Structurating Expanded Genetic Carrier Screening: A Longitudinal Analysis of Online News Coverage

Expanded carrier screening (ECS) is a genetic test that is designed to assess the risk of a healthy person passing down a genetic disorder, such as spinal muscular atrophy, to future children. ECS screens for up to several hundred disorders in one test, expanding on traditional carrier screening tests that target one or a few genetic disorders. However, little is known about how this health technology is being presented to the public in media coverage. Accordingly, this study is a qualitative content analysis of online news and information of ECS over a 6-year period, beginning in 2010 when the technology was publicly available. Results indicate that major coverage themes were consistent across the years included, although content within those themes changed over time. Using structuration theory to guide analysis, results reveal that online news and information from 2010 to 2015 structurated ECS as a health technology innovation, an opportunity for business and investment, and a tool for family planning. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research, for health journalism practice, and for clinical interactions.     

Commenting on Health: A Framing Analysis of User Comments in Response to Health Articles Online

Public health officials have continually urged journalists and other members of the news media to ease off health frames that focus on individuals and to instead promote broader societal frames. Although some scholarly research has reinforced these pleas, none has examined the interplay between frames of health news coverage and resulting public comments. The current online environment invites such an analysis, allowing news organizations to post articles online and the public to comment on those articles. Using a content analysis, this study reveals thematic frames in online health stories may drive down gain-oriented responses, while episodic frames may prompt the public to share more personal comments. Furthermore, the findings examine other textual factors—gain and loss frames and mobilizing information—that may be driving the volume and frames of user comments to health stories online.     

Public opponents of vaccination: a case study

Opposition to mass childhood vaccination is a world-wide phenomenon, particularly in industrialised countries. Unfounded claims about vaccination are perpetuated by parental lobby groups and individual spokespeople, some of whom have a medical or scientific background. This article focuses on one such spokesperson who has achieved particular notoriety. Dr. Viera Scheibner is a retired micropalaeontologist, without any formal training in health-related sciences, who tours the world claiming that vaccines are ineffective and dangerous and lead to a host of ills such as cancer and asthma. Professionals in public health or the clinical arena are from time to time called upon to publicly respond to her, or similar, claims disseminated during tours of Europe, North America or Australasia and in books and articles. Health professionals have expressed at how such spokespersons misrepresent the evidence on vaccine safety, resulting in the potential to undermine public confidence in immunisation. Media coverage, or proposed coverage, particularly of her more extreme claims, often makes health professionals engaged in immunisation feel obliged to respond. This paper describes Viera Scheibner’s approach, which follows a repetitious path and is representative of that taken by other public opponents of immunisation. We conclude by suggesting how health professionals might respond in the public arena.     

Out of the dissecting room: news media portrayal of human anatomy teaching and research

Radical changes in medical research and education have recently led to a number of innovative developments in terms of how human anatomy is represented and understood. New ways of introducing medical students to anatomy (including living anatomies and virtual simulations) have provoked widespread debate, with discussion of their relative merits compared to more traditional approaches that use cadaveric dissection. Outside the field of medicine, in the wider public sphere, the practice of anatomical study may often seem mysterious. The dissemination of news on anatomy, we contend, is central to the question of how medical researchers and educators engage with the public. Our analysis of news media coverage in the UK demonstrates that news-making, by giving prominence to certain facts, themes and images, serves to mask issues about anatomy and its practices that need debate. We examine the ways in which news media, through processes of selection and the 'framing' of issues, may perform an agenda-setting role. We draw attention to the use of positive 'awe and amazement' frames including 'miracles of modern science', 'medical heroes', and 'gifts of life', alongside more negative 'guts and gore' coverage including 'Frankenstein', 'Brave New World' and 'Rape of the Body' frames that concentrate on high profile scandals associated with the use and misuse of human bodies, tissues and parts. We also highlight the selective use of commentaries from members of the medical profession, which are more prevalent in positive 'awe and amazement' stories than in stories with negative coverage. We conclude by arguing for greater collaboration between journalists on the one hand, and medical educators and researchers on the other, in the making of news in order to provide portrayals of anatomy which bear a closer relationship to the everyday reality of professional work.     

