Whose view is it anyway? Media coverage of litigation in for-profit firms’ role in the opioid crisis

ABSTRACT

The United States opioid epidemic continues to bring suffering to individuals and families as well as a crushing economic toll to communities. Stakeholders require resources to combat the epidemic. Firms that manufacture, distribute, and market opioids are the primary defendants of lawsuits, which play out in public view. This study investigates the public statements made by firms and media coverage in opioid lawsuits through the lens of their word choices. We use text analysis to uncover the similarities and differences in the language used to discuss the opioid crisis. The results provide guidance for marketing, public relations, and communications.

Notes

¹ Text is compared to and scored against DICTION’s thirty-one dictionaries, which contain 10,000 words. The sub-variable scores are converted to z-scores, which are combined via addition and subtraction; a constant of fifty is added to this value to eliminate negative composite variable values (Hart & Carroll, 2015).