A media pandemic: Influenza A in Portuguese newspapers

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Felisbela
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Ruão, Teresa, Marinho, Sandra, Araújo, Rita Alexandra Manso
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/29523
• topic: Health communication; Influenza A; Newspapers; Science & Technology

On April 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic alert as a consequence of the appearance of a new influenza virus, named ‘Influenza A, H1N1’. In Portugal, media coverage on this disease was intense. However, as the number of deaths within Influenza A patients turned out to be much lower than the foreseen statistics of national authorities, the hypothesis of a ‘media pandemic’ was suggested by national opinion makers. Looking for a better understanding of the phenomenon, we conducted a study on media coverage and news sources on Influenza A in Portugal. The study of news sources on health issues is a way of understanding health information and it has been a neglected area on Health Communication. This investigation stood on the examination of 655 articles of three national newspapers, with distinct editorial criteria. The analysis considered six variables: number of sources, geographic location, genre, identification, status, and medical expertise. This task followed a quantitative methodology. The findings confirmed previous noticed trends on health information research: the power of official sources, the complexity of access to medical sources, and the lasting misunderstandings between journalists and the medical community.