Media Coverage of Toxic Risks: A Content Analysis of Pediatric Environmental Health Information Available to New and Expecting Mothers

Abstract

Mass media play a central role in providing environmental health information to the public. Despite several decades of environmental and health communication research, the nature of environmental health information available to one of the most vulnerable populations—new and expecting mothers—has received limited attention. To address this gap, this study poses two questions: (1) How prevalent is information related to prenatal and pediatric environmental health (PPEH) in the media, and (2) how much coverage do the most concerning chemical threats to PPEH receive? A content analysis of 2,543 texts in popular media sources (i.e., the Associated Press [AP], parenting magazines, and parenting websites) from September 2012 to February 2013 revealed that roughly three pieces of PPEH information were made available to mothers daily. Prior research has shown that media coverage of environmental health issues has decreased over the years; however, these results suggest that at-risk populations are likely to encounter this type of information in the media. Also, while certain chemicals received ample coverage (i.e., pesticides, cigarette smoke, mercury), other issues deemed concerning by federal agencies did not (i.e., lead, phthalates). This study also introduces a novel method for harvesting online content encountered incidentally. Implications of these findings for communication research and practice are discussed.

Notes

¹ In January 2013, a brief pilot survey was fielded using the Survey Sampling International online panel. To be eligible for the study, female panelists in the United States must have been pregnant and/or have had at least one child under age 7 years. The survey was completed by 63 respondents and asked a series of open- and closed-ended questions to determine from which sources new and expecting mothers acquire information about chemicals in the environment that may be harmful to children’s health. Mothers were also asked open- and closed-ended questions to ascertain which chemicals they believe are most concerning to children’s health. The study was approved by the university’s institutional review board.

² General news was operationalized as news from television, radio, and newspapers. In closed-ended questions, respondents were instructed to exclude news from newspaper, radio, and television websites from their responses to website-specific questions in an effort to keep response categories mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

³ Dates in 2012 with no content updates on Parents.com: October 7 and 22; December 7, 11, and 24. Dates in 2013 with no content updates on Parents.com: January 6, 12, and 21; February 3, 10, 16, and 23.

⁴ This figure could be characterized as “inflated” for two reasons. First, every magazine article sampled (n = 85) was determined to be relevant as this was a pre-condition in the sampling procedure itself. Second, Web-based content was likely to be relevant, given that it (a) focused exclusively on pregnant women and young children living in the United States and (b) underwent an extensive sampling process that filtered out a significant portion of content unrelated to PPEH before coding even began. By comparison, only 65.8% (n = 194) of stories from the Associated Press were determined to be relevant.

⁵ These estimates should not be interpreted as a measure of individual exposure to PPEH information in these sources, but rather as what was available in the information environment. Here, the likelihood of exposure to any given piece of PPEH information in the media is ignored, as are encounters with such information that may have been mediated through medical professionals and interpersonal sources, resulting in an underestimate of total information availability.