Critical Analysis of Media's Role in Australian Healthcare (HSC230)

This report critically analyzes the role and power of Australian media in shaping healthcare discourses and impacting culturally safe care within multicultural health contexts. It begins by establishing the media's significant influence in disseminating information and contextualizing socio-political environments. The report explores the media's power through symbolic representation, persuasion, and manipulation, highlighting how these elements influence public perceptions of health. It then examines two media items to demonstrate both positive and negative impacts on culturally safe care, focusing on the importance of language and communication in health provision. The analysis includes a discussion of the influence of media on health education and clinical services, along with the use of academic literature to support the arguments. The report concludes by summarizing the media's power to influence public health perspectives and the need for responsible media practices to promote culturally safe healthcare.

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Running Head: POWER AND INFLUENCE OF MEDIA
POWER AND INFLUENCE OF MEDIA
Name
Institution

POWER AND INFLUENCE OF MEDIA 2
Introduction
It is quite important to note that media has become the most prominent part of our daily
lives. More than 96% percent of every household in Australia possess television or any form of
gadget that can be used to pass information to large masses of people. Media is something that
has even become common among the adolescent who spend most of their time on media either
socializing or reading articles on the net. This tool has both the power to influence positively and
negatively the society through viewing certain media. In relation to this paper, the Australian
media has notable power in transforming and shaping the discourse of health in the context of
multicultural health in Australia. In addition to this, this paper is going to analyze critically the
role and power of the current Australian media with further identification of the influence of the
media in relation to culturally safe care.
Power of the media
In Australia, media has proven to be a powerful instrument of all time given the fact that
it influences almost all areas of the lives of individuals starting from the adolescent to the old
generation. It power is majorly seen in its role of disseminating information and facts to the
multitude. It has effectively managed to contextualize the cultural health environment. Talking of
power, this refers to the ability of the media to structure and present ideologies and issues to the
public thus increasing the level of profitability. It is notable that power can be classified into two
with reference to media power (De Jesus 2013).
A media can be said to be symbolically possessing weak power if it does not have the
ability to weave the crowd due to auditoria decisions made in the course of disseminating raw
data. On the contrary, strong symbolic media power lies on the ability of the media being in

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control of the crowd through the fabrication of a strong information to the extent of it not being
questioned in by the society. Another form of power displayed by the media is persuasion and
manipulation.
Talking of media manipulation, this refers to a series of techniques that are related
through which the media tries to create a convincing image or form of argument, which, tends to
favor a particular line of interest. This includes the utilization of certain logical fallacies and
manipulating people psychologically. This may include the diversion of attention of certain
people or inducing groups to stop listening to a series of information given the fact that the
public has a limited span of attention.in this case, persuasion and manipulation are important
sources of power as they help the media to conceal the underlying goals of their stories. For
instance, power is shown by the media in the editorial process where it has the ability to choose
the information to keep and display to the crowd and which to omit is a form of persuasive
power.
McCool, Freeman & Tanielu (2014) denote that furthermore, the media also displays its
ability of power through the choice of words (diction) to relay the intended information to the
crowd in a language known to many thus placing them in the position of possessing intellectual
power. This involves the use of luring language to capture the attention of the readers or
listeners. Luring the crowd through framing issues which sustains the interests of the crowd.
Tension and interest in the crowd is developed from the captivating power and influence in the
information displayed by the media. The information displayed by the media can either be
positive or negative but both have the ability of influencing the crowd. The only difference
between power and influence of the media is it capability. Mostly, power refers to being in

POWER AND INFLUENCE OF MEDIA 4
position to and capacity to influence while influence refers to the putting into action this power
(De Jesus, 2013).
The social conditions of individuals in both Australia and other parts of the world are
greatly influenced by their overall health conditions. When the media diverts its attention to
addressing the health issues in the society, it will be demonstrating its influence in the
perspectives held by the masses with reference social and cultural health. The media address
issues concerning health for instance giving out information on HIV/AIDS, obesity, drug abuse
among others. It is through not only television but also smartphone apps and pop up messages all
focusing on health issues thus raising the awareness and alerting individuals on healthy living
(Breton et al. 2016)
The considerable ability of the media to disseminate critical information concerning health issues
is quite positive to the public. It becomes an asset when it addresses issues pertaining public
health awareness and health campaigns and promotions. The current accelerating rate of chronic
illnesses makes it rudimentary for media to tale control in passing information to the public with
respect to healthy living and disease prevention. For us to consider a certain information
positively affecting the society in terms of health it should not stereotype anything it should
consist of facts and not propagate acts of ageism, sexism or any form of vice that may stigmatize
the society members. When it comes to health provision with media, the choice of language and
communication system is paramount with the aim of reducing power difference (McCool,
Freeman & Tanielu, 2014)
According to Javier & Belgrave (2015), when it comes to health awareness in Australia,
media has really acted as a powerful instrument and among the primary source in to support

