The media and AIDS: health elite perspectives of coverage

Most writers assessing AIDS have been critical of the media's coverage of this epidemic. To ascertain the views of key elites on media coverage of AIDS, the authors surveyed chief state public health officers, chairs of legislative health committees, and directors of hospital associations. In general, these groups tended to reject criticisms that media handling of AIDS is unbalanced. Conversely, however, they also generally rate the media as not doing a good job of educating the public about AIDS. The media's success in accurately communicating professional perspectives regarding AIDS might have accounted for their relative lack of independent influence in AIDS policymaking. The media exhibited a "guard dog" role-protecting the health professionals' positions-instead of an agenda-setting role-dictating to the decision-makers what issues they should be addressing.     

From complacency to panic: AIDS and heterosexuals in the Australian press, July 1986 to June 1988

AIDS is a disease which has received a great deal of attentionfrom the popular media, which in turn has attracted the interestsof those who analyse media. The health information conveyedto the general public by the popular press is a topic of specialinterest to health educators. This paper documents the Australianpress' coverage of the AIDS threat to heterosexuals. The preliminaryfindings of a content analysis of all Australian articles mentioningAIDS published between June 1986 and July 1988 is reported.An overview of the issues gaining most attention in the pressduring that time is given and major narrative themes discussed.It is shown that the focus of the popular press' reporting ofAIDS changed in that time from representing AIDS as a risk toonly homosexuals and intravenous drug users, to generating panic-strickenarticles suggesting that everyone was now threatened. The pressgenerally lent their support to a major public health informationcampaign designed to warn heterosexuals of their risk of contractingAIDS (the ‘Grim Reaper’ campaign), although manyatricles exaggerated the threat and disseminated confusing informationabout the risk. Health educators need to have a good knowledgeof press accounts of health issues, and be aware of the potentialfor support of coinflicting information in the press both ofhealth education campaigns and of the health issue itself.     

Disease metaphors in new epidemics: the UK media framing of the 2003 SARS epidemic

Since the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, social scientists and sociologists of health and illness have been exploring the metaphorical framing of this infectious disease in its social context. Many have focused on the militaristic language used to report and explain this illness, a type of language that has permeated discourses of immunology, bacteriology and infection for at least a century. In this article, we examine how language and metaphor were used in the UK media's coverage of another previously unknown and severe infectious disease: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). SARS offers an opportunity to explore the cultural framing of a less extraordinary epidemic disease. It therefore provides an analytical counter-weight to the very extensive body of interpretation that has developed around HIV/AIDS. By analysing the total reporting on SARS of five major national newspapers during the epidemic of spring 2003, we investigate how the reporting of SARS in the UK press was framed, and how this related to media, public and governmental responses to the disease. We found that, surprisingly, militaristic language was largely absent, as was the judgemental discourse of plague. Rather, the main conceptual metaphor used was SARS as a killer. SARS as a killer was a single unified entity, not an army or force. We provide some tentative explanations for this shift in linguistic framing by relating it to local political concerns, media cultures, and spatial factors.     

Misrepresentation of health risks by mass media

BACKGROUND: Mass media are a leading source of health information for general public. We wished to examine the relationship between the intensity of media coverage for selected health topics and their actual risk to public health. METHODS: Mass media reports in the United States on emerging and chronic health hazards (severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), bioterrorism, West Nile Fever, AIDS, smoking and physical inactivity) were counted for the year 2003, using LexisNexis database. The number of media reports for each health risk was correlated with the corresponding death rate as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RESULTS: The number of media reports inversely correlated with the actual number of deaths for the health risks evaluated. SARS and bioterrorism killed less than a dozen people in 2003, but together generated over 100 000 media reports, far more than those covering smoking and physical inactivity, which killed nearly a million Americans. CONCLUSIONS: Emerging health hazards are over-reported in mass media by comparison to common threats to public health. Since premature mortality in industrialized societies is most often due to well-known risks such as smoking and physical inactivity, their under-representation on public agendas may cause suboptimal prioritization of public health resources.     

