TY - JOUR AU - Gibson, Timothy, A. AB - Abstract This article argues that the theory and practice of media advocacy suffers from some inherent pragmatic and conceptual limits. One limit is practical: Media advocacy's reliance on journalists working in commercial media radically constrains advocates' ability to reach policy makers and citizens in anything more than an episodic way. Another limit is conceptual. By implicitly endorsing an elitist theory of democracy and focusing on mainstream journalism, media advocacy fails to theorize the crucial role media resources and strategies play within local social change movements. The article concludes by exploring what the theory and practice of media advocacy might look like if informed by an alternative, more participatory theory of democracy as well as a commitment to promoting media reform. Les limites de l'action au sein des médias Timothy A. Gibson Cet article soutient que la théorie et la pratique de l'action au sein des médias souffre de limites pragmatiques et conceptuelles inhérentes. L'une des limites est d'ordre pratique : la dépendance des acteurs vis-à-vis des journalistes œuvrant dans les médias commerciaux restreint de façon radicale la capacité des militant d'atteindre les responsables et les citoyens à un rythme autre qu'épisodique. Une autre limite est d'ordre conceptuel. En soutenant implicitement une vision élitiste de la démocratie et en se concentrant sur le journalisme dominant, l'action au sein des médias omet de théoriser le rôle crucial que jouent les ressources et les stratégies médiatiques dans les mouvements locaux pour le changement social. L'article conclut avec une exploration de ce dont pourrait avoir l'air la théorie et la pratique de l'action au sein des médias si elles étaient informées par une théorie de la démocratie alternative, plus participative, et par un engagement envers la promotion d'une réforme médiatique. Die Grenzen des Medienlobbyismus Timothy A. Gibson Medienlobbyismus wurde als ein Ansatz der Gesundheitskommunikationskampagnen von Public Health Wissenschaftler Lawrence Wallack entwickelt und sollte für den kritischen Medienwissenschaftler von großem Interesse sein. Medienlobbyismus bedient sich Agenda- Setting und Framing-Theorie, um Aktivisten für die Bevölkerungsgesundheit dabei zu unterstützen, Nachrichtenberichterstattung in kommerziellen Lokalmedien herzustellen und zu gestalten. Diese Berichterstattung wird dann wiederum genutzt, Druck auf Politiker auszuüben, wichtige soziale und gesundheitsbezogene Probleme zu beseitigen. Es gibt viel, was man bezüglich dieses politikzentrierten Ansatzes von Gesundheitskampagnen bewundern kann, insbesondere wenn man den individualisierten und freiwilligen Charakter der meisten anderen Ansätze der Gesundheitskommunikation dagegensetzt. Dennoch argumentiert dieser Artikel, dass die Theorie und Praxis von Medienlobbyismus an einigen ihr inhärenten pragmatischen und konzeptuellen Grenzen leidet. Eine Grenze ist praktischer Natur: Die Abhängigkeit der Medienlobbyisten von Journalisten der kommerziellen Medien beschneidet ihre Möglichkeiten, Politiker und Bürger anders als auf episodische Art und Weise zu erreichen. Eine andere Grenze ist konzeptuell: Indem implizit einer Elitetheorie von Demokratie angenommen wird und indem auf Mainstream-Journalisten und Medien fokussiert wird, versäumt es der Medienlobbyismus theoretisch zu bedenken, welche zentrale Rolle Medienressourcen und Strategien in lokalen Bewegungen gesellschaftlichen Wandels spielen. Diese Artikel schließt mit der Untersuchung, wie die Theorie und Praxis von Medienlobbyismus wohl aussehen würde, würde sie aus einer alternativen, mehr auf Teilhabe ausgerichteten Demokratietheorie und einem Engagement für die Förderung einer Medienreform gespeist werden. Los Límites del Apoyo de los Medios Timothy A. Gibson Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA Resumen Este artículo sostiene que la teoría y práctica del apoyo de los medios sufre de algunos límites pragmáticos y conceptuales inherentes. Un límite práctico es: la dependencia en el apoyo de los medios de los periodistas trabajando en medios comerciales que constriñen radicalmente la habilidad de los defensores para alcanzar a los creadores de políticas y los ciudadanos en nada más que una forma episódica. Otro límite es conceptual. Al avalar implícitamente una teoría elitista de la democracia y focalizar en el periodismo de la corriente dominante, el apoyo de los medios falla en teorizar el rol crucial de los recursos de los medios y las estrategias que juegan dentro de los movimientos sociales de cambio local. Este artículo concluye con una exploración de cómo la teoría y la práctica del apoyo de los medios sería si estuvieran informadas por una teoría de la democracia alternativa, más participativa así como también un compromiso hacia la reforma de los medios. Health communication research, defined as the study of how communication processes relate to human health and well being, is a rapidly expanding and increasingly influential subfield within the larger discipline of communication studies (Maibach, 2002). Evidence of the subfield's growth can be found in the impressive number of communication journals devoted to health issues, the number of research grants awarded to health communication projects, and the proliferation of tenure-track faculty lines awaiting newly minted health communication scholars (Thompson, 2003). And, to be sure, there is good reason for this growth. The subfield has generated an impressive diversity of research which explores the relationship between communication and health in interpersonal, organizational, and mediated contexts. Health communication scholars have produced valuable work on, for example, patient–provider interactions, health information-seeking and media use, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of health communication campaigns. Perhaps most importantly, much of this research has subsequently been applied in concrete social contexts to improve the health and well being of individuals around the world. For their work outside the academy's walls, in short, health communication scholars and practitioners deserve high praise. At the same time, the theories and interventions of health communication scholars are not beyond critique (a point with which my health communication colleagues would readily agree). Yet, with some notable exceptions (Lupton, 2003; Tulloch & Lupton, 1997), the subfield has received relatively little attention from critical communication or cultural studies scholars. Likely this lack of engagement has much to do with the unfortunate persistence of the divide between “critical” and “administrative” research (Lazarsfeld, 1941). Health communication, for the most part, remains resolutely administrative, focused on the practical problems that government agencies and non-governmental organizations face when attempting to communicate with, and persuade, an often hard-to-reach and (from the agency's perspective) misbehaving public. The methods employed are typically social-scientific, the theories behavioral, and larger questions of the relationship between health and wider systems of economic, cultural, and political power—the stuff of critical scholarship—are often bracketed and set aside in favor of testing more narrow relationships between variables (Tulloch & Lupton, 1997, see also Thompson et al., 2003). Critical and health communication scholars, in short, ask different questions, employ different methods, attend different panels, and travel in different circles. It is my view, however, that critical communication scholars have much to contribute in a dialog with health communication research. This is particularly true for the work on health communication campaigns. The dominant theoretical approaches in the campaign literature—including the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985), and the extended parallel-process model (Witte, 1994)—are focused primarily on the origins of and influences on individual behavior (i.e., how are patterns of behavior estab- lished, and, more importantly, how can they be changed?). Furthermore, the campaigns that apply these theories are most often resolutely authority- and agency-centered, with “the problem” defined in terms that place responsibility on individuals not institutions (see, for example, Rice & Atkin, 2001). Most typically, the cause of ill-health is the recalcitrant audience: They are smoking too much; they are not getting screened for cancer; they are engaging in risky sex and not buckling their seat belts. The solution pursued by agencies (and therefore their health communication clients) is thus equally narrow: How can we reach the recalcitrant audience with a tailored, persuasive health message and therefore change their behavior (or “win compliance” as it is sometimes called)? Ultimately, of course, this focus on individual behaviors obscures the role played by social systems structured in inequality. After all, the determinants of health and well being are not merely individual, and your chances on living a healthy life are not simply a matter of access to accurate information and making the right decisions. When it comes to health, social context—particularly one's access to social, political, and economic resources—matters. Individuals living in poverty, for example, suffer rates of illness and premature death at rates nearly double those of their more affluent counterparts (World Health Organization, 2003), and individuals' socioeconomic status is a better predictor of cardiovascular death than cholesterol level, blood pressure, and smoking status combined (Pincus et al., 1998). Persuading individuals to eat more vegetables (or to use sun screen, or to stop smoking) through targeted health campaigns is a worthwhile goal, but has little chance of addressing the structural conditions that unevenly distribute good health and well being based on one's ability to pay. Interestingly, there is a dissenting perspective on these points within the health communication campaign field itself—a perspective its leading proponent, Lawrence Wallack, has dubbed media advocacy. Wallack, a public health scholar, has long objected to the individualistic and authority-centered focus of health communication campaign scholarship, and has instead called upon health educators to focus on policy rather than behavior (Wallack & Dorfman, 2001) Along with his longtime colleagues Lori Dorfman and Katie Woodruff, he has argued that the true target of communication campaigns should be policymakers, and the goal of these campaigns should be the pursuit of policies that transform the social and natural environment within which individuals act (Wallack, Dorfman, Jernigan, & Themba, 1993). In doing so, Wallack and his colleagues apply the basic insight of public health: Change the environment, not the individual. If children are dying in auto accidents, don't try to educate parents. Pass a mandatory car-seat law instead. Also intriguing, from the perspective of critical media studies, is that Wallack and his colleagues place the media at the center of their advocacy efforts, and, in doing so, cite liberally from a wide range of media scholars and theories, including agenda setting, framing theory, and even political-economic perspectives on media concentration and control. Drawing on this work, Wallack and Dorfman have established an influential media research and advocacy organization—the Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG)—dedicated to teaching community groups and issue advocates about how to use the mass media in order to pressure policy makers into pursuing healthy public policies. And, as will be discussed below, the BMSG's media advocacy efforts have scored tangible policy victories that have indeed demonstrably improved the health and well being of individuals and communities. Yet at the same time, the theory and practice of media advocacy—especially as represented by the work of Wallack, Dorfman, and the BMSG—suffers from its relative isolation from the wider streams of critical communication research. The goal of this article is, therefore, to build a greater dialog between critical media studies and health communication scholarship by examining the perspective within the health communication campaign literature that most directly draws on the insights and findings of critical media research—Wallack and Dorfman's media advocacy. To this end, beginning with a short introduction to Wallack and Dorfman's work, this article offers a sympathetic critique of their approach to media advocacy, with a focus on its inherent pragmatic and theoretical limits. In particular, I will argue that Wallack and Dorfman's implicit theory of democracy—a theory that Baker (2002) would term “elitist”—has led them to both radically overestimate the political utility of commercial media in the United States and to underestimate the important role that media resources and strategies can play within social movements for policy change. The result of their pragmatic advice to advocates—couched within an elitist theory of democracy—is thus to encourage community groups to pursue episodic bits of commercial press coverage, while at the same time neglecting internal strategies that use media resources to build stronger and more cohesive social change coalitions. To rectify this blind spot, the final sections of this article thus explore what the theory and practice of media advocacy might look like if informed by what Baker (2002), following Habermas (1994) and Fraser (1992), calls a “complex” vision of democracy. In the end, it is my hope that engaging in this sympathetic critique will, first, contribute to both the theory and practice of media advocacy, and, second, help build a pointed and productive dialog between critical media studies and health communication research. Media advocacy and the Berkeley Media Studies Group: An introduction In the inaugural volume of the Journal of Health Communication, Winett and Wallack (1996) offered a gentle but compelling critique of traditional health campaigns. Although such campaigns can pursue a number of different theory-based strategies (i.e., social marketing, social cognitive theory, theory of reasoned action, etc.), ultimately they share the same goal: providing individuals with “good” information and promoting individual behavior change. Media advocacy, on the other hand, focuses its attention on the “system-level variables that are implicated in the perpetuation of poor health” (Winett & Wallack, 1996, p. 183). Media advocates thus begin with the premise that patterns of poor health within a population are the product of a particular social, natural, and economic context. This context both generates health risks and distributes these risks unevenly among the population, due primarily to an unequal distribution of social resources and power. For this reason, to be truly effective, health promotion strategies must transcend the individual to address the wider social production and distribution of health risks. Media advocacy is thus focused on changing public policy, rather than individual behavior. Consider the problem of childhood obesity in low-income urban neighborhoods. If a traditional approach would attempt to educate kids and parents on healthier eating choices, media advocates like Dorfman, Wallack, and Woodruff (2005) point to the social conditions outside the individual's control, including the lack of safe playgrounds and parks, cuts to physical education programs, the relentless promotion of low-cost and high-fat junk food in the media, and the relative paucity (and expense) of fresh produce at inner-city convenience stores. The solution to inner-city childhood obesity is, therefore, structural: the pursuit of public policies that increase the access of disadvantaged communities to social resources that promote good health (i.e., affordable housing, healthy food, safe parks and streets, and affordable health care). The emphasis on public policy solutions leads directly to the BMSG's approach to the media. Inspired by agenda-setting and framing research, Wallack and his colleagues conceive of the mainstream news media as a powerful means of placing health issues on the public agenda and pressuring policy makers to make needed changes. As described by the BMSG, the basics of media advocacy are straightforward: Media advocacy tries to work through the news to put the spotlight on selected social and health issues, focus the light on policy-oriented solutions, and hold the light in place over time. This three-step process: setting the agenda, framing or shaping the issue, and advancing a specific solution