Sources

At first glance this assignment seemed simple enough: find an online article and evaluate its sources. Easy-peasy. Eight articles later and I finally click on a headline that features an actual article with actual sources. The seven previous headlines had been nothing more than a paragraph of loose information with no sources cited at all. And these were in notable online publications: Time, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

I settled on an article in the New York Times: Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not by Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll. As a member of my hospital's Wellness Committee I am heavily involved in our worksite wellness program, so an article declaring they don't work definitely caught my attention. Both Frakt and Carroll have strong backgrounds in public health, as cited in the article and Frakt’s bio page listed several of his peer-reviewed publications. Within the article there were numerous sources cited including the Kaiser Family Foundation, the RAND Corporation and PepsiCo (Red flag! Red flag!) (Frakt & Carroll, 2014).  The article itself I felt was slightly bias, basically claiming that wellness programs shift costs from employer to employee. Per Dr. Z’s instruction I donned my Sherlock Holmes detective hat and started investigating the trail of evidence on which this article was based.

I have heard of the Kaiser Family Foundation within my own work in public health and wasn’t surprised that as a source, they checked out. Their survey and its funding all appeared to be neutral.  The mission of the RAND Corporation is to “advance understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.” (Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller, 2014)  A little wordy, but it certainly sounds official. I found the specific study that was referenced by Frakt and Carroll, and it was based on PepsiCo’s (Yes, as in Pepsi cola and Frito-Lay potato chips) Healthy Living Wellness Program.  PepsiCo was the sponsor of the study and two of its authors are PepsiCo employees. The study, even though it was sponsored by a huge junk food conglomerate, still backed up what Frakt and Carroll wrote –worksite wellness works in some ways, but not in all the ways it is intended.     

The potential impact of unrestricted web publishing is that anyone could put forth information in a format that seems credible and legitimate.  While the article I focused on for this blog post was based on credible findings and presented in a fairly unbiased manner information is only as good as the way in which it is presented.  Even if authors cite credible sources, if they do so in a way that shows only one perspective, just to get their point across, its nearly as bad as just making things up. Unrestricted web publishing, while leveling the playing field for people to voice their opinions and create positive social/political movements, also poses the risk spreading falsified information, where facts are cherry picked to suit the author’s motives (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010).

 

Works Cited

Frakt, A., & Carroll, A. E. (2014, September 11). Do Workplaec Wellness PRograms Work? Usually Not . Retrieved from New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/upshot/do-workplace-wellness-programs-work-usually-not.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: HOw to know what's true in the age of information overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller. (2014, January 6). Retrieved from RAND Corporation: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2014/01/06/index1.html

Social Media: Making Information Interesting

How do I know what I know? What is one new thing I learned today? If you read my first post, you know that my favorite things to learn from social media involve food and/or wallpaper removal tutorials.  But I don't think those are the types of things that Dr. Z is looking for.  So, in an effort to appear more intellectual than I actually am, I took to my Facebook and Twitter pages to see what was popular in the news.  After surfing through many videos of the Ice Bucket Challenge and Cute Kittens Doing Cute Stuff, I settled on  Does Organic Make Food Better For You? from FoodTank, a food think tank. Usually the term think tank is a red flag. To me, it's like people who say they tip well and then leave their restaurant server 5%.  But the for the purpose of this blog, I thought the article would be a good exercise in mindful social media consumerism (did I just make up a new buzz phrase?).

Not surprisingly, FoodTank, whose mission is focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters, declared organic foods as better for you than non-organic versions.  How do I know this is true?  Well, if the article was just commentary from FoodTank I wouldn't believe it, based on that information alone.  While I support organic foods, slow foods, local foods, sustainable foods (I really love food) it's pretty obvious that this website is interest-based journalism at it's finest (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2011).  But just because I approve of their agenda doesn't mean I won't question the validity of the report, even though studies show that people give more street cred to content that they approve of (Kaye & Johnson, 2011).  No, the reason I believe this article's information is accurate and credible stems from the fact that the authors cited a peer reviewed paper from the British Journal of Nutrition. "A new study by Newcastle University on organic versus conventional crops confirms that organic farming methods do have a positive impact on health. Results found substantially higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticides in organic crops versus conventional crops."  That source gave the content the credibility I was looking for (Nierenberg & Reed, 2014). 

