Where the Fault Lies: Representations of Addiction in Audience Reactions to Media Coverage of the Opioid Epidemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
David Russell ◽  
Kelly M. Thames ◽  
Naomi J. Spence ◽  
Callie M. Koeval
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Opioid Epidemic ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Overdose Deaths ◽  
The U.S

The unprecedented number of deaths in the U.S. attributed to opioids has been referred to as an “epidemic of addiction.” Media coverage of the epidemic has stoked public discussion of addiction on social media platforms. This article describes how addiction is represented in comments on media coverage of the “opioid epidemic” and examines the relationship between media framing and audience representations of addiction. Content analysis methods were applied to data obtained from news posts ( n = 397) and comments ( n = 2,836) on the Facebook pages of 42 newspapers in Ohio, where overdose deaths are among the highest in the U.S. Eleven percent of comments were identified as referencing addiction ( n = 319). These comments were classified into two overarching categories: (1) support, disease, and contributing factors expressed support for persons affected by the epidemic, represented addiction as a disease requiring treatment, and highlighted social and structural factors seen as contributing to the epidemic (61.1% of comments referencing addiction); and (2) misdirected attention and individual blame questioned the media focus on addiction and overdose deaths, highlighted individual choices to misuse opioids, and suggested that media coverage of the epidemic diverts attention away from other social problems viewed as being more worthy of public attention (38.9% of comments). Representations of addiction in comments were found to be independent of (not associated with) frames in media coverage ( p = .945). Together, these results suggest that while a majority of commenters represent addiction as a legitimate social problem that warrants intervention and support, a substantial minority are dismissive of the epidemic, express anger and disdain for persons who use opioids, and seek to counter popular narratives of social and structural factors contributing to addiction.

scholarly journals Diverging from News Media: An Exploratory Study on the Changing Dynamics between Media and Public Attention on Cancer in China from 2011-2020

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yangkun Huang ◽  
Xiaoping Xu ◽  
Sini Su
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Cancer Information ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Media ◽  
Cancer Types

Over the past decade, China has witnessed fast-paced technological advancements in the media industry, as well as major shifts in the health agenda portrayed in the media. Therefore, a key starting point when discussing health communication lies in whether media attention and public attention towards health issues are structurally aligned, and to what extent the news media guide public attention. Based on data mined from 73,060 sets of the Baidu Search Index and Media Index on 20 terms covering different types of cancer from 2011 to 2020, the Granger test demonstrates that, in the last decade, public attention and media attention towards cancer in China has gone through two distinct phases. During the first phase, 2011-2015, Chinese news media still held the key in transferring the salience of issues on most cancer types to the public. In the second phase, from 2016-2020, public attention towards cancer has gradually diverged from media coverage, mirroring the imbalance and mismatch between the demand of active public and the supply of cancer information from news media. This study provides an overview of the dynamic transition on cancer issues in China over a ten-year span, along with descriptive results on public and media attention towards specific cancer types.

Corporate Capturing Public Attention through Social Media: A Content Analysis of Facebook Pages of top Indian Companies

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prof. (Dr.) Bandana Pandey ◽  
Sumedha Dhasmana
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Fortune 500 ◽  
News Story ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Communication Flow ◽  
Virtual Platform ◽  
Facebook Pages

On July 23, 2015, the Press Trust of India released the news story about seven Indian companies making it to the reputed Fortune 500 list. These seven organizations form the basis of this research that aims to understand the socialmedia efforts of top Indian companies. Since Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms, the study examines the Facebook pages of seven Indian companies listed in the global Fortune 500 list of 2015. Undoubtedly, organizations take on various strategies for achieving maximum public support. Reaching the public through virtual platform like that of a Facebook is one such tactics that leads to communication flow and builds public goodwill. The research aimed at understanding how top Indian companies make use of their Facebook Pages in order to gain public support and popularity. The paper identifies loopholes and plus points that can help organizations and individual in analyzing Facebook Page use for growth and publicity purposes. Content analysis method has been adopted on 17 days wall posts of Facebook Pages of selected Indian companies. Findings indicate a variety of type of Facebook updates that includes photos, photos with relevantlinks, videos and video with relevant links. Among these, photo updates are most prominent on the Facebook pages of these organizations

scholarly journals Exploring the impact of the opioid epidemic in Black and Hispanic communities in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 205032452094042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Drake ◽  
Creaque Charles ◽  
Jennifer W Bourgeois ◽  
Elycia S Daniel ◽  
Melissa Kwende
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
Opioid Epidemic ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Urban Minority ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Overdose Deaths ◽  
The U.S