or policy, is the core of media advocacy. (1997, p. 5) In this way, the “target” of media advocacy campaigns is extremely narrow: policy makers. Media advocates attract press coverage of health issues not to “raise awareness” or educate the public, though these may be desirable externalities. Instead, advocates attempt to draw and influence mainstream media coverage to pressure the powerful into advancing healthy public policies. To this end, Lawrence Wallack founded the BMSG in 1993 to “help public health professionals and community groups become more savvy about using the power of the media to advance public health” (Berkeley Media Studies Group, 2009a). Beginning with three grant-funded projects on violence, alcohol advertising, and lead poisoning, the BMSG has grown substantially over the past 15 years, taking on a range of health issues including violence and injury prevention, alcohol, tobacco, child care, nutrition and exercise, and sexually transmitted disease (Berkeley Media Studies Group, 2009a). In each case, the BMSG partners with community advocacy groups, assists with media management strategies (i.e., how to attract news coverage and promote their organization's issue frame), and works to achieve realistic goals that change corporate and government policies in ways that promote the public health. Their efforts have not only earned the BMSG hostility from corporate America (a frequent target of their advocacy campaigns, including especially the alcohol industry) but also the attention of more progressive nonprofit foundations.1 The BMSG's institutional funders have included some of the largest private foundations in the United States, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The California Endowment, and the Ford Foundation, and this funding now supports a fulltime staff of nine professional health advocates (BMSG, 2009b). Finally, Wallack and his colleagues have authored a number of leading articles (Dorfman et al., 2005; Wallack and Dorfman, 1996; Wallack et al., 1993; Wallack Woodruff, Dorfman, & Diaz, 1999) as well as two key texts in the health advocacy field, including Media Advocacy and Public Health (Wallack et al., 1993) and a popular “how to” advocacy guide, News for a Change (Wallack et al., 1999). As a critical media scholar also attracted to structural explanations for, and solutions to, injustice and inequality, I find much to admire in the BMSG's approach to health campaigns. And, indeed, media advocacy's success stories are impressive and inspiring. Using this approach, for example, local advocates have drawn media attention to deplorable conditions in public housing units (Wallack et al., 1999), criticized the sexist nature of alcohol advertising (Woodruff, 1996), and even publicized the fate of wrongly accused citizens on death row (McHale, 2003). Most notably, this media coverage has led in some cases to policy changes that have changed the lives of citizens in tangible and important ways—resulting in, respectively, improved housing conditions, voluntary agreements to regulate the depiction of women on alcohol billboards, and a life-saving gubernatorial pardon. I do not wish to diminish these achievements. At the same time, however, such success stories (published precisely because they were successful) should not blind us to the inherent theoretical and pragmatic limits of media advocacy as articulated by the BMSG. In the following two sections, and in the spirit of a sympathetic critique, I detail two of these limits. However, at the end of the article, the discussion turns toward a more constructive dialog with media advocacy in which I explore how a more complex theory of democracy—and an engagement with media policy and reform—might enrich the BMSG's “media advocacy” approach to health campaigns. Media advocacy and local commercial broadcasting: A pragmatic limit My first critique is pragmatic: Media advocacy overestimates the utility of commercial media as a vehicle for social change messages. To be fair, however, media advocacy scholars would be the first to recognize, in general terms, the limits of media activism as a tool for policy change. In fact, the first principle of media advocacy, according to Wallack et al. (1999), is that “you can't have a media strategy without an overall strategy” (p. 10). To this end, media advocacy writers periodically take pains to caution readers that attracting and shaping media coverage will be futile unless advocates develop a coherent political strategy. A specific, achievable policy goal must be selected. A target with the power to change the policy must be identified, and a community of committed partisans should ideally be mobilized. Only then will the media strategy have a chance of producing results. At the same time, however, the whole premise of media advocacy is that attracting the coverage of local commercial media can yield big political dividends. This premise thus opens the door to questions about the structures and practices that govern news production in local media institutions. To what extent do the structures and practices of commercial media facilitate or impede media advocates laboring to attract and frame coverage? And if local commercial media are shown to offer an inhospitable environment for advocacy messages, what does this suggest about the limits of media advocacy as a tool for social change? In the United States, the first limit of media advocacy is thus the failure of local commercial media—particularly local commercial broadcasting—to provide a meaningful coverage of local public affairs more generally. But before I begin to document this failure, I should address one potential objection to focusing narrowly on the failures of local commercial broadcasting. After all, this focus on broadcasting excludes, on the one hand, the coverage provided by local newspapers, and, on the other, the forms of local content that can be accessed online (via community blogs, etc.). To be sure, despite declining circulation, daily newspapers remain the most prodigious source of local news in the USA (Cooper, 2004), and the potential for community blogs to provide a rich range of independent media voices is indeed exciting—if yet to be fully realized in practice, as Baker (2007) has demonstrated. Yet local commercial broadcasting remains, according to numerous studies, the top source of local news for most citizens. In a recent FCC media use survey, for instance, 66% of respondents indicated they turned most often to television and/or radio for most of their news, whereas only 23% said the same for newspapers (Cooper, 2004). More telling still, the media advocacy literature itself emphasizes the importance of attracting local television coverage. In their most recent textbook, News for a Change, Lawrence Wallack and his colleagues at the Berkeley Media Studies Group (1997) repeatedly highlight the need for advocates to develop visuals if they wish their efforts to yield television coverage (pp. 59, 82). Further, a cursory review of the advocacy success stories published in News for Change (and on the BMSG website) found that television and radio coverage played a role in just over 40% of these local advocacy victories (with newspaper coverage accounting for the rest). Media advocates, in short, have themselves long recognized the fact that American political culture has become increasingly mediated by the “public screen” (DeLuca and Peeples, 2002), and their practical advice reflects this awareness (with their many admonitions to “use compelling visuals” and think of visuals as “magnets” for coverage). Thus it seems reasonable to suggest that media advocacy's power to influence public policy depends at least in part on advocates' ability to attract local television and radio news coverage. If local broadcasters devote significant resources to covering political and social issues, this would presumably enhance the reach and power of media advocates. However, if the “news hole” in local commercial broadcasting shrinks, so too will the reach of local advocates. With this in mind, then, how are commercial broadcasters in the United States doing in terms of providing coverage of local public affairs? In a word, poorly. On the whole, in the United States, local commercial broadcasters devote an appallingly small amount of time to the coverage of local public affairs. For