Media Literacy
19
to do so. It is unclear from this analysis whether their beliefs would translate into actual
behavior change.
It is interesting that nonsmokers appeared to exhibit changes primarily on variables
associated with early stages of decision making and more logic-based thinking, as represented in
the Message Interpretation Process model, while smokers demonstrated changes on variables
associated with later stages of decision making, and more emotion-based thinking. This suggests
that among those not using tobacco, the media literacy curriculum raised new issues they had not
been thinking about before. Among those for whom tobacco use has been an issue, it directly
addressed decision-making benchmarks closely associated with behavior (identification,
expectancies and peer-resistance intentions). This suggests that media literacy responds well to
Bandura’s (1997) argument that health communication campaigns need to move away from
scaring individuals into healthy attitudes and behaviors, concentrating instead on helping them
develop skills needed for better decision making. These results suggest that helping them build
resistance to persuasive messages may provide an important bridge to better decision making
regarding health-related behaviors. In particular, it may help them to resist image-based, affect-
laden appeals used by many advertisers to gain customers by short-circuiting their logical
thinking about the costs and benefits of product use.
Only three outcome measures showed no effects for either smokers or nonsmokers. The
nature of these measures, however, made their lack of change especially surprising. These
outcomes--attitudes toward tobacco ads, skepticism, and critical thinking about media motives--
directly reflected the immediate goals of the media literacy intervention. It is possible that a
pretest-posttest analysis will show change not evident in a posttest-only analysis, or that these
outcomes might show change among a younger group of participants, given that decision-
Convention