Wang, J. and Lai, W.-F. orcid.org/0000-0003-0585-6396 (2021) News coverage of drug development: implications for the conveyance of health information. BMC Public Health, 21. 1799. ISSN 1471-2458
Abstract
Background Technical information regarding health-related advances is sometimes esoteric for the general public. News media, therefore, plays a key role in public health promotion via health information conveyance. In this study, we use China as a sample country and analyze the claims and frames in news coverage of health-related advances, with special focus on news coverage of the development and performance of newly developed or tested drugs.
Methods A keyword search was performed to retrieve news articles from four representative news agencies in China. In total, 3029 news reports were retrieved, of which 128 were selected for further analysis.
Results Four aspects of news coverage of drug development were identified: (1) the characteristics of new drugs covered, (2) the sources of information, (3) the accuracy of health information in newspapers, and (4) textual features of news coverage.
Conclusions Our findings reveal that guidelines should be established to facilitate more systematic news reporting on health-related advances. Additionally, literacy among the general public and professionalism in health information conveyance should be promoted to negate the “illusion of knowing” about health-related advances.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Keywords: | Health information conveyance; Chinese news media; Illusion of knowing; Drug development |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Food Science and Nutrition (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Jul 2024 10:32 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jul 2024 10:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMC |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12889-021-11849-8 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:215193 |