example, in their content analysis of 1 month of local television news coverage in nine Midwestern U.S. markets, the University of Wisconsin's NewsLab found that, in a typical 30-minute newscast, local stations devote over 9 minutes to advertising, over 7 minutes to sports and weather, and approximately 2 minutes each to local crime and “teasers, bumpers, and intros” (a category that presumably includes the now-obligatory chitchat among anchors). News about government—all levels of government—received, on average, one and a half minutes per newscast. Of this, only 31 seconds on average was devoted solely to coverage of local government. Put another way, in the typical local TV newscast, coverage of local government received about one-fourth of the time devoted to teasers, bumpers, and intros (UW NewsLab, 2007). This is just the newscast, of course. “Town meeting” formats, interview shows, and televised public debates should also be part of a well-balanced commitment to public affairs programming. But, according to the Media Access Project (MAP), most local stations offer very little in the way of public affairs programming outside the local newscast. In fact, in their 1998 survey of 40 local television stations in 5 markets, MAP researchers found that, out of 13,250 possible hours of programming over a 2-week period, these 40 stations collectively produced only 46.5 hours of local public affairs programming outside the daily local newscast. Put another way, local public affairs (outside of local news) represented only 0.35 percent of these stations' total programming schedules (Media Access Project, 1998). Local stations in the USA are even failing to deliver on their most basic public obligation—covering local elections. For example, the Lear Center (a joint project of the University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin) analyzed the local newscasts of 44 ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates in the month prior to the 2004 elections. What they found was that just eight percent of local newscasts contained even a single story about a local candidate race (a category which included campaigns for the United States House, state senate or assembly, mayor or city council seat, judgeship, law enforcement posts, education-related offices, and regional and county offices). In terms of total coverage, these stations devoted eight times more coverage to stories about accidental injuries than they extended to all local elections combined (Kaplan, Goldstein, and Hale, 2005, pp. 3–4). The picture in American commercial radio is equally discouraging. To be sure, a number of commercial radio stations, particularly in the largest markets, offer first-rate coverage of local public affairs and offer listeners call-in shows focused on issues of local concern. Yet these stations are by all accounts the exception, not the rule. According to Cooper (2004), only 30% of commercial radio stations produce any news at all, and, further, those stations that do provide news stretch their reporters and producers to the breaking point. The average radio newsroom in the USA, for example, employs just three people. Given these numbers, you might think that American audiences were simply not demanding local news from commercial radio, but this is emphatically not the case. Over 90% of respondents, for example, told the Radio–Television News Directors Association that they expected local radio to “inform them about what is happening in their community” (Hood, 2007, p. 5). Instead, commercial radio increasingly draws its news content from distant production centers, which then circulates this “outsourced” news on the cheap throughout the corporate radio chain (Huntemann, 1999). In fact, in some communities, all the local commercial radio stations are owned by national chains, with most content piped in from headquarters via satellite. Such practices in these communities effectively create a “local free” zone for listeners (Hood, 2007). There is, in short, a pragmatic limit on the power of media advocacy: the misguided priorities and commercial strategies of local commercial broadcasting itself.2 On the whole, this overall lack of commitment to high-quality local news and public affairs is scandalous—especially considering the inherent profitability of commercial broadcasting, not to mention their legal obligation, under US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, to provide a high-quality local public service. According to Napoli and Yan (2007), for instance, local television stations typically enjoy profit margins of between 45% and 50%, and local news provides over 40% of total station revenues on average (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008). With these margins, the oft-heard claim that there is just not enough money or time to improve coverage of local affairs begins to ring hollow. Simple greed, rather than limited resources, seems to be the more likely explanation. Station owners and their investors, like all commercial firms, want revenues to grow steadily. They expect this year's balance sheet and share price to be better than last year's. The result is a constant pressure to view local news as a revenue stream rather than a public service. The failures and flaws of local commercial broadcasting thus make media advocacy essentially the art of making do with a bad situation. Media advocacy scholars draw on their knowledge of television news—including its thirst for arresting images, its penchant for drama, its need to personalize or put a “face” on abstract and complex issues (Bennett, 2004)—and then translate this knowledge into a set of best practices for local grassroots groups. These grassroots grounds then grind their messages through the high-powered juicer that is the existing commercial media system in order to glean episodic bits of local television and radio coverage. But the fruit of this accommodation is often a disappointing war of all against all, as advocates compete with one another to find purchase in an ever-shrinking local newshole. In this battle, the loser is consigned to obscurity, whereas the victor wins the dubious prize of having their advocacy message sandwiched between slayings, stabbings, weather, and sports. Media advocacy and elitist democracy: Conceptual limitations Fair enough. Having a local broadcasting system more committed to public affairs would obviously enhance the political efficacy of media advocacy. But media advocacy scholars might argue that the flaws of local television and radio coverage are, in the end, really not that important. To be sure, the general public may indeed rely heavily on local broadcasting for (what passes for) news, but ultimately, they would point out that the main goal of media advocacy is not to reach “the public” at all. Instead, the goal is to reach decision-makers. In other words, media advocates work to attract news coverage not to inform the public, but rather to compel those in positions of power and authority to change public policy. And if the public at large has drifted away from newspapers in recent years, the same cannot be said of policy elites. Therefore, the failures of local commercial broadcasting need not limit the reach and power of media advocates, so long as elites still read newspapers. There is indeed some merit to this argument. After all, public officials are notorious newshounds, devouring multiple newspapers each morning in order to survey the ups and downs of the local political scene. For this reason alone, advocacy campaigns covered by the local newspapers (but not local television) are still likely to reach the desks of policy makers. At the same time, however, this conceptual defense of newspaper-only campaigns contains a serious flaw. After all, the theoretical foundation of media advocacy is agenda setting—a theory that argues that the public's agenda (i.e., what issues the public believes are most important) closely follows the media's agenda (i.e., the amount of coverage devoted to particular issues) (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; McCombs, 2005; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). However, as stated above, media advocates labor to shape the media's agenda not to influence the general public's agenda; the public is, as we will see, incidental to the practice of media