Social media sites like Facebook are a good jumping off point for finding information. While they may not tell you the whole story or present all the facts at once, their content can offer up the most pertinent information and a path for finding out more about a topic.  And let's be honest- often times information posted through social media sites is just more interesting and entertaining than the original source.  Case in point - I don't follow the British Journal of Nutrition (Fun Fact: They don't even have a Facebook page- I checked) so I probably wouldn't have stumbled upon this study were it not for my fellow Facebook foodies reposting the article from FoodTank.

Social Media takes important information and transposes into interesting, bite sized chunks for the average consumer. You don't have to be in grad school to understand the information presented. Though it certainly doesn't hurt.

Work Cited

Kova   Kaye, B.,  & Johnson,T. (2011) Hot Diggity Blog: A cluster analysis examing motivations and other factors for why people judge different types of blogs as credible. Mass Communication and Society. P. 236-263.   

             

           Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2011). Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload . New York: Bloomsbury.    

          Nierenberg, D., & Reed, M. (2014, September 9). Does Organic Make Food Better? Retrieved from www.FoodTank.com: http://foodtank.com/news/2014/09/organic-produce-higher-in-nutritional-content-than-conventional-produce

Influence of The Media

Even though new media has the capacity to connect people across the globe and spread information almost instantaneously, I find it keeps me rather insulated from outside events.  Thanks to innovations like Netflix and Spotify, I am often blissfully unaware of what is happening in the world around me.  I watch TV through streaming, without commercials or newscasts. Ditto for music. I rarely listen to broadcast radio in my car and never in the house. Instead, for $10 a month I enjoy unlimited, commercial free music through my Smart Phone or iPad. I have been living in this insulated commercial-free bubble for about 18 months and it wasn’t until recently I realized that I really had no idea what was going on in the world.  Or even in my own backyard. One Tuesday evening in early August, a hurricane blew through my town located in the western Foothills of Maine (we rarely get hurricanes).  I had no idea. I thought it was just a really bad rain storm.  It wasn’t until later in the evening when I popped onto Facebook that I saw all the posts about people taking to their basements and losing power.  Geesh, I thought. I don’t even have any bottled water in the house, in case of an emergency.  The situation made me realize how removed I am from current events.

I wasn’t always so disengaged from what was happening in the world.  As a former social studies teacher, I know the importance of being an informed citizen.  I used to read the local online newspapers and occasionally watch a local or national newscast the day after it was broadcast, on the Internet.  But there was always so much information available.  One article would link to another article and another and so on…until I had frittered away my morning reading news that was usually pretty depressing, not to mention bias.  I think my hermit-like aversion to both local and national news started slowly, replacing the New York Times with Martha Stewart Living on Hulu and CBS Nightly news with Youtube channels of How to Remove Wallpaper.  I am slightly addicted to Pinterest and all the ways to use a mason jar.  I use Facebook to stay connected with my family and friends and to cyber-stalk my teenagers.  LinkedIn is useful only when I am feeling disgruntled at work and want to look for a new job. Essentially, I am selfish social media consumer.  I only use it if it benefits me directly.

Is this positive or negative?  New Media allows me to be much more selective about the content I consume.  Obviously, I’m generally happier looking for dessert recipes on Pinterest than reading about fighting in the Middle East.  Add to this the fact that there is so much content available all the time – and  it starts to feels like information fatigue.  I know I should care, but I just don’t have the energy right now.  I’m going to check out Halloween craft ideas on Pinterest instead.