Diabetes portrayals in North American print media: a qualitative and quantitative analysis

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated how media coverage has portrayed diabetes as newsworthy. METHODS: The quantitative component involved tabulating diabetes coverage in 2 major Canadian newspapers, 1988-2001 and 1991-2001. The qualitative component focused on high-profile coverage in 2 major US magazines and 2 major Canadian newspapers, 1998-2000. RESULTS: Although coverage did not consistently increase, the quantitative results suggest an emphasis on linking diabetes with heart disease and mortality to convey its seriousness. The qualitative component identified 3 main ways of portraying type 2 diabetes: as an insidious problem, as a problem associated with particular populations, and as a medical problem. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the results suggest that when communicating with journalists, researchers and advocates have stressed that diabetes maims and kills. Yet even when media coverage acknowledged societal forces and circumstances as causes, the proposed remedies did not always include or stress modifications to social contexts. Neither the societal causes of public health problems nor possible societal remedies automatically received attention from researchers or from journalists. Skilled advocacy is needed to put societal causes and solutions on public agendas.     

Hype in health reporting: "checkbook science" buys distortion of medical news.

The greatest danger to public health might be "checkbook science": research intended not to expand knowledge or to benefit humanity but to sell products. Much of the media coverage of health news stories is based on public relations efforts on behalf of the companies that sell the products, including pharmaceutical companies, diet clinics, or doctors selling new techniques. The author presents three case studies of how companies selling medical products effectively but invisibly shaped recent news coverage of medical products: fen-phen diet pills, breast implants, and hormone replacement therapy. All involve subtle strategies whereby physicians and other experts paid by corporate interests are influential because they are perceived to be objective medical experts. Articles in prestigious medical journals are sometimes ghostwritten by individuals paid by companies or are based on biased analyses or interpretations shaped by corporate interests. Nonprofit organizations that tout the benefits of specific medical products also may be part of the public relations efforts of the companies making the product. Meanwhile, important newsworthy studies are ignored by the mass media when corporate interests do not publicize or pitch the results to influential reporters and producers.     

Media coverage of health issues and how to work more effectively with journalists: a qualitative study

Background  

The mass media has enormous potential to influence health-related behaviours and perceptions. Much research has focused on how the media frames health issues. This study sought to explore how journalists in Australia select and shape news on health issues.     

Whose interest? British newspaper reporting of use of medical records for research

OBJECTIVE: There is increasing debate about the ethics of using medical records for research. We aimed to characterize newspaper reporting in this area. METHOD: We searched Lexis-Nexis to find newspaper reports about the use of medical records for research from 1 June 2005 to 30 November 2006. Following screening for relevance, we generated a coding scheme and classified articles using this, assisted by QSR N6 software. RESULTS: Our analysis shows that much newspaper coverage portrays the use of medical records as uncontentious, but also presents ethical arguments for and against such research. Arguments in favour of access to medical records emphasize the public interest and patients' legitimate expectations that research will be carried out. Arguments against such use emphasize the importance of confidentiality and the violation of rights of privacy. Our findings highlight that there is no single dominant position on the rights and wrongs of access to medical records by researchers. Within newspaper reporting in this area, patient voices are currently noticeable by their absence. CONCLUSIONS: Use of medical records for research raises important ethical questions, in particular regarding the balance between the rights and interests of the individual and the public interest benefits of the research. Understanding how these positions are represented within the mass media is important because the media can inform and influence the public's views and public policy. Empirical research into patient views is needed.     

Press relations: a 14-point plan for enhancing the public image of health care institutions

Hospital executives often complain about a lack of positive press coverage. As the news media pay increasing attention to health-related issues, health-care institutions and their personnel will be increasingly thrust into positions of interaction with the news media. These interactions can either boost public confidence or cause widespread public distrust. A 14-point plan of practical suggestions can improve press relations and enhance the effectiveness and prestige of the health-care executives.     

Defining moments in risk communication research: 1996-2005

Ten years ago, scholars suggested that risk communication was embarking on a new phase that would give increased attention to the social contexts that surround and encroach on public responses to risk information. A decade later, many researchers have answered the call, with several defining studies examining the social and psychological influences on risk communication. This article reviews risk communication research appearing in the published literature since 1996. Among studies, social trust, the social amplification of risk framework, and the affect heuristic figured prominently. Also common were studies examining the influence of risk in the mass media. Among these were content analyses of media coverage of risk, as well as investigations of possible effects resulting from coverage. The use of mental models was a dominant method for developing risk message content. Other studies examined the use of risk comparisons, narratives, and visuals in the production of risk messages. Research also examined how providing information about a risk's severity, social norms, and efficacy influenced communication behaviors and intentions to follow risk reduction measures. Methods for conducting public outreach in health risk communication rounded out the literature.     

