Television airings of U.S. federal COVID-19 public service announcements in 2020 were associated with market-level political orientation, not COVID-19 rates

Sarah E. Gollust; Chris Frenier; Margaret Tait; Colleen Bogucki; Jeff Niederdeppe; Steven T. Moore; Laura Baum; Erika Franklin Fowler

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275595

Television airings of U.S. federal COVID-19 public service announcements in 2020 were associated with market-level political orientation, not COVID-19 rates

Sarah E. Gollust, Chris Frenier, Margaret Tait, Colleen Bogucki, Jeff Niederdeppe, Steven T. Moore, Laura Baum, Erika Franklin Fowler

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Televised public service announcements were one of the ways that the U.S. federal government distributed health information about the COVID-19 pandemic to Americans in 2020. However, little is known about the reach of these campaigns or the populations who might have been exposed to the information these ads conveyed. We conducted a descriptive analysis of federally-affiliated public service announcement airings to assess where they were aired and the market-level social and demographic characteristics associated with the airings. We found no correspondence between airings and COVID-19 incidence rates from March to December 2020, but we found a positive association between airings and the Democratic vote share of the market, adjusting for other market demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that PSAs may have contributed to divergent exposure to health information among the U.S. public during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	e0275595
Journal	PloS one
Volume	17
Issue number	10 October
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275595
State	Published - Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant number 77645) to multiple authors (SEG, MT, CB, JN, STM, LB, EFF). Funder URL: https://www.rwjf.org/. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We are grateful for the diligent research assistance of Jake Abrahams and Robert Brehm who coded the ad sponsors.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Gollust et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Keywords

COVID-19/epidemiology
Humans
Pandemics
Television
United States/epidemiology

PubMed: MeSH publication types

Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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10.1371/journal.pone.0275595

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title = "Television airings of U.S. federal COVID-19 public service announcements in 2020 were associated with market-level political orientation, not COVID-19 rates",

abstract = "Televised public service announcements were one of the ways that the U.S. federal government distributed health information about the COVID-19 pandemic to Americans in 2020. However, little is known about the reach of these campaigns or the populations who might have been exposed to the information these ads conveyed. We conducted a descriptive analysis of federally-affiliated public service announcement airings to assess where they were aired and the market-level social and demographic characteristics associated with the airings. We found no correspondence between airings and COVID-19 incidence rates from March to December 2020, but we found a positive association between airings and the Democratic vote share of the market, adjusting for other market demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that PSAs may have contributed to divergent exposure to health information among the U.S. public during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.",

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author = "Gollust, {Sarah E.} and Chris Frenier and Margaret Tait and Colleen Bogucki and Jeff Niederdeppe and Moore, {Steven T.} and Laura Baum and Fowler, {Erika Franklin}",

note = "Funding Information: This study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant number 77645) to multiple authors (SEG, MT, CB, JN, STM, LB, EFF). Funder URL: https://www.rwjf.org/. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We are grateful for the diligent research assistance of Jake Abrahams and Robert Brehm who coded the ad sponsors. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 Gollust et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.",

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PY - 2022/10

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N2 - Televised public service announcements were one of the ways that the U.S. federal government distributed health information about the COVID-19 pandemic to Americans in 2020. However, little is known about the reach of these campaigns or the populations who might have been exposed to the information these ads conveyed. We conducted a descriptive analysis of federally-affiliated public service announcement airings to assess where they were aired and the market-level social and demographic characteristics associated with the airings. We found no correspondence between airings and COVID-19 incidence rates from March to December 2020, but we found a positive association between airings and the Democratic vote share of the market, adjusting for other market demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that PSAs may have contributed to divergent exposure to health information among the U.S. public during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Television airings of U.S. federal COVID-19 public service announcements in 2020 were associated with market-level political orientation, not COVID-19 rates

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

PubMed: MeSH publication types

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