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The way media portray public health problems influences the public’s perception of problems and related solutions. Social media allows users to engage with news and to collectively construct meaning. This paper examined news in comparison to user-generated content related to opioids to understand the role of second-level agenda-setting in public health. We analyzed 162,760 tweets about the opioid crisis, and compared the main topics and their sentiments with 2998 opioid stories from The New York Times online. Evidence from this study suggests that second-level agenda setting on social media is different from the news; public communication about opioids on X/Twitter highlights attributes that are different from those highlighted in the news. The findings suggest that public health communication should strategically utilize social media data, including obtaining consumer insight from personal tweets, listening to diverse views and warning signs from issue tweets, and tuning in to the media for policy trends.
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Freedom of the Press and Public Responsiveness
Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1728792
- PAR ID:
- 10176336
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Perspectives on Politics
- ISSN:
- 1537-5927
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 13
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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A Linguistic Analysis of News Coverage of E-Healthcare in China with a Heterogeneous Graphical ModelE-healthcare has been envisaged as a major component of the infrastructure of modern healthcare, and has been developing rapidly in China. For healthcare, news media can play an important role in raising public interest and utilization of a particular service and complicating (and, perhaps clouding) debate on public health policy issues. We conducted a linguistic analysis of news reports from January 2015 to June 2021 related to E-healthcare in mainland China, using a heterogeneous graphical modeling approach. This approach can simultaneously cluster the datasets and estimate the conditional dependence relationships of keywords. It was found that there were eight phases of media coverage. The focuses and main topics of media coverage were extracted based on the network hub and module detection. The temporal patterns of media reports were found to be mostly consistent with the policy trend. Specifically, in the policy embryonic period (2015–2016), two phases were obtained, industry management was the main topic, and policy and regulation were the focuses of media coverage. In the policy development period (2017–2019), four phases were discovered. All the four main topics, namely industry development, health care, financial market, and industry management, were present. In 2017 Q3–2017 Q4, the major focuses of media coverage included social security, healthcare and reform, and others. In 2018 Q1, industry regulation and finance became the focuses. In the policy outbreak period (2020–), two phases were discovered. Financial market and industry management were the main topics. Medical insurance and healthcare for the elderly became the focuses. This analysis can offer insights into how the media responds to public policy for E-healthcare, which can be valuable for the government, public health practitioners, health care industry investors, and others.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719003852