Gesundheitliche Aufklärung als Risikokommunikation

Those seeking to educate the public about health need to communicate health risks effectively. This involves providing evidence-based information about factors and behaviors that are dangerous to people’s health and making recommendations regarding how risks can be avoided or minimized. This communication usually aims to motivate people to act in a way that promotes health or prevents disease. Organized ‘health education’ that seeks to communicate risks is always embedded in a contextual framework that in turn influences the issues and content to be communicated and the form of communication that is chosen. The scope of available scientific knowledge is an important part of this framework as is the extent to which risks are presented in the media as being dangerous. The media’s message has a strong influence on how the public and specific subgroups within it react. The article describes conditions that contribute to successful risk communication based on the example of HIV/AIDS prevention. We chose this particular case because it can serve as an example of how to deal with future epidemics that may potentially generate substantial media coverage. This field report shows how risk communication about HIV/AIDS in the mass media in Germany in the mid-1980s elicited a risk consciousness among the general public that in itself was in danger of becoming a health risk, especially for people affected by the disease, and how ‘health education’ responded to this challenge. It concludes by describing how these experiences with risk communication can be applied to similar types of risk communication today.     

The end of AIDS?: AIDS reporting in the Australian press in the mid-1990s

In news reports of HIV/AIDS, the discourses giving meaning to the pandemic have constantly shifted and changed since its emergence in the early 1980s. This article presents an analysis of HIV/AIDS reporting in the Australian press in the three-year period between 1994 and 1996. It focuses on two dominant topical themes appearing in this period: politics and policy debates around HIV/AIDS and medico-scientific research and treatment issues. It is argued that in the mid-1990s HIV/AIDS has increasingly become portrayed as a biomedical rather than a public health problem, and again as affecting gay men rather than the general population. It is suggested that these changes in representation may eventually lead to ‘the end of AIDS’ as a highly prominent phenomenon in the news media, with implications for general attitudes towards the syndrome and future policy and funding decisions.     

AIDS in Black and White: The Influence of Newspaper Coverage of HIV/AIDS on HIV/AIDS Testing Among African Americans and White Americans, 1993–2007

This study examined the effect of newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS on HIV testing behavior in a U.S. population. HIV testing data were taken from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 1993 to 2007 (N = 265,557). The authors content-analyzed news stories from 24 daily newspapers and 1 wire service during the same time period. The authors used distributed lagged regression models to estimate how well HIV/AIDS newspaper coverage predicted later HIV testing behavior. Increases in HIV/AIDS newspaper coverage were associated with declines in population-level HIV testing. Each additional 100 HIV/AIDS-related newspaper stories published each month was associated with a 1.7% decline in HIV testing levels in the subsequent month. This effect differed by race, with African Americans exhibiting greater declines in HIV testing subsequent to increased news coverage than did Whites. These results suggest that mainstream newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS may have a particularly deleterious effect on African Americans, one of the groups most affected by the disease. The mechanisms driving the negative effect deserve further investigation to improve reporting on HIV/AIDS in the media.     

Social vaccine for HIV prevention: a study on truck drivers in South India

Nearly everywhere that AIDS has been found, HIV infection is fast spreading. No one is known to have recovered from HIV infection. There is no vaccine to cure AIDS (Population Reports, 1989 and The Hindu, dated 9.3.2000). Until a cure or vaccine for HIV infection is found, the only way to prevent the spread of the disease is by changing people's behaviour through AIDS education programmes (Population Reports, 1986). Many national governments are using broadcast, print media, personal contact, counselling methods, etc., to educate people on AIDS and safer sex. Thus, the best vaccine is the 'Social Vaccine.' Social vaccine involves spreading education on how to protect oneself, hundred percent condom use, and changing sexual behaviour. In fact, the social vaccine was so successful in Thailand that the infection rate has come down by 50 per cent (The Hindu, dated 9.3.2000). Truck drivers, prostitutes, and young adults are considered high risk groups for HIV/AIDS in India. An action research study was conducted in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh (India) among truck drivers. As part of this study, different strategies, namely mass media, personal contact, group discussion, folk media, and counselling, were adopted to provide AIDS education, to encourage increase in condom use for safer sex, and bring changes in their sexual behaviour. The strategies adopted in this study greatly enhanced the knowledge of the truck drivers on AIDS, changed their attitudes on sex, increased the use of condoms, and modified their sexual behaviour. Thus, the social vaccine would help spread education on AIDS, bring changes in the sexual behaviour of the people, increase condom use, and thus help to prevent the AIDS scourge throughout the world. The social vaccine suggested in this study can also be extended to all the high risk group population for successful prevention of this dreadful disease in the world.     

