Intervention of eating disorder symptomatology using direct and indirect influence of educational mass communication messages: A social marketing approach.

摘要

Overall, this research has demonstrated that information campaigns in mass media can improve young women's perceptions about their bodies. Exposure to educational messages affected body satisfaction, a subscale of the Eating Disorder Inventory often used as a diagnostic tool by medical professionals. Also, educational messages influenced the norm of ideal thinness held by female college students through the presumed influence of these messages on female friends, the greatest source of pressure to be thin among young women. When it comes to the matter of practicing mass communication campaigns for an underfunded cause, this research revealed that alignment advertising can be a very attractive alternative to public service advertising for non-profit organizations while appealing to profit-oriented organizations as a marketing communication tool.