The emergence and portrayal of obesity in The Irish Times: content analysis of obesity coverage, 1997-2009

Both global obesity prevalence rates and media attention to obesity have increased significantly in recent years. The current study examined the representation of obesity in The Irish Times, from 1997 to 2009. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 479 articles to examine how the causes, consequences, and solutions to obesity have been portrayed and how obesity has been described. A frame analysis was also conducted to examine the dominant frames over time. It was found that attention to obesity was positively correlated with time, indicating coverage has increased significantly over the period examined. Regarding reported causes and solutions, the behavioral frame has been dominant, though environmental and mixed-frame stories have become more frequent. The presence of the genetic frame was consistently low. The study provides an overview of how the issue is being represented in Ireland's paper of record and informs health communicators of the dominant and trending messages and the implications for individuals' formation of illness representations.     

The human drama of genetics: 'hard' and 'soft' media representations of inherited breast cancer

This paper examines media coverage of 'breast cancer genetics', and explores its implications for public understanding. We present a content analysis of coverage in British newspapers and look at a variety of popular forms, including women's magazines, television soap opera and radio drama. Genetic/inherited risk receives a great deal of coverage across a wide range of media formats and outlets. Much of this attention has focused on individuals from 'high risk families' and dilemmas around prophylactic mastectomies. Through examining media coverage, combined with interviews with media personnel and their sources, we show why this story proved so attractive to the media and highlight the different production values which influence coverage. Finally, we introduce preliminary findings from focus group discussions to demonstrate how such 'human interest' framing has engaged audience attention and influenced public understandings. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for analysing, predicting, and engaging with, media representations of science.     

Defining Moments in Risk Communication Research: 1996–2005

Ten years ago, scholars suggested that risk communication was embarking on a new phase that would give increased attention to the social contexts that surround and encroach on public responses to risk information. A decade later, many researchers have answered the call, with several defining studies examining the social and psychological influences on risk communication. This article reviews risk communication research appearing in the published literature since 1996. Among studies, social trust, the social amplification of risk framework, and the affect heuristic figured prominently. Also common were studies examining the influence of risk in the mass media. Among these were content analyses of media coverage of risk, as well as investigations of possible effects resulting from coverage. The use of mental models was a dominant method for developing risk message content. Other studies examined the use of risk comparisons, narratives, and visuals in the production of risk messages. Research also examined how providing information about a risk's severity, social norms, and efficacy influenced communication behaviors and intentions to follow risk reduction measures. Methods for conducting public outreach in health risk communication rounded out the literature.     

Media content analysis of the introduction of a “soft opt‐out” system of organ donation in Wales 2015‐17

In an attempt to improve organ donation rates, some countries are considering moving from “opt‐in” systems where citizens must express their willingness to be an organ donor, to “opt‐out” systems where consent is presumed unless individuals have expressed their wishes otherwise, by, for example, joining an “opt‐out” register. In Wales—a part of the United Kingdom—the devolved government recently legislated for an “opt‐out” system. For the change to be effective, a public awareness campaign was critical to the policy's success. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, we explored media coverage of the change to better understand the relationship between the state, policy actors, media and the public when such policy changes take place. Our findings illustrate how a state communication campaign can effectively set the media agenda within which we saw a degree of interdependency created with the state using the media to promote policy, and the media relying on the state for credible information. Yet we also found that the media is not uncritical and observed how it uses its autonomy to influence policy setting. Over the period of study, we found that a change in tone and view towards deemed consent organ donation has taken place in the media. However, while this may influence or reflect public attitudes, it is yet to be seen whether the media campaign translates into behavioural change that will result in increases in organ donations.     

A 10-year retrospective of research in health mass media campaigns: where do we go from here?

Mass media campaigns have long been a tool for promoting public health. How effective are such campaigns in changing health-related attitudes and behaviors, however, and how has the literature in this area progressed over the past decade? The purpose of the current article is threefold. First, I discuss the importance of health mass media campaigns and raise the question of whether they are capable of effectively impacting public health. Second, I review the literature and discuss what we have learned about the effectiveness of campaigns over the past 10 years. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of possible avenues for the health campaign literature over the next 10 years. The overriding conclusion is the following: The literature is beginning to amass evidence that targeted, well-executed health mass media campaigns can have small-to-moderate effects not only on health knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, but on behaviors as well, which can translate into major public health impact given the wide reach of mass media. Such impact can only be achieved, however, if principles of effective campaign design are carefully followed.     

