Construction of Health and Medical Messages in the Media and its Effect on the People’s Awareness

Introduction: Broadcasting is a task of public information media and for the promotion of the quality of the citizens’ livings. We tried to find the extent to which the present strategy of the national broadcasting organization (IRIB) in performing this task in the shape of broadcasting of health messages among other commercial and public ads has been noticed by the audience by discussing different theories concerning the social effect of the media and the effect of the media on the change of the individual behavior and also to see whether these messages have had effects on the audience’ behaviors or not from their viewpoints. Method: the sample persons in Tehran city have been selected in the present study by the survey method through the questionnaire and by the multi-stage cluster sampling method: The respondents who were over 15 and TV watchers were selected as the sample persons among the households. 825 peoples were studied. Findings: findings showed that the citizens of Tehran passed on average 3 hours and 20 minutes watching TV. They noticed very much the health messages broadcasted by IRIB TV and almost 91 percent of the respondents stated that were content from the broadcast of the health messages and its usefulness and effectiveness. 29.9 percent of them regarded cartoons or puppet shows and films as effective.  17 percent deemed important the combination of two educational and news functions in the medical news. Conclusion: Media and especially TV as a widely-spread media have an important role in the making of persuasion, encouragement and dictation of certain behaviors, usages and tendencies; this role may be emphasized in the area of health and healthcare by expanding health educations across the society through the media.