How do newspapers deal with health in Sweden? A descriptive study (original) (raw)
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Global Media Journal, 2022
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Representations of preconditions for and determinants of health in the Dutch press
Health Promotion …, 2000
As a mass medium which provides information to the public about both the determinants of health and the conditioning of those determinants through professional or civic means, the press is an important object of study for health promoters, who regularly seek to build upon and influence public understandings regarding the etiology of health. This article investigates whether the factors which the Dutch press portray as determining or allowing for health are congruent with the central tenets of health promotion as these are detailed in the WHO's 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and 1997 Jakarta Declaration. A content analysis was conducted on 600 randomly selected health-related articles appearing in the five Dutch newspapers with the largest average daily circulation over 8 weeks. Two coders ascribed values to each of the 600 articles for seven content variables, including determinant theme of article, authority identifying determinant theme, means and agent of determinant conditioning, breadth of population affected, and mediating populational attributes. Two form variables, text and graphic area, were also assessed by the coders. Findings indicate that though there are some reasons to be encouraged, representations of the determinants of health in the Dutch press are largely incompatible with the etiological assumptions of health promotion. Health promoters, it is asserted, must continue to engage the press in order to take advantage of opportunities and gaps in health etiological coverage.
Health Promotion International, 1999
Courier Mail, under the two broad categories of public health and the medical model. Content analysis was utilized to assess 19 criteria which measured prominence, content, stakeholders, orientation of reporting and tone of items. The findings suggest that public health, including health promotion, is presented less often, less prominently and less positively than medical model issues . No comparable review of press reporting of these two models was identified in extensive international literature searches and this study is considered to break new ground. The potential influence of the print media in the education of the population on public health issues is presented. It is proposed that a greater understanding of the dynamics of health reporting and particularly the relationship between public health and the medical model may lead to more constructive and informative reporting.
Print News and Health PsychologySome Observations
Journal of Health Psychology, 2006
This commentary overviews the look of health news in American print journalism and the research that suggests how health news creates influence at both the individual and policy levels. Crime and violence are argued to be public health issues, but unfortunately they are often not treated as such. There is clearly room for improvement in all areas of health news, but unfortunately the extreme stress that newspapers are under to maintain their high profit margins suggests that the resources for such improvement are unlikely to be available. Examination of the Minneapolis Star Tribune's coverage of health, crime and violence exemplifies problematic aspects.
Newspaper influence on health policy development
Newspaper Research Journal, 1994
Abstract: Examines how the news media may influence health policy development through case studies of four newspaper series on health issues and the impact each had on related health policies. Shows that, in three of the four situations, newspaper coverage did not ...
The status of the daily newspaper
Poetics, 1992
The status of the daily newspaper What readership research tells us about the role of newspapers in the mass media system Lennart Weibull * During the latest decades the rapid demise of newspapers has often been predicted. In spite of everything, however, the print media have turned out to be very strong in some parts of the world, for example in the Scandinavian countries. Given this background the main aim of this article is to analyse the factors contributing to the strength of the Swedish newspapers among its readers. The basis for the results presented is the long term research programme Dagspresskollegiet, which by means of yearly national and regional surveys traces the long-term development of media use in Sweden. The general presentation of readership development shows that between 80 and 90 per cent of the Swedes are regular newspaper readers. The level has been the same since the 1960s. Further it is shown that the strength of the newspapers is that they are local in outlook, corresponding to individual as well as social needs of the audience which are not being fulfilled by other media. Finally, the form of the newspaper invites the double function of ritual reading, surveying matters of potential importance to the reader as the member of a local community, and specialized reading, corresponding to specific needs of the individual reader. In the wider media system the newspapers have kept an informative role, where radio and TV have stressed their entertainment character.
A Death in the Family" - A Case Study of Newspaper Influence on Health Policy Development
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 1994
Milio argue, however, that health campaigns aimed at producing changes only in individual behaviors are likely to have the weakest overall effect on health. They suggest that rather than using media campaigns to encourage individuals to adopt healthier behaviors, health advocates should focus their attention on gaining public policy changes that will provide better health options and more support for healthy behaviors.T he same reasoning can be applied to the comparison of the importance of the effects of health news on individual behaviors versus effects on health f>olicy. Media coverage of a health problem can affect individuals only when those individuals are exposed to the health story and have the intellectual, psychological, and finandal ability to adopt healthier behaviors. But public policy changes spurred or encouraged by media coverage of a health issue can make better health options available to individuals who never were exposed to news about that issue and to those who could not have chosen healthier behaviors even if they had wished to.
From Broadsheet to Tabloid: Content changes in Swedish newspapers in the light of a shrunken size
During the early 2000s, the newspaper market in Northern Europe was characterised by a trend of format changes as many broadsheets have chosen to adapt to the tabloid format. Similar tendencies also have emerged in other Western countries, making it a transnational phenomenon. Critics have argued that a reduced size impacts the content, resulting in increased tabloidisation, finding a connection between the page size and the news content whereby the broadsheet and tabloid formats require different kinds of journalism. Thus, this study aims to analyse whether it is possible to detect this type of increased tabloidisation in relation to the resizing of newspapers. Using the theoretical concept of tabloidisation, this study begins with a content analysis of Swedish dailies that have changed their format during the early 2000s. Comparisons are made to newspapers that did not undergo this type of transition as means of determining whether any of the changes detected can be explained by the actual format change, or rather, are the effects of other factors. The study focuses on news content published in 1990, 2000, and 2010. It reveals that the format itself has had only a minor influence on journalism, in that all newspapers show similar signs of increased tabloidisation during this period.
Patient Education and …, 2011
Today more than ever, health is one of the main topics covered by the mass media. Obviously, good health is a prime concern for all of us, and its attainment and maintenance involve many and varied aspects, including economic ones. Thus, the public finds itself immersed in a veritable sea of health-related news from many different sources, often without the means to discern what is really useful or important, or understand the true significance of the intended messages, or even appraise their accuracy [1-4]. Many population surveys have recognized the mass media as the main source of public health information [6,7]. The impact of this coverage on citizens' knowledge, perceptions and attitudes can be analyzed from two perspectives: its great power to disseminate information and form public opinion and the potential for distortion from useless or inaccurate information [5-9]. Such effects stem not only from potential information overload, but also from poor information quality, in terms of correctness, reliability, understandability, usefulness, balance and independence, which people are often unable to evaluate due to limited health literacy. In crises or emergencies, the mass media may create a ''communications storm'', which shifts attention to a single health problem, such as AIDS, SARS, BSE, or avian flu [10,11] Quantitative and qualitative analyses of mass media messages over the time can be a useful tool to evaluate their possible effects on public perceptions and behaviors. To this end, the Pisa University OCS (Osservatorio della Comunicazione Sanitaria = Health Communication Observatory) has collected and stored in a DBT (Data Base Text) all health-related articles published each day since 1999 in Italy's three most popular newspapers for quantitative and qualitative analyses. This paper describes the methods followed for collecting, storing and analyzing these articles and using the results to design questionnaire surveys on information sources, knowledge, attitudes and risk perception of citizens. To explain this methodology as example food safety related issues were investigated both with article analysis and questionnaire survey.