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AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Aug 30, 2005
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October 2005, Vol 95, No. 10 | American Journal of Public Health 1832-1838
© 2005 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.049866

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Diabetes Portrayals in North American Print Media: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

Melanie Rock, PhD, MSW

The author is with the Department of Community Health Sciences, the Faculty of Social Work, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, Alberta, and the Université de Montréal, Quebec.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Melanie Rock, University of Calgary, Department of Community Health Sciences, Health Sciences Centre, 3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 4N1 (e-mail: mrock{at}ucalgary.ca).

Objectives. This study investigated how media coverage has portrayed diabetes as newsworthy.

Methods. The quantitative component involved tabulating diabetes coverage in 2 major Canadian newspapers, 1988–2001 and 1991–2001. The qualitative component focused on high-profile coverage in 2 major US magazines and 2 major Canadian newspapers, 1998–2000.

Results. Although coverage did not consistently increase, the quantitative results suggest an emphasis on linking diabetes with heart disease and mortality to convey its seriousness. The qualitative component identified 3 main ways of portraying type 2 diabetes: as an insidious problem, as a problem associated with particular populations, and as a medical problem.

Conclusions. Overall, the results suggest that when communicating with journalists, researchers and advocates have stressed that diabetes maims and kills. Yet even when media coverage acknowledged societal forces and circumstances as causes, the proposed remedies did not always include or stress modifications to social contexts. Neither the societal causes of public health problems nor possible societal remedies automatically received attention from researchers or from journalists. Skilled advocacy is needed to put societal causes and solutions on public agendas.






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