Nimegeer Amy, Patterson Chris, Hilton Shona
MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
BMJ Open. 2019 Apr 4;9(4):e025646. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-025646.
Media can influence public and policy-makers' perceptions of causes of, and solutions to, public health issues through selective presentation and framing. Childhood obesity is a health issue with both individual-level and societal-level drivers and solutions, but public opinion and mass media representations of obesity have typically focused on individual-level framings, at the cost of acknowledgement of a need for regulatory action.
To understand the salience and framing of childhood obesity across 19 years of UK national newspaper content.
Quantitative content analysis of 757 articles about childhood obesity obtained from six daily and five Sunday newspapers. Articles were coded manually for definitions, drivers and potential solutions. Data were analysed statistically, including analysis of time trends and variations by political alignment of source.
The frequency of articles grew from a low of two in 1996 to a peak of 82 in 2008, before declining to 40 in 2010. Individual-level drivers (59.8%) and solutions (36.5%) were mentioned more frequently than societal-level drivers (28.3%) and solutions (28.3%) across the sample, but societal solutions were mentioned more frequently during the final 8 years, coinciding with a marked decline in yearly frequency of articles.
Increased focus on societal solutions aligns with public health goals, but coincided with a reduction in the issue's salience in the media. Those advocating public policy solutions to childhood obesity may benefit from seeking to raise the issue's media profile while continuing to promote structural conceptualisations of childhood obesity.
媒体可通过选择性呈现和框架构建来影响公众及政策制定者对公共卫生问题的成因及解决方案的认知。儿童肥胖是一个涉及个体层面和社会层面驱动因素及解决方案的健康问题，但公众舆论和大众媒体对肥胖的呈现通常聚焦于个体层面的框架构建，却忽视了对监管行动必要性的认识。
了解英国全国性报纸19年间有关儿童肥胖问题的显著性及框架构建情况。
对从6份日报和5份周日报纸中获取的757篇关于儿童肥胖的文章进行定量内容分析。文章针对定义、驱动因素和潜在解决方案进行人工编码。对数据进行统计分析，包括时间趋势分析以及按来源的政治倾向进行的差异分析。
文章数量从1996年的低点2篇增至2008年的峰值82篇，随后在2010年降至40篇。在整个样本中，个体层面的驱动因素（59.8%）和解决方案（36.5%）比社会层面的驱动因素（28.3%）和解决方案（28.3%）被提及得更频繁，但在最后8年中，社会层面的解决方案被提及得更频繁，这与文章年发表频率的显著下降相吻合。
对社会层面解决方案的更多关注符合公共卫生目标，但与此同时该问题在媒体上的显著性却有所降低。那些倡导针对儿童肥胖问题采取公共政策解决方案的人，可能会从寻求提高该问题在媒体上的关注度，同时继续推广儿童肥胖问题的结构性概念化中受益。