Media roles in suicide prevention: a systematic review

The aim of the current systematic review was to monitor and provide an overview of the research performed about the roles of media in suicide prevention in order to find out possible effects media reporting on suicidal behaviours might have on actual suicidality (completed suicides, attempted suicides, suicidal ideation). The systematic review was performed following the principles of the PRISMA statement and includes 56 articles. Most of the studies support the idea that media reporting and suicidality are associated. However, there is a risk of reporting bias. More research is available about how irresponsible media reports can provoke suicidal behaviours (the 'Werther effect') and less about protective effect media can have (the 'Papageno effect'). Strong modelling effect of media coverage on suicide is based on age and gender. Media reports are not representative of official suicide data and tend to exaggerate sensational suicides, for example dramatic and highly lethal suicide methods, which are rare in real life. Future studies have to encounter the challenges the global medium Internet will offer in terms of research methods, as it is difficult to define the circulation of news in the Internet either spatially or in time. However, online media can provide valuable innovative qualitative research material.     

Strategies of media marketing for "America Responds to AIDS" and applying lessons learned.

The Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) public service announcement (PSA) campaign on acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), entitled "America Responds to AIDS," has provided an opportunity to examine various media marketing techniques and their effectiveness in setting and sustaining a national media agenda for public health. The overall objective was to enlist the media as a partner in the effort to establish a clear national public health agenda on AIDS by reaching as many Americans as possible with disease prevention information in a credible and acceptable way. In order for the media to become interested in a subject traditionally treated as health information rather than a "news story," CDC identified and employed various methods and tools to generate coverage. These included the use of news conferences, video and audio news releases, satellite interviews, and press kits developed for each phase of the campaign. News "hooks" were used to grab attention; for example, the use of well-known public health spokespersons in media events or the promotion of free collateral materials. The marketing approach undertaken for each phase of the campaign varied, and lessons were learned and applied along the way. A model emerged indicating that a combination of techniques could result in maximum exposure in both news stories and public affairs programming. Because the model allowed messages to be delivered credibly and consistently, the result was increased usage of the PSAs to coincide with the media coverage.     

The making of a germ panic, then and now

Over the last 2 decades, a heightened interest in germs has been evident in many aspects of American popular culture, including news coverage, advertisements, and entertainment media. Although clearly a response to the AIDS epidemic and other recent disease outbreaks, current obsessions with germs have some striking parallels with a similar period of intense anxiety about disease germs that occurred between 1900 and 1940. A comparison of these 2 periods of germ "panic" suggests some of the long-term cultural trends that contributed to their making. Both germ panics reflected anxieties about societal incorporation, associated with expanding markets, transportation networks, and mass immigration. They were also shaped by new trends in public health education, journalism, advertising, and entertainment media. In comparison to the first germ panic, the current discourse about the "revenge of the superbugs" is considerably more pessimistic because of increasing worries about the environment, suspicions of governmental authority, and distrust of expert knowledge. Yet, as popular anxieties about infectious disease have increased, public health scientists have been attracting favorable coverage in their role as "medical detectives" on the trail of the "killer germ."     

Mediatised risk culture: News coverage of risk technologies

In this article, we examine if and how a particular risk culture emerges as mediated and mediatised for a number of diverse technological risks. Modern news reporting is increasingly preoccupied with representing risk events in order to show how technological lifestyles affect our human and natural environments. In this article, we draw on data from project which used a comparative research design to investigate media coverage of four contemporary risks, in order to show how public risk communication contributes to the establishment of a broader mediatised risk culture. The project combined a quantitative content analysis with a qualitative study of a sample (n = 344) of news items across three different Danish media platform. We found that risk reporting varied substantially depending on dominant news themes, cultural resonance and media platform. However, within these variations we also found common elements such as the discursive representations of risk as contested and/or manageable. Based on the aggregate picture of the four risk studied, we argue that the media risk discourse takes a particular form that is different to risk discourse in other social arenas. Media risk discourse, therefore, tends to share certain cultural traits which results in the representation of risks as either (un-)manageable or (un-)controllable according to the level of public or elite disagreement in public debate.     