advocacy. Instead, media advocates capture the media spotlight to reach policy makers, with the hope of shaping the policy agenda. Ostensibly following agenda setting theory, then, media advocates actually read in a second theoretical link implied, but not explicitly defended, by agenda setting research: that is, the assumption that the media agenda shapes the policy agenda, via the force of perceived public opinion (Wallack et al., 1993; Wallack et al., 1999). Thus, for media advocates, the arrows of causality work this way: media coverage → (perceived) public opinion → policy agenda. In this way, as Wallack et al. (1999) write, the effectiveness of media advocacy depends not only on reaching elites with media messages but also upon creating the sense—or, more precisely, the illusion—that “the public” cares about the issue that they are talking about it, and that they are demanding action from political leaders (p. 4). If this is the case, it seems obvious that policy makers will feel much less pressure if advocates only secure coverage from the local print daily. Cultivating the illusion that “everyone” cares about a particular issue will be much more successful if this coverage appears not just in newspapers but also on local television and radio. But it is precisely in these outlets that the possibilities of securing meaningful coverage are shrinking rapidly. This discussion of the relationship between the media, the public, and policy makers leads to perhaps the most problematic conceptual limitation of media advocacy: its implied theory of democracy. Although, as noted above, Wallack and his colleagues periodically emphasize the role of grassroots participation in social change movements, for the most part their practical advice remains focused on how advocates can reach public authorities (Woodruff, 1996). As Wallack et al. (1999) counsel: You should be as specific as you can about naming your target. In some cases the person with the power to make the necessary change might be a single individual who holds the deciding vote on a legislative subcommittee. Even though you are only speaking to one person, the media can help you “turn up the volume” on your conversation, make the conversation public, and make you more effective. (p. 17) Media advocates defend this focus on policy elites by pointing not merely to expediency,3 but more importantly by referencing the philosophical commitments of public health. As discussed above, media advocates rightly argue that American political discourse too often celebrates individualism and a naïve faith in unfettered markets, and they are right to point out that these ideologies inevitably privilege individualistic definitions of social and health problems (Dorfman et al., 2005). To counter this reflexive and self-defeating focus on individuals, media advocacy scholars urge community advocates to define their issues in social, not individual terms. The goal of media advocacy, in short, is not to raise awareness or to educate individuals about social or health risks, but rather to promote social policy changes that transform the risk-producing environment—and this, in turn, means focusing advocacy efforts on policy makers (not the public at large). It is the fundamental logic of public health: focus on systems, not elements. However appealing, this logic nonetheless has the unintended effect of pushing media advocates away from the public and toward policy elites, defined in operational terms as “the individual, body, group, or organization that has the decision-making power to alter policy that affects the environment in a more substantial and permanent way” (Wallack et al., 1999, p. 17). Thus the whole conceptual and pragmatic apparatus of media advocacy is devoted to reaching and pressuring these policy elites with media messages. What media outlets do the targeted elites consume? How can media messages be framed to attract the interest of journalists at these outlets? If the target's favorite outlets bite on the story, can this coverage be subtly framed to define the problem as a matter of public policy? And, if so, can it be used to pressure the target to make the advocate's preferred policy change? The problem is that the public is nowhere to be found in these questions. Democracy becomes, by implication, a matter of one set of elites (advocates) using journalists to pressure other elites (policy makers), mostly by creating the mediated illusion that the (absent) public demands the recommended policy change. Thus the practice of media advocacy fits squarely within a venerable tradition in American political theory, what Baker (2002) calls “elitist democracy.” Articulated most forcefully by Walter Lippman (1922) in Public Opinion, this theory of democracy suggests that, due to the complexity of modern economic and social life, the desire for widespread popular participation in public affairs is romantic at best and disastrous at worst. Modern governance requires expertise and training beyond the grasp of the average citizen. Modern governance requires, in short, a vanguard of elites (Baker, 2002, p. 130). However, even in Lippman's elitist democracy, the public is not exorcised entirely. Concentrated power, particularly when isolated from view, inevitably invites corruption and cronyism. Periodic elections, however, discipline elites; they hold elites accountable. Furthermore, elections also ensure the orderly circulation of elites, as those who have been proved wanting are replaced by a fresh and more promising vanguard (Baker, 2002, p. 130–131). Thus the designated role of the public is either to simply legitimize the actions of elites, or, conversely, to act as a last-ditch check against their incompetence and corruption. The participation of average citizens in governance itself is neither required nor, in truth, even desired. As James Carey (1995) writes, Lippman's theory of elitist democracy also prescribes a particular role for the news media. With the eclipse of the public as a viable political force, the media comes to “stand in” for the (absent) public, acting as a “fourth estate” that uses the power of exposure—Lippman's famous media spotlight—to deter corruption, expose wrongdoing, and, if necessary, facilitate the orderly replacement and recirculation of elites. Facilitating the participation of nonelites in the actual process of policy making—such as when social movements propose legislation or bring pressure to bear on policy makers independent of elections—is emphatically not in the media's job description. After all, such grassroots actions represent, for Lippman and his many followers, a disruptive and potentially disastrous intrusion into the learned negotiations of trained elites. What Baker's discussion makes clear is that the BMSG's version of media advocacy has confined itself to operating within one level of the media system (the mainstream “fourth estate”) in the context of an elitist notion of democracy. It is a vision of democracy as a competition among elites—for example, with public health advocates on one side and tobacco-financed publicity flacks on the other—to bend the fourth estate spotlight to their will. Once captured, this media spotlight is then used to elevate particular issues, and issue-framings, up the policy agenda. The ultimate hope is that the media spotlight will compel another set of elites—this time, policy makers—to act in the public interest (on behalf of the absent and powerless public). In the end, the theories that guide our political practices matter for more than moral-ethical reasons. Carey (1992), for his part, has argued persuasively that our models of democracy and the press do not merely describe social reality in some neutral way; instead, by prescribing some practices and discouraging others, our theoretical models actually help create and reproduce the social relations they purport to describe. By framing media politics as primarily a matter of getting the fourth estate to pressure policy-making elites, media advocacy scholars smuggle into their pragmatic advice an elitist theory of democracy. And in doing so, they help legitimate, albeit in a modest and well-intentioned way, the view that the public has only a limited role to play in effective democratic governance. Media advocacy and complex democracy: Toward a renewed media advocacy To be fair, media advocates