Unbalanced news coverage of Zika virus highlights need for more public health messaging
May 9, 2019
A content analysis of United States newspaper and television news coverage about the Zika virus and travel between 2016 and 2017 shows that the media failed to emphasize critical information about sexual transmission of the disease or how travelers should approach significant barriers to practicing Zika-prevention measures.
Mallory Wolfe Turner
Mallory Wolfe Turner, MSPH, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is co-author of the article “Zika and travel in the news: a content analysis of US news stories during the outbreak in 2016-2017,” which was published in the March 2019 issue of Public Health. Other Gillings School authors on the paper are Jim Herrington, PhD, professor in the Department of Health Behavior; and Sylvia Becker-Dreps, MD, MPH, associate professor, Lola Stamm, PhD, associate professor emeritus, and Devika Chawla, PhD, alumnus, all from the Department of Epidemiology.
Dr. Sylvia Becker-Dreps
Almost all of the examined news stories mentioned mosquito-borne transmission, but only half mentioned sexual transmission of the virus. News stories were more likely to cover Zika outcomes than symptoms, and they disproportionately covered outcomes for babies over outcomes that could affect adults. More than three quarters of news stories mentioned delaying or avoiding travel as a prevention strategy.
Overall, the analysis showed that media outlets did little to address significant barriers to practicing Zika-prevention measures, Turner said. The most common ways people were encouraged to prevent Zika were to delay or avoid travel to certain areas, use mosquito repellent, wear long sleeves and pants, and empty any standing water. These measures, for a variety of reasons, can be unreasonable, she added.
“Delaying or avoiding travel may not be an option for travelers, depending on their circumstances. Mosquito repellent can be outrageously expensive in tourist towns in the tropics, and many are not necessarily effective. Wearing long sleeves and pants is miserable in tropical beach areas, and travelers have limited ability to empty standing water in areas with poor drainage,” she said. “That 10 percent of media content addressed these barriers was surprising to me and showed the disconnect between the media coverage and the realities of being in Zika-affected areas.”
Public health organizations and professionals can use this study’s findings to focus on improving communications amid public health crises in ways that might ensure comprehensive coverage and correct pervasive inaccurate information. Real-time monitoring of news media and frequent content analysis of news stories can give public health organizations an opportunity to provide media with targeted messages to keep the public safe.
“For example, rather than simply recommending that people use mosquito repellent, a more useful message would be to recommend packing a specific type of effective mosquito repellent while explaining that it may be hard to find or prohibitively expensive at a travel destination,” Turner said.
Contact the Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@listserv.unc.edu.
