Assignment 4B -Report

For our next assignment for this semester we were to pick a journal and a book on part of our chosen item from the previous parts of the assignments and are to write a report about the ideas the authors are trying to give across and were to then compare them with one another in the final part of the report. As I struggled to find a book on my chosen topic which is advertising and sexually transmitted diseases I have chosen two journals that I found interesting and thought were quite good at what they are meant to make people aware for.

My chosen journals are:

‘Internet treatment of sexually transmitted infections – a public health hazard?’

‘Teenagers and the risks of sexually transmitted diseases: a need for the provision of balanced information.’

The first of the journals goes on about the stigma that is normally associated with sexually transmitted infections as people who have been infected by any of theses diseases prefer to keep it private and would rather seek information and advice from the Internet than from a one to one from their doctor, as this is less embarrassing. It is though quite dangerous to seek out remedies from the Internet, as those who sell them do not always provide the correct information. The purpose of this journal was that the people who did the research and work for the article conducted an Internet search to find out the availability of STI treatments and the amount and useful information that they presented. What they intended to do was compare just how effective the Internet was in containing the correct medicine required to fight these diseases and those which did nothing are themselves cause more harm to a person because they were not the correct items.

The team discovered that when they ran a search engine on the information into Google, Yahoo etc they found that most people only read information on the first two pages of the results the engines found and that these were not the most useful of sites so they looked at all the links on these pages and took down all the information that was available. The information that had been found was quite interesting as they discovered that their was more information and help for symptomatic conditions with topical manifestations such as genital warts and herpes and that there was a far fewer number of treatments for conditions such as Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea but this is most likely because these symptoms are more difficult to identify and do require more advanced and thorough testing. Due to the Internet being a widely available access point it is no wonder that this takes on more sales than a normal prescription from the doctor as they are more affordable online and done within the privacy of someone’s home without having to get all embarrassed in front of people at the chemist. What is alarming with treatments form the net is that most of these remedies turned out to be herbal and homeopathic and would not help treat the cause at all, this is because of the lack of advise given on the sites that sell them, even though they may have information that will say how the product works they will not mention the fact that it does work and what problems and side affects they can cause, this is a problem as you do not know if it is a secure website that has a medically approved remedy.

The whole point of this journal was to make people realise, especially patients, is the Internet really helpful, should the public be more educated on the spread and protection and the cure for such diseases, they believe that the government should take a step up and make the dangers aware on these sites alerting people to whether it can be successful or not.

The second journal I chose is an evaluation of teenager's knowledge and understanding about sexually transmitted disease, conception and contraception. It goes on to explain how teenagers may underestimate their risk of contracting a STD after the promotion of information about HIV/Aids. It says that simple messages about them in mass media advertising programs may have unwanted results and need to be targeted and easy to understand for teenagers to take in the effect. So what is the problem with the campaigns and advertisements that are currently available to teenagers and what exactly they know about sexually transmitted diseases? What they did was carry out a questionnaire through nine schools in the South west of England in an exam type test, to prevent comparing answers, of how much was being taught to the youths of today, along with all the sources they got their information on, what they found was that five people did not answer any of the questions and 134 did not give detail of the sources they got them from. They also found out that it was television that was the base for most of the information of STI’s available to young people, but even this did not help with their understanding as most gave vague or incorrect answers.

What was the purpose of this, well it was to see just how much these people knew about diseases through sex and what they could do to prevent them and how often were they made aware of the dangers, where did they get the most useful information from, was it television, school, parents? All were very unclear of what they thought they knew, so how could this all be prevented.

What the article is also asking is that, will teenagers understanding of these affect their risk of contracting sexually transmitted, will they take this knowledge and use it wisely and lessen their chances of contracting a disease or will they ignore it thinking it won’t happen to them and think it will be difficult to contract it? Are the adverts in mass media advertising working well enough to fight it or are they just an unwanted annoyance? This is the main reason of this journal, to show that with test and the understanding of the high-risk people have that advertising the risks are not affective enough and are simply just there rather than informing teenagers of what it can do to your life and that more should be done in schools, at home and on the TV as the amount of teenagers who are contracting the disease will spread it even more without even realizing it until it is too late. The youth of today are not informed enough and advertising should be more effectively by being producing more professional interpretations to teenagers that is thoroughly researched and with a strong development of what can be done so that is easier for them to understand and feel that they should want to know more about it.

So to compare both of these journals and what they are trying to portray and how similar they are and which I think comes off to be the stronger article of the two. Both are tackling the same subject of advertising sexually transmitted diseases and how both are not being advertised effectively to their targeted audience, the first is stating that those who have already contracted a STI and are not being given the correct information of how to fight it, where the second is to aim teenagers as soon as possible so they are not at such high a risk of contracting it.

The first journal was had a similar theme to it as to another journal I read, 'Promoting Chlamydia screening with posters and leaflets in general practice’ by E. Freeman, and this partly states from a nurses point of view how ineffective the think the advertising in practices are as they said that patients were to embarrassed to look at a poster and pick up a leaflet, they would rather to it at home through the Internet on their own, and this is where I think this journal connects with the first one I have written about.

Both my chosen journals are trying to increase the message of how high a risk people are at contracting STI’s and how little information is actually available, it seems to me that if you really want to know all there is about them then you are best to do this through a doctor but doctors cannot always be there to solve this, more advertising that has been properly thought out and displayed should have to work better to increase the public awareness and make them think twice about having unprotected sex and how dangerous it is to buy something that may not be reliable from someone you will not even meet.

Both authors have carried out different tests, but both were used to find out important information that is available to all, and how reliable they are. From what I can tell from both journals are they think the methods used at the moment are working, they are lacking the natural element of awareness and safety. These also got me onto thinking of another journal, 'Sexually transmitted disease/HIV health-care policy and service provision in Britain' by RG. Cooper, who compared the advertising from the late 19th to the present 21st Century’s and how even trough this history the advertising to help prevent the spread of it has never been quite so affective because more people than you would think do not understand a lot or know how dangerous a single disease can be.

As said before of what can be done, well in schools advertising campaigns can be made more to be aimed at younger people instead of the current very dated programs that are being shown to students, and even getting taught about this a few times a year would help increase their awareness and perception. For tackling the Internet the government could possibly step in and label what product really work against STI’s and what sites are the best to look at.