18-Year Trends in Government Speech on Health in the U.S.

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 2. Political Ideologies, Political Contexts, and Health

Abstract

Governments routinely convey vast quantities of information to publics. Examples of such state “speech” include social media postings, press releases, mass media campaigns, government reports, and, arguably, government-mandated labelling on commercial products, such as packaged food, beverages, and tobacco products. Government speech may cover a range of topics as broad as the range of state penetration into manifold aspects of private and public life, including education, access to social services, safety, health, and cooperation and compliance with government. Despite the commonplace nature of state speech, very little theoretical or empirical work has focused on it. In this paper, we develop a typology of state speech, which includes (1) direct speech, (2) compelled commercial speech, and (3) compelled professional speech. We then employ an innovative method to chart and understand direct government speech: analysis of over 35,000 tweets by a U.S. federal government account – USAGov – over a roughly 18-year period. We assess the relationship between the disease burden imposed by various threats to health and the relative frequency of government speech. We conclude by arguing that developing a sociology of government speech would be a useful enterprise and suggest next steps in that direction.

Authors

• Mark Wolfson, University of California-Riverside

• Samane Zare