negatively.
While describing the role and power of media in healthcare, the reach of media in
population should be known. According to the government of Australia’s statistics, an average
Australian spends more than 13 hours of his week watching television. On the other hand, there
are more than 8,153,000 people with age more than 16 reads print media every day in Australia.
These statistics represents the reach and power of media over the Australian population
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). The younger generation is more attached to other forms
of media such as social media and these forms of media affects every aspects of society,
including healthcare. Media provides a basic communication stage to the healthcare sector in the

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country. This communication stage is further used by both private and public healthcare sector to
spread the information about healthcare throughout the country. It has ceased the boundaries of
people and their culture to spread the healthcare and associated benefit to communities, who are
deprived of this basic human right. Media helps the Australian healthcare sector by promoting
the governmental healthcare strategies, movements, health promotional campaigns, spreading
awareness about contagious diseases, spreading awareness about epidemics and so on (Flew &
Swift, 2013). Hence, it could be understood that it plays a role of central information system in
the health communication channel. Such roles demonstrates the media as a powerful tool that
influences people regardless of their culture, gender, creed and ethnicity. Social media is an
example of billions of people on same platform. Therefore, by using social media to spread the
healthcare related informations is an important step for healthcare industry in Australia (Zolkepli
& Kamarulzaman, 2015).
As mentioned earlier, media has an immense reach in the population regardless of their
gender, creed and ethnicity. Therefore, the influence, which can created by a media campaign
have higher affects in the mindset of people than any other things. The awareness spread by
media is faster and effect the lifestyle and culture as well. Therefore, there are chances of
positive as well as negative influence. Healthcare in Australia is an important aspect and the
government never neglects this crucial department, as multi-cultural diversity can create
situations that sometimes creates epidemics. Therefore, the government uses the platform of
media to spread basic knowledge about healthcare in population. The positive aspect of media in
healthcare sector can be estimated by the fact that almost 15,000,000 people in Australians are
associated with Facebook and the patients who have arrived at the hospital has mentioned the
fact that they have got the information about the healthcare facility through social media or any

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other form of media. According to another survey, the population has accepted the fact that,
people of 18 to 24 year old likely to discuss the about healthcare using social media platform.
More than 31 percent of Australian healthcare organization have specific media guidelines
attached in their specifications. This is because media provides the stakeholders with the
opportunity to collaborate and form a network, to share and facilitate clients’ personal progress
under medication.
Beside the positive aspect of media on healthcare, there are some negative aspects as
well, that leads to affect the healthcare sector in culturally sensitive society. Media, both print
and mass media, has the tendency of biasness because nowadays media is famous for their role
in sensitizing facts, news and earning money. This has affected the healthcare sector adversely as
some media group supports one healthcare facility or campaign, and some other media group
supports another media campaign. This created a dilemma in people who seek care in those
healthcare facilities. Furthermore, in this age of social media, there are instances of fake
healthcare advises and medicines that are being sensitized to spread social entropy in multi-
cultural population of Australia. Hence, the influences of media, despite being positive or
negative affects the mindset of common Australians and affects the cultural safety of the multi-
diverse society as well (Flew & Swift, 2013).
The two media platforms that has been used in assignment for critical analysis of role of
media in healthcare system of Australia are television or mass media and newspaper or print
media. The critical analysis will contain positive as well as negative aspects of these mediums on
the healthcare facilities of Australian healthcare department. The positive effects of media on
spreading awareness about healthcare are increased accessibility and widened access. Because of