Media Meditation #5 Wait... WHAT?

Caila and I went in to Elaine Young’s office the other morning to have her answer some questions for us and we left her office with even more questions than we started with. Elaine brought to our attention the news of a recent study that was released by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issuing new breast cancer screening guidelines. “The task force now recommends against routine mammography screening for women before age 50 years and suggests that screening end at age 74 years." Although I strongly disagree with this whole recommendation, this media meditation is more about the different places on the Internet you can get your information. Who should you trust? Who should you listen to?

Elaine made her Facebook status (and sent a Tweet) saying, “WTF? Don’t teach BSE, no screening til 50! Imagine impact on “preventative” health care coverage.” And then included a link to an article about the issue on Medscape.com. As Clive Thompson tells us in his text, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy”, once you post something on the News Feed feature on Facebook, it is available for all your friends to see whether they click on your page or not, what a great way to get the word out about this new reccomendation. Elaine also included the hashtag, “#womenshealth” which I’m sure draws huge numbers on the search feature of Twitter as we learned in the text, “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”. So now, all of Elaine’s followers know the facts, but where do people turn too next? My guess is they will visit their most trusted websites and blogs for more information and viewpoints, this shows a personal shift of the Internet.

This recommendation from the USPSTF really hit close to home for me because of everything I do for the non-profit organization, Boarding for Breast Cancer. Our goal is to inform people how crucial it is to perform BSE and live an active lifestyle and now this article is going against those value messages of ours that. For me, I next went to B4BC.org to see what the standpoint is there.

B4BC opposes the plan which then makes me want to get a viewpoint from another source in order to figure out my own individual meaning. Also, Blair who runs the B4BC official Twitter and Facebook put out little notes saying to check out the website here for more information on their standpoint on the issue so that people who didn't actively seek out the information could still stumble across it.

I figured another source people may go to in order to find out more information and form their own individual meanings would be the American Cancer Society’s website. The interface of the website had a link front and center leading you to their viewpoint on the matter. Interesting to me that you somewhat had to scan the page in order to find the link but at the same time, it was front and center compared to the other links across the top.

What do you think? It's important to not just read one thing on the Internet and close your case. Poke around, see what other people are saying and doing and when mixed with your own values, you can often come up with a pretty solid and thoughtful opinion.

Well, I still believe BSE and mammograms are pretty... well, really important... here's a video from B4BC filling you in a little more about some steps you can take to help keep yourself safe.

7 Steps To Stomp Out Breast Cancer

Boarding For Breast Cancer [B4BC] | MySpace Video