have little time to think in philosophical terms about implicit visions of democracy. Their attention is rightly focused on the difficult task of wringing positive social change from entrenched and sometimes hostile media and political systems. At the same time, there are alternative theories of democracy, and these alternative visions of democracy suggest practices and strategies that, in my view, could enrich the field of media advocacy. One such alternative is what Baker (2002) calls the theory of “complex democracy.” For Baker, complex democracy—as opposed to elitist democracy which, as we have seen, discourages public participation in routine governance—begins with the opposite premise that public participation is fundamental to the legitimacy and effectiveness of government. As Baker (2002) argues, democratic governance necessarily entails making decisions about rules of conduct and the use and distribution of resources. In any such decision, multiple alternatives exist, and in no case will each and every individual or group support the final outcome. The willingness of those who lose such debates to consent to the outcome depends largely on their perception of the process. If these actors believe they were allowed sufficient participation in the policy process, they will be more likely to grant the outcome legitimacy (p. 136).4 Having defended the principle of public participation, Baker then moves to describe the ideal “complex” democracy as one that balances two countervailing impulses in participatory-democratic politics. On the one hand, he writes, it is difficult to deny that much of politics involves an all against all, beggar-thy-neighbor struggle, as individuals and groups pursue what they regard as their self-interest in policy-making bodies. In this case, the function of democratic governance is to mediate this struggle and offer equal avenues of participation, ending (hopefully) in fair bargains and workable compromises. On the other hand, it is equally true that, as Dewey (1991 [1927]) famously argued, individuals often act selflessly to help others and strive to serve what they view as the “common good.” Even in those cases where views of the common good inevitably conflict, both parties may be motivated not by mere self-interest, but rather by divergent (but nonetheless sincere) definitions of the public interest (McAvoy, 1999). A complex theory of democracy, then, envisions a pluralist society, encompassed by different interests whose separate conceptions of the civic good exist in varying degrees of tension and correspondence (p. 146). Importantly, however, Baker does not neglect issues of power and inequality. If the legitimacy of democratic decisions depend upon the ability of each interest to have its voice heard, in reality this power is unevenly distributed. Some have greater control over, and access to, media resources than others. The result is dysfunctional: When it comes time for the varying interests to struggle over the common good and execute fair bargains, majority voices speak loudly and often, whereas from the “subaltern” little is heard. For this reason, as Baker writes, “a true search for more inclusive ‘public goods' will be noncoercive only if groups first have an adequate opportunity to develop their differing perspectives, and then have their perspectives fully voiced and given their due” (p. 146). To this end, Baker argues for federal policies that create media resources conducive to both fair partisan bargaining and a more inclusive discourse aimed at agreement on the common good. We need, in short, different forms of media to serve different democratic aims. On the one hand, we need comprehensive, community-wide media institutions that attempt to represent and provide access to the polity as a whole. Ideally, these macromedia institutions (e.g., a commercial or public broadcasting network in the national context; or, in the local context, a daily newspaper or news/talk radio station) would supplement their traditional “fourth estate” or “watchdog” roles with a more republican ambition to support a common, polity-wide discussion oriented toward agreement on the common good (Habermas, 1994). On the other hand, the plurality of interests—particularly among subordinated or minority groups—also each require their “own” micromedia outlets oriented to their particular political and cultural needs. According to Fraser (1992), subordinated groups need to develop alternative means of discussion and dialog—means which exist in relative isolation from the discussions of the outside majority. In these “subaltern public spheres,” subordinate groups engage in internal debates over matters of identity (who are we?), self-interest (i.e., what interests do we share?), and strategy (how do we advance our particular interests in the wider public sphere?). These internal discussions of political means and ends then subsequently inform and guide subaltern groups' interventions into the dominant political system. For this reason, a healthy and “complex” democracy requires both majority-focused macromedia institutions as well as a rich array of micromedia outlets, focused narrowly on facilitating such subaltern conversations. So how can this theory of complex democracy inform the theory and practice of media advocacy? Up until this point, following an elitist theory of democracy, media advocates have focused their attention on securing the attention of journalists occupying polity-wide macromedia outlets. The local community paper is nice, the thinking goes, but the major daily is better. Getting heard on community radio is fine, but an invitation to speak on the leading news-talk station means real progress toward change. However, following Baker's model of complex democracy, such strategies neglect the crucial role played by conversations internal to subaltern public spheres, as Fraser describes them. In short, if indeed community organizing is crucial to the larger process of achieving policy changes, as suggested by Wallack et al. (1999), then advocates need to develop as sophisticated a media strategy for nurturing such subaltern conversations as they do for attracting the attention of mainstream journalists. Such a strategy in most local contexts in urban America would begin with an accounting of the media resources owned by, or focused on the needs of, grassroots groups within the community. And here advocates would find that the existing local media system in most cities can be roughly divided into two groups: (a) well-financed, community-wide outlets—often integrated into national or global media conglomerates—which, if they cover local public affairs at all, usually focus on the interests and needs of the majority and the affluent; and (b) a sparse scattering of underfinanced community newspapers, websites, and radio stations. The lack of media resources focused on the needs of grassroots groups—labor organizations, churches, minorities, underserved neighborhoods—thus presents one important barrier to enriching media advocacy with a commitment to community-based dialog and organizing. Consider radio, the quintessential local medium (McChesney, 1999). Nationwide, in 2002, 10 radio groups controlled nearly two-thirds of national radio listeners and revenues, and local markets were even more concentrated. In Detroit, for example, four radio groups controlled 86% of the city's listeners; in Dallas (the least concentrated of the top 10 markets), the figure was nearly 70% (DiCola & Thomson, 2002). Overall, such levels of ownership concentration, both nationally and locally, have eroded the number of minority-owned radio stations (as large media groups buy up smaller radio firms). In 2007, taken together, Latinos and African-Americans owned less than 7% of all radio stations in the United States, despite accounting for 28% of the wider population (Turner, 2007). Thus radio—perhaps the ideal medium for community organizing—remains, with some notable exceptions, largely focused on delivering majority audiences to advertisers through repetitive music formats and canned corporate programming (Huntemann, 1999). Yet there are some concrete steps that media advocates, working with the media reform movement, could take that would provide local communities with a richer menu of media resources—resources that could be used to facilitate Fraser's