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Abstract
Public health officials have continually urged journalists and other members of the news media to ease off health frames that focus on individuals and to instead promote broader societal frames. Although some scholarly research has reinforced these pleas, none has examined the interplay between frames of health news coverage and resulting public comments. The current online environment invites such an analysis, allowing news organizations to post articles online and the public to comment on those articles. Using a content analysis, this study reveals thematic frames in online health stories may drive down gain-oriented responses, while episodic frames may prompt the public to share more personal comments. Furthermore, the findings examine other textual factors—gain and loss frames and mobilizing information—that may be driving the volume and frames of user comments to health stories online.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Nasha Lee, University of Texas at Austin, and Julianna Potter, University of Texas at Austin, for their assistance in the coding procedure of this study.
Notes
1Overall intercoder reliability scores for each of the pretests were as follows: Pretest 1 = .78; Pretest 2 = .87, Pretest 3 = .87.
Note. Occurrences measured in number of paragraphs for articles, number of sentences for comments; presence measured for mobilizing information.
***p < .001.
Note. Given the high number of possible correlations, a Bonferroni correction was run. The new significance level was set at p < .002 during this process, allowing for more accurate significance measures.
*Significant.