Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

West Nile Virus (WNV) has been reported as one of the worst epidemics in US history. This study sought to understand how WNV news stories were framed and how risk information was portrayed from its 1999 arrival in the US through the year 2012. The authors conducted a quantitative content analysis of online news articles obtained through Google News (N = 428). The results of this analysis were compared to the CDC’s ArboNET surveillance system. The following story frames were identified in this study: action, conflict, consequence, new evidence, reassurance and uncertainty, with the action frame appearing most frequently. Risk was communicated quantitatively without context in the majority of articles, and only in 2006, the year with the third-highest reported deaths, was risk reported with statistical accuracy. The results from the analysis indicated that at-risk communities were potentially under-informed as accurate risks were not communicated. This study offers evidence about how disease outbreaks are covered in relation to actual disease surveillance data.

Keywords

health communication public health mosquitoes health risk risk communication West Nile Virus

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Harvell

Mitchell

Ward

Alitzer

Dobson

Ostfeld

et al . Climate warning and disease risks for terrestrial and marine biota. Science. 2002; 296: 2158–2162.

Lafferty

. The ecology of climate change and infectious disease. Ecology. 2009; 90: 888–900.

Shuman

. Global climate change and infectious disease. N Engl J Med. 2010; 362: 1061–1063.

Rossi

Ross

Evans

. West Nile Virus. Clin Lab Med. 2010; 30: 47–65.

Sun

. West Nile epidemic on track to be deadliest ever: CDC. The Washington Post. September 19, 2012. Available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/west-nile-epidemic-on-track-to-be-deadliest-ever-cdc/2012/09/12/c09bbf1e-fcea-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html (accessed April 2, 2013).

West Nile Virus. MedlinePlus online. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/westnilevirus.html#cat42 (accessed April 2, 2013).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. West Nile Virus: symptoms and treatment. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/symptoms/ (accessed October 9, 2012).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. West Nile Virus: final annual maps and data 1999–2012. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/statsMaps/finalMapsData/index.html (accessed October 9, 2012).

Reese

. Prologue – framing public life: a bridging model for media research. In: Reese

Gandy

Grant

(eds) Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2001: pp.7–31.

10.

Entman

. Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. J Commun. 1993; 43: 51–58.

11.

Scheufele

. Framing as a theory of media effects. J Commun. 1999; 49: 103–122.

12.

Price

Tewksbury

Powers

. Switching trains of thought: the impact of news frames on readers’ cognitive responses. Commun Res. 1997; 24: 481–506.

13.

Fishman

. Manufacturing the News. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press; 1980.

14.

Nisbet

Brossard

Kroepsch

. Framing science: the stem cell controversy in an age of press/politics. Harvard Int J Press/Politics. 2003; 8: 36–70.

15.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Principles and practices working with the media 1994. Available from: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/risk/riskprimer/media.html (accessed April 2, 2013).

16.

Griffin

Dunwoody

Zabala

. Public reliance on risk communication channels in the wake of a Cryptosporidium outbreak. Risk Anal. 1998; 18: 367–375.

17.

Roche

Muskavitch

MAT

. Limited precision in print media communication of West Nile Virus risks. Sci Commun. 2003; 24: 353–365.

18.

Evensen

Clarke

. Efficacy information in media coverage of infectious disease outbreaks: an ill predicament? Sci Commun. 2012; 34: 392–418.

19.

Frohlich

Fougner

Ren

. Communication a health epidemic: a risk assessment of the Swine Flu coverage in U.S. newspapers. Int J Public Health. 2011; 3: 63–76.

20.

McComas

Shanahan

. Telling stories about global climate change: Measuring the impact of narratives on news cycles. Commun. Res. 1999; 1: 30–57.

21.

Shih

Wijaya

Brossard

. Media coverage of public health epidemics: linking framing and issue attention cycle toward an integrated theory of print news coverage of epidemics. Mass Commun Soc. 2008; 11: 141–160.

22.

Riffe

Lacy

Fico

. Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2005.

23.

Wimmer

Dominick

. Mass Media Research: An Introduction. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth; 1994.

24.

StatCounter. Top 5 search engines in the United States from August 2011 to August 2012. Available from: http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-US-monthly-201108-201208-bar (accessed April 2, 2013).

25.

Hurley

Kosenko

Brashers

. Uncertain terms: message features of online cancer news. Commun Monogr. 2011; 78: 370–390.

26.

Purcell

Rainie

Mitchell

Rosenstiel

Olmstead

. Understanding the participatory news consumer. Pew Internet & American Life Project. March 1, 2010. Available from: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx (accessed April 2, 2013).

27.

Fox

Jones

. The social life of health information. Pew Internet & American Life Project. June 11, 2009. Available from: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/8-The-Social-Life-of-Health-Information.aspx (accessed April 2, 2013).

28.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The state of the news media 2012: an annual report on American journalism. Available from: http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/overview-4/key-findings/ (accessed April 2, 2013).

29.

Scott

. Reliability of content analysis: the case of nominal scale coding. Public Opin Q. 1955; 19: 321–325.

30.

Altman

. Officials working to contain West Nile Virus. New York Times. April 26, 2000. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/26/nyregion/officials-working-to-contain-west-nile-virus.html (accessed April 2, 2013).

31.

Caviness

. 4 good ways to get rid of mosquitoes in your yard. Fox News. September 29, 2012. Available from: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/09/29/4-good-ways-to-get-rid-mosquitoes-in-your-yard/ (accessed April 2, 2013).

32.

Ungar

. The rise and (relative) decline of global warming as a social problem. Sociol Q. 1992; 33: 483–501.

33.

Weise

. Hantavirus in Yosemite may be shape of things to come. USA Today. October 5, 2012. Available from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/09/29/hantavirus-yosemite-west-nile-bubonic-plague/1566407/ (accessed April 2, 2013).

34.

Xinyi

Elam

Yuen

. The perceived threat of SARS and its impact on precautionary actions and adverse consequences: a qualitative study among Chinese communities in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Int J Behav Med. 2009; 16: 58–67.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.44 MB