subaltern discussions and to help grassroots groups advance their collective political and economic interests. It is my view, in short, that developing these grassroots media resources, and assisting local community groups in taking advantage of these resources, represents the next challenge for media advocacy as an intellectual and political movement. Media advocacy and subaltern public spheres: The promise of low-power FM Let me end by discussing one such opportunity to develop media resources especially suitable for nurturing subaltern conversations in the USA: low-power FM radio. The concept of low-power radio is a bit of a historical departure for the FCC. Throughout most of its history, FCC regulators have been extremely stingy with their licensing practices and have typically preferred to award radio licenses to well-financed, advertising-supported firms (Streeter, 1996). In practical terms, this has meant that most frequencies, and the best frequencies, went to stations backed by powerful corporations and integrated into national radio networks. To take advantage of these economies of scale, radio chains often deliver prepackaged news and entertainment produced from distant locales—a move that cuts programming costs but undermines the bond between stations and the communities they serve (Figeuroa et al., 2002). In response to the failures of commercial radio, media reformers successfully pressured the FCC in 2000 to begin licensing smaller, community-based radio stations, dubbed ‘microradio’ or ‘low-power FM’ (LPFM). As defined by the FCC, LPFM stations must be noncommercial, run by a nonprofit group, and oriented to the needs of local communities. These stations must also broadcast with a weak signal—between 10 and 100 watts—to avoid interfering with existing stations, so they can only be heard for a few miles (Free Press, 2008a). Yet, according to media reform advocates, it is precisely this short range that makes LPFM most local of local media. Since the FCC's policy change, over 800 low-power licenses have been granted across the nation, and today, over 700 LPFM stations are currently on the air, serving a rich variety of local community needs (LPFM Database.com, 2008). In Lebanon, Pennsylvania, for example, one LPFM station serves the local Latino community, providing residents with information on immigration and labor laws along with pop songs from Mexico and Central America (Associated Press, 2004). Another LPFM station in Southwest Florida has for over 5 years offered residents a wide range of services from women's rights shows to community bulletins to hurricane warnings and folk music—with most programs produced in Spanish or in one of several indigenous languages, including M’am, Q’onjub’al, and Haitian Creole (Free Press, 2008b). Beyond serving as a source of local information, however, LPFM stations also have great potential to function as a means for conducting Fraser's subaltern conversations. In short, due to their intensely local focus, and because radio remains the most inexpensive form of broadcasting this side of an internet blog, microradio stations are ideally suited to serving as a means for subordinated groups to hold internal discussions about their collective identity (who are “we”?), to debate issues of interest (what are our goals?), and to discuss matters of strategy (how should we achieve these goals?). Consider, for example, the sizeable Vietnamese-American community in the Washington metro area—a community that, according to local advocates, faces a unique set of economic, social, and public health challenges (Nguyen, personal communication, January 20, 2005). One such challenge, as I learned, while I was working on a collaborative health communication project with a local community group, concerns the alarming health disparities that exist between new Vietnamese immigrants and the wider metro population. For instance, among Vietnamese women, breast and cervical cancer morbidity rates are extremely high—a condition public health officials believe is connected to the community's comparably low cancer screening rates. Vietnamese men, for their part, suffer in disproportionate numbers from lung cancer, due to relatively high smoking rates and low rates of health insurance coverage. Perhaps not surprisingly, my informal conversations with local community groups also revealed a rich debate about how to remedy these disparities. Some advocates wanted to partner with university researchers to develop a community-based health information campaign. The goal in this case would be to increase screening rates by educating new immigrants (in Vietnamese) about the free screening services provided by public health officials in Northern Virginia (NoVa). Other advocates, however, declined to participate in the project, arguing that information and education was not the main problem—rather, a lack of affordable health care and poor transportation services were to blame. Their preferred solution was to ramp up advocacy efforts toward free or more affordable health care services in Northern Virginia. What we discovered in NoVa's Vietnamese community, in fact, was a fairly typical internal debate about problem definitions, tactics, and remedies. But what all sides of this debate could agree upon was the lack of media resources available for either health campaigns or community organizing. The most powerful local outlets in Northern Virginia, of course, are English-speaking and, therefore, totally irrelevant in the lives of new immigrants who speak only Vietnamese. Interestingly, some advocates also viewed national and local Vietnamese-language print media as similarly unhelpful, noting that newspaper editors consider the topic of cancer prevention to be too ‘boring’ and ‘depressing’ to merit more than sporadic coverage (T. Nguyen, personal communication, January 20, 2005). Low-power radio thus would fill a crucial gap in a local media system focused largely on the needs of majority and affluent audiences. In this case, LPFM could serve as a relatively inexpensive means for the local Vietnamese community to hold their internal conversations regarding how best to address high cancer rates. And, once these debates generated a leading definition of the problem—and perhaps even a consensus remedy for solving it—the LPFM station could serve as an effective means for organizing the community as part of a larger media and political advocacy strategy. In this way, not only could LPFM play an important role in extending media resources to underserved communities (like NoVa's Vietnamese community), but, more broadly, low-power radio could help develop richer, more “complex” local democratic systems. Unfortunately, however, low-power radio has attracted some powerful enemies, including especially the powerful National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the lobbying organization representing commercial television and radio networks in the United States. Fearing that the arrival of LPFM would siphon away audiences from commercial broadcasters, the NAB has lobbied hard to smother microradio in its infancy. As it stands (as of this writing), the NAB has succeeded in convincing Congress to prohibit LPFM licenses in urban areas, citing what independent experts believe to be bogus claims of interference with existing commercial stations (Charle, 2003; Dodero, 2005). Today's microradio is thus essentially a small-town and rural service—a policy decision that prevents urban advocacy groups like those in NoVa's Vietnamese community from developing this vital communication resource. However, all is not lost. As I write this, a broad coalition of media policy organizations, led by Free Press, the Future of Music Coalition, and the Prometheus Radio Project, are working hard to get the FCC and Congress to roll back the egregious rules that limit LPFM in urban areas. There is an opportunity, in short, to make the tool of microradio available to community groups across the American landscape—especially within its cities. Doing so would immeasurably enrich the media resources available to media advocates and community organizers alike. Media advocacy, complex democracy, and media reform Within the larger context of health communication scholarship, there is much to admire about Wallack and Dorfman's “media advocacy” approach to health campaigns. By