Injury News Coverage,Relative Concern,and Support for Alcohol-Control Policies: An Impersonal Impact Explanation

Research on the impersonal impact hypothesis suggests that news (especially print) coverage of health and safety risks primarily influences perceptions of risk as a societal issue, and not perceptions of personal risk. The authors propose that the impersonal impact of news—impact primarily on concerns about social-level risks—will mediate effects of news stories on support for public health policies; such effects substantively matter as evidence suggests health policies, in turn, have important effects on protective behaviors and health outcomes. In an experiment using 60 randomly selected violent crime and accident news stories manipulated to contain or not contain reference to alcohol use as a causative factor, the authors find that the effect of stories that mention alcohol as a causative factor on support for alcohol-control policies is mediated by social-level concern and not by personal-level concern. In so doing, the authors provide a theoretical explanation as well as empirical evidence regarding the potential for news coverage—including breaking or episodic news—to influence health-related public policy.     

Health-Related Disaster Communication and Social Media: Mixed-Method Systematic Review

This mixed-method evidence synthesis drew on Cochrane methods and principles to systematically review literature published between 2003 and 2016 on the best social media practices to promote health protection and dispel misinformation during disasters. Seventy-nine studies employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods on risk communication during disasters in all UN-languages were reviewed, finding that agencies need to contextualize the use of social media for particular populations and crises. Social media are tools that still have not become routine practices in many governmental agencies regarding public health in the countries studied. Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook (and equivalents in countries such as China), need to be incorporated into daily operations of governmental agencies and implementing partners to build familiarity with them before health-related crises happen. This was especially observed in U.S. agencies, local government, and first responders but also for city governments and school administrations in Europe. For those that do use social media during health-related risk communication, studies find that public relations officers, governmental agencies, and the general public have used social media successfully to spread truthful information and to verify information to dispel rumors during disasters. Few studies focused on the recovery and preparation phases and on countries in the Southern hemisphere, except for Australia. The vast majority of studies did not analyze the demographics of social media users beyond their geographic location, their status of being inside/outside the disaster zone; and their frequency and content of posting. Socioeconomic demographics were not collected and/or analyzed to drill deeper into the implications of using social media to reach vulnerable populations. Who exactly is reached via social media campaigns and who needs to be reached with other means has remained an understudied area.     

The Impact of Mass Media Health Communication on Health Decision-Making and Medical Advice-Seeking Behavior of U.S. Hispanic Population

Mass media health communication has enormous potential to drastically alter how health-related information is disseminated and obtained by different populations. However, there is little evidence regarding the influence of media channels on health decision-making and medical advice-seeking behaviors among the Hispanic population. The Pew 2007 Hispanic Healthcare Survey was used to test the hypothesis that the amount of mass media health communication (i.e., quantity of media-based health information received) is more likely to influence Hispanic adults' health decision-making and medical advice-seeking behavior compared to health literacy and language proficiency variables. Results indicated that quantity of media-based health information is positively associated with health decision-making and medical advice-seeking behavior above and beyond the influence of health literacy and English and Spanish language proficiency. In a context where physician–patient dynamics are increasingly shifting from a passive patient role model to a more active patient role model, media-based health information can serve as an influential cue to action, prompting Hispanic individuals to make certain health-related decisions and to seek more health advice and information from a health provider. Study implications are discussed.     

Heavy Viewing: Emergent Frames in Contemporary News Coverage of Obesity

In the last 10 years, rising rates of obesity in the United States have drawn significant and increasing public attention from various quarters, which has led to commensurately increased news coverage of the issue. A handful of scholars to date have examined how obesity has been “framed” in the news, given that news framing of issues has proven effects on cultural and political attitudes, practices, and policies as regards the subject of coverage. Consistent with these studies, this qualitative framing analysis assesses how obesity is framed in more recent mainstream news coverage. Framing patterns identified in this analysis represent a notable departure from those identified in earlier studies, specifically as relevant to troubling the individual/environmental attribution binary that historically has characterized public discourse around obesity, in particular, and health more broadly. These findings signal important shifts for contemporary cultural attitudes toward obesity and, accordingly, public health policies designed to redress the issue. Further, the findings suggest a reconsideration and elaboration of established tenets of framing theory.