Designing an AIDS information campaign to reach intravenous drug users and sex partners

Intravenous drug users are currently the second largest group to have developed the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in the United States and Europe. Clearly, health communication plays an important role in the development of AIDS prevention programs directed at IV drug users. However, few public information campaigns have been developed to reach IV drug users or their sexual partners. In a recent campaign directed at these groups, the selection of messages to be used was based both on theory and on research into multi-media public information campaigns. The attempt was made to communicate basic facts about AIDS etiology and prevention. This included information that needle sharing and unprotected sex could spread the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, while bleaching needles and using condoms properly could reduce the risk of infection. A step-by-step diagram on how to bleach needles was provided. Posters, pamphlets, billboards, and out-reach workers were used to spread the word in inner-city neighbors, and coverage of the campaign was sought in the news media. Strategies incorporating practical and theory-based suggestions for future campaigns on IV drug use and AIDS are discussed.     

Social Vaccine for HIV Prevention

Abstract

Nearly everywhere that AIDS has been found, HIV infection is fast spreading. No one is known to have recovered from HIV infection. There is no vaccine to cure AIDS (Population Reports, 1989 and The Hindu, dated 9.3.2000). Until a cure or vaccine for HIV infection is found, the only way to prevent the spread of the disease is by changing people's behaviour through AIDS education programmes (Population Reports, 1986). Many national governments are using broadcast, print media, personal contact, counselling methods, etc., to educate people on AIDS and safer sex. Thus, the best vaccine is the ‘Social Vaccine.’ Social vaccine involves spreading education on how to protect oneself, hundred percent condom use, and changing sexual behaviour. In fact, the social vaccine was so successful in Thailand that the infection rate has come down by 50 per cent (The Hindu, dated 9.3.2000).

Truck drivers, prostitutes, and young adults are considered high risk groups for HIV/AIDS in India. An action research study was conducted in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh (India) among truck drivers. As part of this study, different strategies, namely mass media, personal contact, group discussion, folk media, and counselling, were adopted to provide AIDS education, to encourage increase in condom use for safer sex, and bring changes in their sexual behaviour. The strategies adopted in this study greatly enhanced the knowledge of the truck drivers on AIDS, changed their attitudes on sex, increased the use of condoms, and modified their sexual behaviour.

Thus, the social vaccine would help spread education on AIDS, bring changes in the sexual behaviour of the people, increase condom use, and thus help to prevent the AIDS scourge throughout the world. The social vaccine suggested in this study can also be extended to all the high risk group population for successful prevention of this dreadful disease in the world.     

The impact of AIDS on state and local health departments: issues and a few answers.

Owing to large differences in the incidence of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) and in public health resources and priorities, the impact of AIDS on state and local health departments has been variable. Nonetheless, health departments everywhere are being held responsible for surveillance and control of the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) epidemic which we believe requires, at minimum, convenient, free HIV testing and counseling; expanded HIV services in sexually transmitted diseases clinics and substance treatment centers; locally oriented AIDS information/education; notification of persons unknowingly exposed to HIV; restrictive measures for HIV-infected persons who, after counseling, persist in exposing others; regulation or closure of public establishments in which HIV transmission is likely to result; and confidential reporting of all HIV test results to public health departments. In Colorado new legislation was passed to require reporting of HIV test results, to provide the reports with near absolute protections against unauthorized disclosure, and to modify quarantine statues to incorporate rights to due process, appeals, and confidentially. States in which there is a legal basis for discrimination against gay men will need to rectify this problem first. There is no evidence that reporting of HIV infections in Colorado has adversely affected the rate at which persons with HIV risk behaviors volunteer to be tested. For Denver and Colorado Departments of Health, more than 70 per cent of the estimated $2,796,000 expended in AIDS activities during 1987 was federal.     

