WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE HEALTH CONTENT OF TURKISH PRESS

Online Submission, 2012

This study was retrospective in design and the purpose was to review health information related to PA (physical activity) in articles of Turkish newspapers. The search covered newspapers article printed between January 1, 2002 and December 31, 2004 in all Turkish newspapers that are accessible via the electronic newspaper database. Four daily Turkish newspapers were identified as having regularly archived documents on Web pages. The search was limited to articles that contained the phrase "physical activity" within them and resulted in 184 published articles being identified. A total of 165 (89.7%) articles presenting health information messages related with PA were selected for content analysis in that study. General health information about PA (35.9%), weight management (21.2%) and cardiovascular (11.9%) effects of the PA were the mostly frequently given as the main content of the articles. The target population in the articles included sedentary population (27.8%), individuals having specific disease (23.9%) and overweight people (16.9%). Twenty-eight of the articles (15.2%) contained information regarding the duration and frequency of the PA for the target population. Thirty articles (16.3%) contained information suggesting general exercises for muscle strength and flexibility. In the articles, the rate of health professions or academicians cited by the journalist was 27.7% in the articles. It was concluded that between 2002 and 2004, the published articles relating to PA in the Turkish new papers to promote the awareness of public had inadequate suggestions for promoting PA. The experts on PA, such as health professions and academicians, must be augmented and encouraged to educate and change health behaviors of the community through newspaper.

Concern for public health is considered to be of crucial societal value for the national policy of every democratic government. As usually happens, the status and changes to social policy may be widely communicated by the media in every country in various ways, either in favor of or against government planning, depending on different factors. Such media saturation can result in deep concern in the area of health issues. Add the current economic crisis, especially as depicted in certain countries of Southern Europe, to such concerns, and reporting on health issues becomes an interesting challenge for the media outlets in these countries. This paper presents a comparative study concerning the press coverage of health issues in the Republic of Cyprus. The study is divided in two parts; the first part was conducted before and the second part after the banking crisis became evident in the local society. The aim of this paper is to examine whether health reporting in the national press was altered after the crisis, and, if so, in which ways.

2012

Background: Mass media play an important role in keeping people up-to-date with the latest health news. This study aims at investigating the quality of health news disseminated in the print media, its course of production and factors affecting its quality. Methods: In the quantitative section of the study, 410 health-related news items, published during a six-month span in the Iranian public press, underwent content analysis. In the qualitative section, focus group discussions were held with journalists, editors-in-chief and news gatekeepers.

Patient Education and …, 2011

Today more than ever, health is one of the main topics covered by the mass media. Obviously, good health is a prime concern for all of us, and its attainment and maintenance involve many and varied aspects, including economic ones. Thus, the public finds itself immersed in a veritable sea of health-related news from many different sources, often without the means to discern what is really useful or important, or understand the true significance of the intended messages, or even appraise their accuracy [1-4]. Many population surveys have recognized the mass media as the main source of public health information [6,7]. The impact of this coverage on citizens' knowledge, perceptions and attitudes can be analyzed from two perspectives: its great power to disseminate information and form public opinion and the potential for distortion from useless or inaccurate information [5-9]. Such effects stem not only from potential information overload, but also from poor information quality, in terms of correctness, reliability, understandability, usefulness, balance and independence, which people are often unable to evaluate due to limited health literacy. In crises or emergencies, the mass media may create a ''communications storm'', which shifts attention to a single health problem, such as AIDS, SARS, BSE, or avian flu [10,11] Quantitative and qualitative analyses of mass media messages over the time can be a useful tool to evaluate their possible effects on public perceptions and behaviors. To this end, the Pisa University OCS (Osservatorio della Comunicazione Sanitaria = Health Communication Observatory) has collected and stored in a DBT (Data Base Text) all health-related articles published each day since 1999 in Italy's three most popular newspapers for quantitative and qualitative analyses. This paper describes the methods followed for collecting, storing and analyzing these articles and using the results to design questionnaire surveys on information sources, knowledge, attitudes and risk perception of citizens. To explain this methodology as example food safety related issues were investigated both with article analysis and questionnaire survey.

Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 2010

This research was planned in order to analyze news items about nursing published in the media and to investigate how nursing is portrayed in publications in Turkey. News items related to nursing were accessed for the year 2006, by searching the online news archives with the keyword nursing. Data were collected on 8 characteristics. In total, 103 news items regarding nursing were collected from 7 daily newspapers and evaluated. It was concluded that news regarding nursing was poorly covered in terms of quantity and quality and that published articles gave a negative impression of nursing. Nor did the published articles reflect the scientific side of nursing.

This study aims to reveal whether obesity which is deemed today as a public health issue, has been dealt within public health frame in Turkish press after the “Fight Against Obeisty Campaign” launched in 2012 by the Ministry of Health. Accordingly, a total of 303 articles on obesity which have been selected from daily newspapers Zaman, Posta, Hürriyet, Sabah, Sözcü and the national and regional editions of the same published in Turkey between January 1 – December 31, 2013 have been examined via content analysis method in the study. The findings have revealed that individual refererences were majorly both in the risk factors of obesity and in measures and solution suggestions regarding obesity, that obesity has been dealt with as highly disconnected from social & environmental context. A high rate of the articles is deprived of public health frame.

International Journal Of Eurasia Social Sciences, 2019

Individuals whose lifestyles have become modernized with the progress of technology move less and consume less calorie. In addition, rapid changes in diets together with the economic development and globalization have also caused changes in individuals' feeding habits. Fast-foodstyle nutrition has increased the calorie intake even further. In this sense, today obesity has become an important public health problem, which concerns all age groups and has a prevalence increasing every passing day. Accordingly, it is also very important to raise awareness of obesity in people. The basic function of health communication is to raise awareness of individuals with accurate information about health matters and develop the community health by directing individuals toward accurate behaviors. A great part of society applies the information they get about health from the media instead of healthcare professionals. However, the media usually commercializes miraculous foods, miraculous applications, so-called effective diet programs and feeding habits encouraging consumption or lifestyle changes instead of raising awareness in people. In this study aiming to reveal the presentation of obesity in internet news; the data (n=209) acquired as a result of screening the term "obesity" on the web page of Sabah and Yeni Şafak newspapers for three months were examined using the content analysis method. The data were analyzed with the "SPSS 22.0" packaged software after being coded with a researcher and a coder on a coding form which was prepared by the researcher. The data were analyzed using arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency, and chi-square (X 2) test.

Public Health Frontier, 2015

The world is changing from day to day, developing new tools of communication. The greatest tool developed in the 21 st century is the media. Media provides news of all kinds, including health information. The aim of this study is to describe the role of media, analyzed according to the case study of swine flu news in newspapers in Turkey. Method: This study seeks to examine the way in which swine flu (and the subsequent actions and discussion) was reported in the Turkish press, with particular attention to the framing devices used and the factors that might influence these framing decisions. Newspapers were chosen to represent the media as the design of the study. Influenza-related news for two consecutive years was chosen as the analytical subject; 575 related news reports were found. Results: There were 496 news reports in the first study year, and 50 in the second. Influenza news occurred primarily (300 news sources) between October-December 2009, while only 14 appeared during the same period in the second year. It was observed that the news pieces were initially located on first pages/covers and the upper part of the pages, covering larger areas. Disease and prevention related pictures were chosen at the crisis point, in particular. In the second year, the area occupied by swine flu news was smaller, occurring on inner pages and written by reporters (p<0.05). Conclusion: Health-related media content is provided when the subject is high on the public agenda, and if the issue poses a threat to the society, such as during crisis periods. In fact, protection is more important for health, so that health related topics should be provided in advance of crisis periods.