scholarly journals Analyzing natural herd immunity media discourse in the United Kingdom and the United States

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. e0000078
Author(s):  
Marco Zenone ◽  
Jeremy Snyder ◽  
Alessandro Marcon ◽  
Timothy Caulfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
High Risk ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Herd Immunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
High Risk Populations ◽  
Pandemic Response

Natural herd immunity, where community-acquired infections in low-risk populations are used to protect high risk populations from infection–has seen high profile support in some quarters, including through the Great Barrington Declaration. However, this approach has been widely criticized as ineffective and misinformed. In this study, we examine media discourse around natural herd immunity in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) to better understand how this approach was promoted. Country-specific news media publications between March 11, 2020 and January 31, 2021 were searched for references to herd immunity. News articles focused on herd immunity and including a stakeholder quote about herd immunity were collected, resulting in 400 UK and 144 US articles. Stakeholder comments were then coded by name, organization, organization type, and concept agreement or disagreement. Government figures and a small but vocal coalition of academics played a central role in promoting natural herd immunity in the news media whereas critics were largely drawn from academia and public health. These groups clashed on whether: natural herd immunity is an appropriate and effective pandemic response; the consequences of a lockdown are worse than those of promoting herd immunity; high-risk populations could be adequately protected; and if healthcare resources would be adequate under a herd immunity strategy. False balance in news media coverage of natural herd immunity as a pandemic response legitimized this approach and potentially undermined more widely accepted mitigation approaches. The ability to protect high risk populations while building herd immunity was a central but poorly supported pillar of this approach. The presentation of herd immunity in news media underscores the need for greater appreciation of potential harm of media representations that contain false balance.

Religious motifs within reporting of the 7/7 London bombings in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland: A transnational agenda-setting network study

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 1323-1342
Author(s):  
Damian Guzek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Media Globalization ◽  
London Bombings

Existing studies have examined the significance of UK media coverage of the 7/7 London bombings. This article seeks to widen this analysis by exploring the coverage of 7/7 in the leading newspapers of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland comparatively using a new agenda-setting perspective that is grounded within network analysis. The study is devised to respond specifically to the contrasting arguments about the influence of media globalization versus religion and ethnicity on this reporting. It finds that the diverse approaches to religion within the countries of the analyzed newspapers appear to mitigate the reproduction of shared religious narratives in this reporting. Nevertheless, the analyzed coverage does carry common attributes and these, it argues, can be explained broadly by the influence of a US-dominated ‘lens on terror’.

scholarly journals Communicating the “Race” for the COVID-19 Vaccine: An Exploratory Study in Newspapers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Massarani ◽  
Luiz Felipe Fernandes Neves
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Understanding Of Science

The search for an effective solution to control the COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized an unprecedented effort by science to develop a vaccine against the disease, in which pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutions from several countries participate. The world closely monitors research in this area, especially through media coverage, which plays a key role in the dissemination of trustful information and in the public’s understanding of science and health. On the other hand, anti-vaccine movements dispute space in this communication environment, which raises concerns of the authorities regarding the willingness of the population to get vaccinated. In this exploratory study, we used computer-assisted content analysis techniques, with WordStat software, to identify the most addressed terms, semantic clusters, actors, institutions, and countries in the texts and titles of 716 articles on the COVID-19 vaccine, published by The New York Times (US), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), from January to October 2020. We sought to analyze similarities and differences of countries that stood out by the science denialism stance of their government leaders, reflecting on the severity of the pandemic in these places. Our results indicate that each newspaper emphasized the potential vaccines developed by laboratories in their countries or that have established partnerships with national institutions, but with a more politicized approach in Brazil and a little more technical-scientific approach in the United States and the United Kingdom. In external issues, the newspapers characterized the search for the discovery of a vaccine as a race in which nations and blocs historically marked by economic, political, and ideological disputes are competing, such as the United States, Europe, China, and Russia. The results lead us to reflect on the responsibility of the media to not only inform correctly but also not to create stigmas related to the origin of the vaccine and combat misinformation.

The role of ideology in the international mainstream news media framing of refugees: A comparison between conservative and liberal newspapers in United States, United Kingdom and Australia*

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Jean Kenix ◽  
Reza Jarvandi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Frames ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Newspaper Reporting ◽  
Political Spectrum

This research examines coverage of refugees in an attempt to further understand how media frames are actively, and perhaps ideologically, constructed. Articles between 2010 and 2015 were analysed in accordance with their publication in sixteen different news publications from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The newspapers were selected from opposite ends of the ideological political spectrum. This research explores the consequences of these findings for the international community and for objective international newspaper reporting.

