Break it to Me Harshly: The Effects of Intersecting News Frames in Lung Cancer and Obesity Coverage

Abstract

By examining the publicily identified top two health problems in the United States, this research, using an experimental design, investigates whether different news frame combinations intensify or diminish framing effects. In this study, the cognitive dimension and affective dimension of framing defined as thematic/episodic and gain/loss, respectively, are manipulated to determine if changing the way newspaper stories report obesity and lung cancer will alter the readers' attribution of societal and individual responsibility. This study revealed a significant interaction between thematic framing and loss framing on societal attribution of responsibility for the health issues—lung cancer and obesity.

Notes

¹The Kaiser poll was conducted in November, July, and May of 2003, and in June and February of 2004 (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004). American polled listed cancer, obesity, and lack of health care coverage as the most important health problems facing Americans. For the purposes of this study only physical conditions and diseases are included.

²For the purposes of this paper, the results of the Kaiser Foundation survey were used for the literature review. This poll was conducted several times throughout 2003 and 2004 with the same results.

³The means were in the predicted directions with thematic stories showing higher means on social responsibility (M = 6.15) and episodic stories showing higher means on individual responsibility (M = 5.73); similarly, gain stories scored higher on positive emotion (M = 5.14), and loss stories scored higher on negative emotion (M = 6.47). Lower power related to the small sample size prevented finding statistical significance.

When answering the open-ended questions, “How would you describe this article to a friend?” participants in the episodic gain and episodic loss groups used more episodic statements (N = 31) than thematic statements (N = 2) to describe the health stories. Participants in the thematic gain and thematic loss groups used more thematic statements (N = 27) than episodic statements (N = 4) to describe the health stories.

⁴After each article, the respondents were asked to describe the article to a friend. The answers were content analyzed to determine if participants recognized whether stories were thematically or episodically framed. The unit of analysis was the statement. Only message relevant statements were coded. Two coding categories were created: thematic statements and episodic statements. Two independent coders were trained and coded 10% of the answers. Intercoder agreement was computed with Cohen's kappa coefficient of reliability. The reliabilities were .80 and above. Chi-square analysis showed individuals who read the thematically framed stories identified significantly more thematic than episodic statements within the stories (χ² = 44.56, df = 3, p < .05). The respondents who read the episodically framed stories identified significantly more episodic than thematic statements (χ² = 15.78, df = 3, p < .05).

(LC) = Lung cancer; (O) = Obesity.

∗p < .01. ∗∗p < .05.

∗p < .01. ∗∗p < .05.

∗p < .01. ∗∗p < .05.