BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Citizens tend to obtain their medical information via newspapers
These informations, having a mass media format, deliver messages which are either too reassuring or too frightening, overlooking the fact that these informations are derived from basic research.
Moreover the bad habit of not reporting citations is an important pitfall.
The presentation’s objective is an analysis of daily lay-press to verify these conditions.
METHODS
Five national newspapers, some local newspapers and two international newspapers will be reviewed over a period of four non consecutive months: November, January, March and June.
This should allow us to see how information changes, in terms of quantity and kind, according to the yearly seasons.
Only articles reporting news derived from medical journals will be selected.
The following informations will be extracted and coded
· The number of articles fullfilling our inclusion criteria
· Which newspapers have a higher rate of health news
· The topics covered
· Whether seasons influence the subject chosen for the news
· Whether citations are reported
· Citation’s accuracy (when reported)
· Position and lenght of the article within the newspaper
· The writing style used to report the news
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