Capturing Cruelty

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon T. Grugan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
General Public ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Print News ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

AbstractThe news media has long been identified as one of the primary sources for factual crime information for the general public, but not much is known about media coverage of cruelty against nonhuman animals, specifically. This study is a content analysis of media-presented themes in 240 print news articles that reported incidents of cruelty against companion animals in the United States in 2013. Seven thematic presentations of cruelty are identified and include: neutrality, condemnation, sympathy for the animal, drama, advocacy, humor, and sympathy for the offender. These themes are not mutually exclusive, with many articles including aspects of more than one theme. Themes are discussed in detail in regard to expanding the understanding of how specific forms of crime are presented by the news media based in news-making criminology.

Coverage of Burmese refugees in Indiana news media: An analysis of textual and visual frames

Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1552-1569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A Ehmer ◽  
Ammina Kothari
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Resettlement ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Visual Frame

This study investigates how Burmese refugees were framed by Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette located in one of Indiana’s cities where refugee resettlement has taken place over the last two decades. We analyzed 335 stories and 286 accompanying images to identify salient textual and visual frames. Results show that the human interest and attribution of responsibility were most salient textual frames, while the visual frame of exotic was dominant. Feature stories were more likely to have a human interest frame and, if an image is included, to reflect the visual frame of Burmese as being exotic. As a global refugee crisis continues to unfold, this study presents implications for how media coverage of future refugees in the United States will evolve based on public opinion.

Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932110314
Author(s):  
David Rozado ◽  
Musa Al-Gharbi ◽  
Jamin Halberstadt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Usage Frequency

This work analyzes the prevalence of words denoting prejudice in 27 million news and opinion articles written between 1970 and 2019 and published in 47 of the most popular news media outlets in the United States. Our results show that the frequency of words that denote specific prejudice types related to ethnicity, gender, sexual, and religious orientation has markedly increased within the 2010–2019 decade across most news media outlets. This phenomenon starts prior to, but appears to accelerate after, 2015. The frequency of prejudice-denoting words in news articles is not synchronous across all outlets, with the yearly prevalence of such words in some influential news media outlets being predictive of those words’ usage frequency in other outlets the following year. Increasing prevalence of prejudice-denoting words in news media discourse is often substantially correlated with U.S. public opinion survey data on growing perceptions of minorities’ mistreatment. Granger tests suggest that the prevalence of prejudice-denoting terms in news outlets might be predictive of shifts in public perceptions of prejudice severity in society for some, but not all, types of prejudice.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Vaccination and Herd Immunity

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-184
Author(s):  
Hyun Kyun Ki
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Genetic Variants ◽  
Herd Immunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
The United Kingdom

Vaccination has been used for the prevention and eradication of communicable diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles. Herd immunity and immunity threshold have already been conceptualized for the prevention of outbreaks and pandemicity of these diseases. Coronavirus infectious disease-19 (COVID-19) is the second pandemic coronavirus disease of the 21st century. Vaccination has been conducted since December 2020 in an attempt to control the pandemic. The morbidity and incidence of COVID-19 has decreased since the initiation of the vaccination program within Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. However, irregular vaccine rollout and uneven distribution of vaccine is a major barrier to vaccine access. Moreover, genetic variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) could be a barrier to immunity.

Hepatitis B Immunization in Infants of Hepatitis B Surface Antigen-Negative Mothers

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 717-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAETANO CHIRICO ◽  
CESARE BELLONI ◽  
ANTONELLA GASPARONI ◽  
ROSA MARIA CERBO ◽  
GIORGIO RONDINI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Hepatitis B ◽  
Hepatitis B Surface Antigen ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Academy Of Pediatrics ◽  
B Virus ◽  
Selective Strategy ◽  
High Risk Populations ◽  
Vaccine Availability

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases and the Immunization Practices Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control have recently pointed out that the selective strategy of immunization against hepatitis B virus (HBV) of high-risk populations has not resulted in the limitation of the diffusion of the disease. In fact, in spite of vaccine availability for more than 10 years, about 200 000 to 300 000 new cases of infection occur in the United States each year. Therefore, the AAP recommended the "universal hepatitis B immunization" strategy as a means to control the disease.1,2 In Italy, where about 400 000 new cases of infection are expected each year, the vaccination has been extended to all newborns, regardless of mother's serologic status (and, for the first 12 years, to all 12-year-old adolescents), with a law promulgated in May 1991.

scholarly journals The language of suffering: Media discourse and public attitudes towards the MH17 air tragedy in Malaysia and the UK

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 562-580
Author(s):  
Theng Theng Ong ◽  
Robert M. McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
The West ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Malaysian Airlines

‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords analysis revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ (Malaysian elites) and non-important ‘Other’ (non-Malaysian) in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ (the West) and evil ‘Others’ (Russia) in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘ conflicts’.

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