Information-Seeking Outcomes of Representational, Structural, and Political Intersectionality Among Health Media Consumers

Abstract

Although the segmentation of publics is a standard practice in public relations programming, practitioners face challenges in using traditional approaches to identify and engage vastly different publics. Responding to the need for new approaches that consider global, cultural, and technological trends in consumer publics, this study provides evidence to a proposed intersectional approach to the segmentation of publics. Thirty-one women of different racial, socioeconomic, age, and relationship backgrounds were interviewed to explore how they perceived their multiple, overlapping identities influence their health decision making. Findings suggest that publics experience co-occurring oppression and privilege in varying contexts: in representations of them, in policies that affect them, and in structures that enable or hinder their ability to improve their health. The findings suggest that intersecting social structures shape disparate health public relations, intersecting policies widen the policymaker–public gap, and intersecting representations reflect a paradox of segmentation.

Keywords:

• Public Relations
• Health Campaigns
• Segmentation
• Publics' Identity
• Qualitative

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by an award from the University of Houston's Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. The authors would like to thank the reviewers and editor for help in refining this manuscript.

Notes

[1] Avowed identity is the collection of cultural or ethnic associations an individual person declares, and ascribed identity is the collection of associations placed upon an individual because of appearance (Sha, 2006; Sha & Ford, 2007).

[2] The first author attended a panel discussion on January 26, 2010, called “New Recommendations for Mammography and Cervical Cancer Screening: What They Really Mean.” The chair of the USPSTF, Dr. Virginia Moyer, discussed the recommendations for breast cancer screening. Amid criticism from advocacy groups, patients, and health care providers during the discussion, Dr. Moyer admitted the task force did not consider communication strategy or best practices in its release of the guidelines.

[3] Some intersectional work supports the extraction of a single identity—the pivoting identity—and places it at the center of analysis, initiating examination of its interactions with other identities (Luft, 2009).