Health risk communication and amplification: learning from the MMR vaccination controversy

Immunisation is the cornerstone of childhood disease prevention. In this context the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccination (MMR) has proved a world-wide success, although in the UK it has been at the centre of public controversy since 1998. Through the media, the public domain has witnessed contestation among expert views about the relative risks associated with the diseases vs. the potential side-effects of the vaccination. Attainment of health protection targets has been compromised. The UK Department of Health sought to redress this through a major communication exercise. This paper reports the findings of a study of information strategies that parents use to make sense of health risk issues, particularly MMR. The findings identify the importance of social networks in reinforcing parental understanding and beliefs. While the media are identified as important sources of information, there is no evidence to suggest that parents passively receive and act upon such risk messages. Official information has been able to capitalise on the strong social normalisation of vaccination, but has not responded fully to the evolving social interpretation of risks. The study reveals a preference for personal and face-to-face engagement with health professionals, stressing the importance of user-centred health risk communication.     

Media coverage of women's health issues: is there a bias in the reporting of an association between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer?

Media coverage of scientific research plays a major role in shaping public opinion and influencing medical practice. When an association is controversial, such as with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and breast cancer, it is important that a balanced picture of the scientific literature be reported. The objective of this study was to assess whether scientific publications that do and do not support an HRT/breast cancer association were cited in the media in proportions similar to those with which they appear in the scientific literature. Scientific publications reporting on the HRT/breast cancer association published from January 1, 1995, to June 30, 2000, were identified through a systematic Medline search. Media reports from newspapers, magazines, television, and radio that reported on HRT and breast cancer were retrieved from an online database. Investigators independently recorded characteristics of the scientific publications and media reports. A total of 32 scientific publications were identified: 20 (62.5%) concluded there was an increased risk of breast cancer associated with HRT (positive publications), and 12 (37.5%) concluded there was no evidence for an association (null publications). Nearly half (47%) of the scientific publications were not cited by the media. There were 203 media citations of scientific publications: 82% were of positive publications and 18% were of null publications, representing a significant excess of citations of positive publications (p < 0.01). Media coverage of this controversial issue is based on a limited sample of the scientific publications. Moreover, the excess of media citations for positive scientific publications suggests a bias against null scientific publications.     

Women's health and the mass media: The reporting of risk

News about women's health risks is prevalent in the mass media, and how that news is presented is important for the women who uses it to make decisions about her health. Conferees at a Jacobs Institute symposium reviewed the presentation and discussion of risk factors in scientific articles and the subsequent translation of this information by the media to their consumers. The symposium participants made four major recommendations to improve the reporting of risk: 1) as information sources, the scientific community, institutions, and media organizations should share the responsibility of clearly presenting information on risk factors affecting women's health, 2) institutional public affairs officers, journal public affairs officers, and mass media editors should require that reports on single studies be placed within the context of current scientific knowledge, with limitations prominently described, 3) measures of absolute and relative risk should be interpretable by a general audience, and 4) news makers (the scientific community) and news writers (reporters and editors) should have more training opportunities to achieve a clearer understanding of the constraints on the news media and the limitations of science.     

Women's health and the mass media: The reporting of risk

News about women's health risks is prevalent in the mass media, and how that news is presented is important for the women who uses it to make decisions about her health. Conferees at a Jacobs Institute symposium reviewed the presentation and discussion of risk factors in scientific articles and the subsequent translation of this information by the media to their consumers. The symposium participants made four major recommendations to improve the reporting of risk: 1) as information sources, the scientific community, institutions, and media organizations should share the responsibility of clearly presenting information on risk factors affecting women's health, 2) institutional public affairs officers, journal public affairs officers, and mass media editors should require that reports on single studies be placed within the context of current scientific knowledge, with limitations prominently described, 3) measures of absolute and relative risk should be interpretable by a general audience, and 4) news makers (the scientific community) and news writers (reporters and editors) should have more training opportunities to achieve a clearer understanding of the constraints on the news media and the limitations of science.