TY - JOUR
T1 - Online newspaper framing of non-communicable diseases
T2 - Comparison of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao
AU - Chang, Angela
AU - Schulz, Peter J.
AU - Cheong, Angus Wenheng
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: This research was supported by grant from the University of Macau (MYRG2018-0062-FSS & MYRG2019-00079-FSS).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2020/8
Y1 - 2020/8
N2 - As non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are now well recognized as the leading cause of mortality among adult populations worldwide, they are also increasingly the focus of media coverage. As such, the objective of this study is to describe the framing of NCDs in the coverage of newspapers, with the understanding that it says something about the society producing it. Automatic content analysis was employed to examine disease topics, risks, and cost consequences, thus providing lay people with a chance of learning the etiology of NCDs and information available for fighting diseases. The result of the computational method identified a total of 152,810 news articles with one of the seven supra-categories of NCDs. The category of metabolic diseases was covered most frequently in the past ten years. Three health risks received ample attention in all 11 newspapers: stress burden, tobacco use, and genetic predispositions. The results evidenced how media framed risk information of illnesses would distort the way in which diseases were selected, interpreted, and the outcome communicated. Future research building on our findings can further examine whether news framing affects the way the readers perceive and prevent NCDs.
AB - As non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are now well recognized as the leading cause of mortality among adult populations worldwide, they are also increasingly the focus of media coverage. As such, the objective of this study is to describe the framing of NCDs in the coverage of newspapers, with the understanding that it says something about the society producing it. Automatic content analysis was employed to examine disease topics, risks, and cost consequences, thus providing lay people with a chance of learning the etiology of NCDs and information available for fighting diseases. The result of the computational method identified a total of 152,810 news articles with one of the seven supra-categories of NCDs. The category of metabolic diseases was covered most frequently in the past ten years. Three health risks received ample attention in all 11 newspapers: stress burden, tobacco use, and genetic predispositions. The results evidenced how media framed risk information of illnesses would distort the way in which diseases were selected, interpreted, and the outcome communicated. Future research building on our findings can further examine whether news framing affects the way the readers perceive and prevent NCDs.
KW - Behavioral factor
KW - Causal assertions
KW - Framing
KW - Non-communicable disease
KW - Online press
KW - Risk factors
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089113407&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijerph17155593
DO - 10.3390/ijerph17155593
M3 - Article
C2 - 32756457
AN - SCOPUS:85089113407
SN - 1661-7827
VL - 17
SP - 1
EP - 15
JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
IS - 15
M1 - 5593
ER -