Mapping news coverage of injury in an urban metropolitan area: Are the news media communicating prevention messages?


Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

3150.0: Monday, December 12, 2005 - Board 5

Abstract #115964

Katherine Clegg Smith, PhD¹, Andrea Gielen, ScD², Juhee Cho, MA¹, and Jon S. Vernick, JD, MPH³. (1) Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins University, 624 N. Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21205, 410 502-0025, kasmith@jhsph.edu, (2) The Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, The Johns Hopkins University, Hampton House, Fifth floor, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21205, (3) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 624 N. Broadway, Room 594, Baltimore, MD 21205-1996

Purpose Unintentional injuries are a leading cause of death, and public health has appropriately focused its gaze on changing individual prevention and risk behaviors. While such efforts are critical, we also need population based and policy oriented interventions to significantly reduce the problem of injury. Influencing news media coverage has been found effective in changing both behavior and policy in relation to multiple public health issues, but as yet, such an approach has not been fully utilized towards unintentional injury prevention.

Methods The data presented here represent the first systematic attempt to analyze news coverage of two leading sources of unintentional injury – house fires and car crashes. Articles were collected via LexisNexis for four Maryland daily newspapers for a period of six months (July-December, 2004). Each article (n>600) is subjected to a qualitative textual analysis to create measures of prominence, content, thematic coverage, episodic coverage and tone. Our analysis incorporates aggregated measures of each of these variables by newspaper.

Results Our descriptive analyses include a comparison of volume, content and tone of news coverage across newspapers. We will also present in-depth qualitative analyses of the rhetorical devices employed to deliver prevention messages, discuss events as episodic and frame coverage in terms of individual responsibility.

Conclusions For injury prevention, assessment of current media coverage and framing of injury topics is a critical step toward improving the efficacy of policy and behavior change efforts. This analysis will highlight the necessary objectives for engaging media advocacy strategies in effective injury prevention.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

1. Discuss the rationale for conducting a media advocacy needs assessment relating to news coverage of unintentional injury.
2. Recognize the commonalities and differences between print news coverage of house fires and fatal car crashes in terms of prevention messages.
3. Assess the necessary next steps for public health advocates in relation to strengthening the role of media advocacy in injury prevention efforts.

Keywords: Injury Prevention, Media

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Transportation and Other Unintentional Injuries Posters

The 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition (December 10-14, 2005) of APHA