News Portrayal of Cancer: Content Analysis of Threat and Efficacy by Cancer Type and Comparison with Incidence and Mortality in Korea.

News Portrayal of Cancer: Content Analysis of Threat and Efficacy by Cancer Type and Comparison with Incidence and Mortality in Korea. J Korean Med Sci. 2016 Aug;31(8):1231-8 Authors: Shim M, Kim YC, Kye SY, Park K Abstract How the news media cover cancer may have profound significance for cancer prevention and control; however, little is known about the actual content of cancer news coverage in Korea. This research thus aimed to examine news portrayal of specific cancer types with respect to threat and efficacy, and to investigate whether news portrayal corresponds to actual cancer statistics. A content analysis of 1,138 cancer news stories was conducted, using a representative sample from 23 news outlets (television, newspapers, and other news media) in Korea over a 5-year period from 2008 to 2012. Cancer incidence and mortality rates were obtained from the Korean Statistical Information Service. Results suggest that threat was most prominent in news stories on pancreatic cancer (with 87% of the articles containing threat information with specific details), followed by liver (80%) and lung cancers (70%), and least in stomach cancer (41%). Efficacy information with details was conveyed most often in articles on colorectal (54%), skin (54%), and liver (50%) cancers, and least in thyroid cancer (17%). In terms of discrepancies between news portrayal and actual statistics, the threat of pancreatic and liver cancers was overreported, wh...
Source: J Korean Med Sci - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: J Korean Med Sci Source Type: research