focusing on the structural causes of ill-health, media advocacy contests the overwhelming focus on individual attitudes and behavior in the wider health communication field. In doing so, they inject a much needed focus on policy and power into discussions of health promotion and education. Furthermore, by connecting media research to the practical needs of grassroots and community groups, media advocates like Lawrence Wallack and his BMSG colleagues also have the potential to enrich both the theory and practice of critical media studies. Not only does their work remind us of the need to move beyond the academy—to test our theories not merely through argument and observation, but also through critical praxis—but their efforts have also resulted in tangible gains for disadvantaged groups across the country. At the same time, however, there are important pragmatic and conceptual limits inherent in media advocacy. In pragmatic terms, the need to attract coverage from mainstream commercial media outlets (still the dominant source of news even in the internet age) inevitably results in an all-against-all competition to place advocacy messages within an ever-shrinking local newshole. In short, as we have seen, the stark failure of local commercial broadcasting to devote resources to local public affairs thus represents a structural limitation on the reach and power of media advocacy. Even more problematic, however, are the conceptual limitations of media advocacy. As discussed above, their practical advice to issue advocates contains embedded within it an elitist theory of democracy (Baker, 2002). Guided implicitly by this conception of democratic practice, media advocacy thus becomes the art of attracting the attention of the mainstream (majority-focused) media to pressure a policy-making vanguard on behalf of the (absent) public. What is missing, as we have seen, is a sustained attempt to theorize the role grassroots media resources play—or could play—in the formation of political identities, priorities, and strategies, particularly among subaltern or disadvantaged communities. Although media advocates periodically pay homage to the importance of community organizing, seldom do they offer advice on how media activism can facilitate intracommunity organizing and solidarity. Instead, their work most often assumes these subaltern groups are always-already organized, always-already unified around particular policy proposals, and thus ready to bend the ear of the policy-making vanguard using the powerful tools of mainstream, polity-wide media coverage. For this reason, I believe the next frontier for media advocacy theory and practice lies in embracing, first, what Baker terms a “complex” theory of democracy, and, second, engaging in the broader movement for media reform. In the first instance, embracing a complex theory of democracy will help focus attention not merely on gaining respect and coverage from mainstream journalists, but also in finding ways to help community groups facilitate the intragroup conversations and internal debates so necessary for building effective political movements. For it is in these internal debates where subaltern groups, in spaces relatively sealed off from the surveillance of the majority, define the problems they face, articulate common solutions, build solidarity, and commit to a common strategy. Media advocacy, in the end, needs a media strategy not merely for pressuring elites, but for nurturing these crucial subaltern conversations. And once these subaltern conversations yield a relatively unified problem definition, remedy, and political strategy, media advocacy scholars can stand ready to assist such groups in their efforts to reach policy makers via polity-wide, general-interest media. This commitment to a complex theory of democracy leads directly to my second conclusion: the need for media advocacy to engage more directly in the politics of media reform. I have argued, in short, that nurturing these subaltern conversations depends in turn upon developing a rich menu of media resources—everything from community newspapers to grassroots radio to your neighbor's blog. Yet, as we discovered in the case of NoVa's Vietnamese community, media outlets focused on the needs of local neighborhoods are in chronically short supply. Most urban commercial media outlets compete for the attention of affluent audiences spread throughout the metropolis as a whole, and, as yet, the promise of the internet as a community organizing tool has yet to be fully realized due to the stubborn persistence of the digital divide. The existing American media system is thus clearly not up to the task of facilitating the kinds of subaltern conversations that have always remained at the heart of effective grassroots struggle. Developing a more complex-democratic and participatory approach to media advocacy thus depends upon developing a more complex-democratic and participatory media system. What this article has, therefore, argued is that the next step for media advocacy lies in developing media strategies that can facilitate subaltern conversations and community organizing. As we have seen, these strategies will be more successful if local neighborhoods and marginalized communities have at their disposal a richer menu of media resources that serve their interests and speak to their needs. Thus it seems that a more sustained dialog between media advocacy—perhaps the school of health communication most directly influenced by critical theory—and critical media studies is in order. And perhaps our shared interest in reforming the media environment to provide citizens with better communication and advocacy tools is a good place to start. Notes 1 " For an early warning to corporate America and the threat to corporate PR interests posed by Wallack's media advocacy approach, see Rose, 1991. 2 " For readers hoping that public television and radio might provide more local news than their commercial counterparts, the reality is disappointing. In their analysis of a 2-week sample of 52 public television stations across the country, Napoli and Yan (2007) found that only seven stations (about 14%) offered local news of any kind. This said, the results from public radio are a bit more encouraging. Although, in 2002, the majority of programming (58%) on public radio was acquired from national distributors like National Public Radio and American Public Media, this still meant that over 40% of programs were locally produced (Merritt, 2004, p. 2). Given the virtual lack of locally produced content on commercial radio, this should be viewed as a major contribution to the local media environment. At the same time, the trend lines in public radio are worrisome—reliance on acquired programming grew by 5% between 1998 and 2002 (Merritt, 2004, p. 2). 3 " For BMSG's “it's regrettable, but that's the way it is,” argument, see Woodruff (1996, p. 340). 4 " Of course, a skeptic could argue that one function of the news media is to create the illusion that the public participates meaningfully in politics (for example, simply by watching the news). This is the dynamic that Stephen Colbert so brilliantly parodies on The Colbert Report. “You, nation, are the true heroes. And why are you the heroes? Because you watch this show.” However, arguing that illusions are “necessary” would be a curious stance for critical media scholars to take. References Associated Press . ( 2004 , May 31) Tiny Lebanon radio station part of FCC experiment . Retrieved December 10, 2005, from http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/lpfm/phillyburbs.htm Ajzen , I . ( 1985 ). 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( 1996 ). Alcohol advertising and violence against women: A media advocacy case study . Health Education Quarterly , 23 , 330 – 345 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS PubMed WorldCat Author notes 1 " A version of this paper was presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Urban Communication Pre-Convention Seminar. San Diego, CA. © 2010 International Communication Association TI - The Limits of Media Advocacy JF - Communication Culture and Critique DO - 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01057.x DA - 2010-03-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-limits-of-media-advocacy-EG30O5uHB6 SP - 44 VL - 3 IS - 1 DP - DeepDyve ER -