Context: In recent years, due to an alarming increase in the number of opioid-related overdose fatalities for White, Non-Hispanics in rural and suburban communities across the United States, they have been considered as the face of this epidemic. However, there has also been a staggering rise in the number of opioid overdoses in urban, minority communities, which have not been thoroughly addressed by the literature. Methods We reviewed deaths where opioid-related substances were reported as the leading cause of death to the Centers of Disease Control Multiple Cause of Death database from 1999 to 2017. Deaths were analyzed by year, State, drug type, and race and ethnicity. Results There were 399,230 total opioid-related deaths from 1999 to 2017 amongst all ethnic groups in the U.S. During this timeframe, approximately 323,939 total deaths were attributed to White, Non-Hispanics, while 75,291 were attributed to all other ethnicities. Examination of opioid-related overdose death data by ethnicity reveals that while White, Non-Hispanics have experienced the largest numbers of opioid-related overdose deaths in the U.S with up to 37,113 deaths occurring during 2017, there has also been a sharp rise in the number of opioid-related overdose deaths for minorities. opioid-related overdose deaths for Black, Non-Hispanics climbed from 1130 deaths in 1999 to 5513 deaths in 2017, while opioid-related overdose deaths for Hispanics climbed from 1058 in 1999 to 3932 in 2017. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the past 19 years, age-adjusted opioid-related deaths for Hispanics have climbed from 3.5 overdoses per 100,000 in 1999 to 6.8 overdoses per 100,000 in 2017. However, greater increases have been reported for Blacks during the same 19-year timeframe with age-adjusted rates of 3.5 overdoses per population of 100,000 in 1999 to 12.9 overdoses per population of 100,000 in 2017. Conclusion While Opioid-related overdoses have overwhelmingly plagued rural and suburban White, Non-Hispanic communities, there has been a surge in the number of deaths in Black and Hispanic Minority communities in recent years. Although there have been significant increases in the number of opioid-related overdose deaths in Black and Hispanic communities, the media narrative for this epidemic is often portrayed as a White, Non-Hispanic rural and suburban crisis. As a result, intervention strategies and policies have failed, both, to assess the severity of the problem in minority communities and to offer culturally sensitive preventative and treatment solutions. In this paper, the impact of the opioid epidemic on Black and Hispanic minority communities will be presented. Racial disparities in the U.S. Government’s current approach to an epidemic, which plagues rural and suburban White America, will be compared to its past criminal justice response to drug pandemics in urban minority communities. Culturally sensitive policy considerations and recommendations that can be used to, both, mitigate and offer treatment options for the opioid epidemic in these minority communities will also be addressed.

Covid-19, Media Reporting, and the Role of Bioethicists

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 137-138
Author(s):  
Federico Nicoli ◽  
◽  
Paul J. Cummins ◽  
Joseph A. Raho ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

"In the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, media coverage was scrutinized for sensationalism, weakness in explaining scientific uncertainty, dehumanization of patients, and lack of contextualization. The current COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to assess whether the media learned its lesson. Results are mixed. Early reporting on the origin of COVID-19 in “wet markets” indicates that the media continues to do poorly with contextualization. On the other hand, stories on mortality and the infectiousness of COVID-19 indicate there has been improvement. The situation remains fluid as COVID-19 threatens to transform into a pandemic at the time of submission. Data from new countries may alter the reported rates of lethality and infectiousness, and media reporting on these changes may or may not be responsible. The explosion of social media, as a medium to promote reporting, could provide bioethicists a tool to direct the public to reliable stories and criticize inaccurate ones. Using a bioethics perspective, this poster will critically evaluate the quality of U.S. and Italian news media’s reporting on the evolving scientific understanding of COVID-19 and its contextualization. The presentation will employ QR technology to provide links to media coverage of COVID-19 from the U.S. and Italian news media. After critically appraising the quality of COVID-19 reporting, this poster will consider if bioethicists: 1) should provide comment to the media on pandemics; 2) should correct reporting for the public and 3) have a duty to publicly criticize sensationalism in the media. "

scholarly journals Targets of Online Hate Speech in Context

Intersections ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radu Mihai Meza ◽  
Hanna-Orsolya Vincze ◽  
Andreea Mogos
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Discursive Patterns

Online hate speech, especially on social media platforms, is the subject of both policy and political debate in Europe and globally - from the fragmentation of network publics to echo chambers and bubble phenomena, from networked outrage to networked populism, from trolls and bullies to propaganda and non-linear cyberwarfare. Both researchers and Facebook Community standards see the identification of the potential targets of hateful or antagonistic speech as key to classifying and distinguishing the latter from arguments that represent political viewpoints protected by freedom of expression rights. This research is an exploratory analysis of mentions of targets of hate speech in comments in the context of 106 public Facebook pages in Romanian and Hungarian from January 2015 to December 2017. A total of 1.8 million comments were collected through API interrogation and analyzed using a text-mining niche-dictionaries approach and co-occurrence analysis to reveal connections to events on the media and political agenda and discursive patterns. Findings indicate that in both countries the most prominent targets mentioned are connected to current events on the political and media agenda, that targets are most frequently mentioned in contexts created by politicians and news media, and that discursive patterns in both countries involve the proliferation of similar stereotypes about certain target groups.