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health education and promoting clinical services. Various forms of power are displayed by the
media. As opposed to the interpersonal forms of power, the media utilizes mostly the structural
power hierarchies hence creating legitimacy of the institution through the control of information
that is relayed to the public.
When we critically analyze media items, they tend to bring out both positive and negative
effects on the culturally safe care. Through this analysis of media item, it is clearly brought out
that even the most criticized media items do contain useful information that can positively affect
the livelihood of Australian with respect to health. According to a positively appraised article
titled “Alcohol-Related Violence among the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders of
the Northern Territory: Prioritizing and Agenda for Prevention-Narrative Review Article” the
article uses strong and stereotyping language in its endeavor to discuss about alcohol and related
violence among the Australian aboriginal and Torres strait islanders (Zartarian, V., Jianping,
Velez & Brown, 2015)
It is quite clear that Ramya Ramamoorthi is dedicated to help address the issue of alcohol
misuse, violence and trauma in the Northern territory. The article concentrates on how these
adversities intersect among the locals in the northern territory. The major aim of the article is to
work towards curbing the problems facing this indigenous people of Australia. When take a keen
look into this article, we will realize that the authors try to highlight the negative representation
of the media about the health state of the indigenous people. The northern federal state of
Australia that contains the largest proportion of the indigenous people is frequently faced by
enormous negative effects of harmful alcohol use, which end up resulting into related violence
against women and trauma (Anderson et al., 2003)

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As it was earlier said in this paper that media has got to a certain audience in the public,
the choice of language by the writer of this article creates unwavering privilege to the educated
readers as the audience of the content. According to this media item, the understanding about the
health state is clearly improved as tries to give evidence of the real situation that is being
encountered by the aboriginal in the northern territory of Australia. The paper addresses several
issues that are well evidenced for instance; family and domestic violence which has been, use to
demonstrate the relationship between the victims and the perpetrators who have been abusing
alcohol. It talks of the high numbers of family conflicts that are more common amongst the
indigenous people as opposed to the conflicts and violence due to alcohol for the non-indigenous
people, which only occurs at licensed premises (Rochelle & Hu, 2017).
The item further provides information that is not biased about violence against the
indigenous women and children. Generally, women and children are taken to be the weak figure
in the article. They are the ones who are highly affected by violence because of alcohol abuse.
Research into the article provides evidence that the media here has tied to choose words factually
provide information about the situation of children and women. According to the item, alcohol is
being seen as biggest contributor to the global burden of disease and violence among the
indigenous groups in northern Australia. I accounts for 3.9% of the death cases and 4.6% of the
disabilities caused through alcohol related violence (Breslin et al., 2018). The paper further gives
prove of the exact number of individuals who have been hospitalized among the young
generation as 11,000 between the ages of 15-25 years.
Through analyzing the article, it is apparently clear that the media has achieved to use its
institutional power in addressing the issue of alcohol and related violence among the indigenous
inhabitants of northern Australia in addition to giving recommendations on what should be done

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in order to abolish the problem. The paper denotes that the presence of heavy alcohol abuse is
largely affecting the indigenous community through causing more economic and social damage
(Afzal, Witherspoon & Trousdale, 2016). It states that these issues could be prevented through
trying to change the existing pattern of harmful drinking of the locals I the northern territory. The
media item uses is power to influence the direction that should be taken by the locals. It uses
suggestive and luring words to suggest the interventional approach, which could be used due to
the complex nature of the evidences I has given. These recommendations include face-to-face,
one- session that focuses on minimizing the harm among the locals (Breslin et al., 2018).
On the contrary, another media item, which was considered negative but still contains useful
information concerning culturally safe care is the article entitled “Embedding cultural safety in
Australia’s main Care standards” this media item concentrates on addressing issues to do with
health among the aboriginal inhabitants of northern Australia (Jesmin & Amin, 2017). The paper
uses manipulative words to address issues. It states that there are many causes of inequitable
health care in northern Australia. The authors of this article mentioned above uses stereotyping
words as they try to address the demeaning or disempowering nature of the health service
providers in northern Australia.
Even though the item addresses health, issues it may arouse stigma due to the use of
words such as deemed racist or culturally unsafe disempowerment, which may result into
significant reduction of treatment due to disengagement. The paper is somehow biased given the
fact that not all parts of the northern Australia lacks modern health care centers. The authors
denote that the causes of inequitable health are numerous for instance, the absence of a holistic
attention to the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing of the indigenous groups. The
paper is also not well evidenced because within the aboriginals themselves, they have tried to

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focus on the cultural safety so s to reduce the mortality rate at hand. The biasness of the item also
comes out in the way the paper uses language that only gives privilege to literate who can be able
to read (Jesmin & Amin, 2017).
Conclusion
To sum up, media is a powerful tool that can be used to influence the multitude if its
power is well mastered. This refers to the use of tools that contain the ability to reach large
mases of people at the same time. The information given out by the media can influence the
crowd positively or negatively the society basing on the information being passed across. As
seen I he analysis of the two health care safe media items above, a positive item does not base
itself on biasness but tries to give out evidence based information, which may help increase the
understanding of the crowd. On the contrary, a negative item may affect the crowd through
giving stereotyping information that may arouse stigma in in the crowd. Media can also be used
to educate people on healthy living especially in this current world that is full of chronic diseases
and low life expectancy.

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References
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Appendix
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2017/207/1/embedding-cultural-safety-australias-main-health-
care-standards
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449401/