Terroredia

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Eid
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Mutual Interaction ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unique Relationship

Terrorism and the media have a unique relationship that has been long evident in history and academia. Due to modern advancements in communication and information technologies, the relationship has grown strong and widely influential. Mutual interaction, dependency, and inseparability have characterized the co-existence of terrorists and media personnel. Looking into the various dynamics, discussions, and descriptions of this relationship, this chapter offers a conceptualization of this relationship by introducing and defining a new term. Terroredia is the interactive, codependent, and inseparable relationship between terrorism and the media, in which acts of terrorism and their media coverage are essentially exchanged to achieve the ultimate aims of both parties—exchanging terrorism's wide-ranging publicity and public attention (i.e., oxygen) for media's wide-ranging reach and influence (e.g., airwaves).

Bioenterprise Media Strategy 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moira A. Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Business Media

In 2012 and 2016, the first two strategic science-business media models were published (SBBMM 1.0 and 2.0). Since that time, there have been significant changes both to the media landscape and to the usage and capability of online and social media platforms. This paper seeks to describe the current bioindustry-relevant media landscape, to introduce a new media model, the Strategic Bioenterprise Media Model 2020 (SBMM 2020), which reflects this new landscape, and to present a mainstream submodel to support the latest opportunity for biotechnology media coverage: Mainstream Media. Examples are drawn from media coverage following the FDA approvals of Zulresso from Sage Therapeutics, Aimovig from Novartis and Amgen, and AquAdvantage salmon from AquAdvantage Technologies. The overall goal of this paper is to equip bioenterprise professionals with an understanding of media dynamics and the strategic potential it brings, ultimately contributing to bioenterprise success.

scholarly journals Ideological Dilemmas Actualised by the Idea of Living Environmentally Childfree

Human Arenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Nakkerud
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Environmental Behaviour ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
Perceived Relevance ◽  
Critical Discursive Psychology

AbstractOver the past decade, the choice of living childfree has increasingly been viewed as a pro-environmental behaviour. Recent research has investigated statistical relations between environmental concern and reproductive attitudes, as well as exploring the processes around actually deciding to live environmentally childfree. Based on increased public attention about the phenomenon, this article employs Michael Billig’s notion of ideological dilemmas to analyse the media coverage of choosing to live environmentally childfree, attempting to answer how these dilemmas influence whether living childfree is perceived as a relevant pro-environmental behaviour. Thirty-one news items were analysed using a synthesis of critical discursive psychology and thematic analysis. The analysis identified five ideological concepts: liberalism, sustainable development, globalism, biologism and humanism. Each of these concepts contains positions supporting and opposing the idea of living environmentally childfree in Norway. These ideological dilemmas seem to weaken the perceived relevance of living environmentally childfree, as the topic is easily dismissed or framed as irrelevant. I therefore conclude that the discourse of living environmentally childfree is analogous to how society generally relates to solutions to the environmental crises.

The 140 Characters AreSetting the Agenda of the Day: A Critical analysis of Role of twitter in Lalitgate

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Online Source ◽  
The Social ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media

The face of a news room in India has been changed radically with the ever growing popularity of social media, where it sets agenda for the news organizations to follow. The #Lalitgate is a classical example, where the Ex IPL Commissioner, Lalit Modi, who has gained a notorious image due to his controversies, broke news on twitter, from there it has been picked up by 24x7 news channels, subsequently online portals do a piece on it, again there is a prime time discussion on that news, followed by a morning coverage by the news papers. As a person gain ability to create sensationalism, he utilizes the ability of social media to create some dialogues, with a larger worldwide audience, which was earlier not possible due to the monologue approach of traditional media. The ability of that piece of information to get retweeted by followers allows it to trend high on twitter. As the number become astonishing some time, it automatically qualifies for the attention of the editors of media organizations and eventually sets the agenda of the day. The social media platforms; Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp etc. have become the essential tool of news gathering of a modern news room. Twitter with its 302 million followers worldwide, eventually became a credible online source of news gathering as the tweets are usually came through a first person, citing his/her views or, opinion on a subject matter. This research paper aims to critically analyze the role of twitter as an agenda setting tool in #Lalitgate, where, the cricket administrator turned whistleblower, Lalit Modi, used twitter effectively for his revelations, and he not only trolled successfully on twitter but news media as well. The scope of this paper is limited to the media coverage by English medium news channels and papers only.

Applying news values theory to liking, commenting and sharing mainstream news articles on Facebook

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110198
Author(s):  
Chang Sup Park ◽  
Barbara K Kaye
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
News Values ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Media ◽  
Facebook Pages

Drawing upon the newsworthiness model that posits that media outlets rely on criteria (news values) to determine which stories are newsworthy and deserve prominence and the media coverage predicts audience attention to the event, this study examines the news values that lead social media users to like, comment on, and share mainstream news stories on Facebook. A content analysis of 2480 articles from three major news newspapers in South Korea ( Chosun, Hankook and Hankyoreh) found that news stories of higher social significance are more common than news stories of higher deviance on the Facebook pages of the three news outlets. Although audiences comment on news stories of higher social significance more frequently than stories of higher deviance, they hit more ‘likes’ on news stories of higher deviance. The results are mixed for sharing – for the conservative Chosun’s Facebook page, stories of higher deviance were more often shared than stories of higher social significance, while the opposite pattern occurred with the moderate Hankook and liberal Hankyoreh.

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