Bossema Francien G, Burger Peter, Bratton Luke, Challenger Aimée, Adams Rachel C, Sumner Petroc, Schat Joop, Numans Mattijs E, Smeets Ionica
Department of Science Communication and Society, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Computational Imaging, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Wellcome Open Res. 2019 Jul 8;4:56. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15147.2. eCollection 2019.
This research is an investigation into the role of expert quotes in health news, specifically whether news articles containing a quote from an independent expert are less often exaggerated than articles without such a quote. Retrospective quantitative content analysis of journal articles, press releases, and associated news articles was performed. The investigated sample are press releases on peer-reviewed health research and the associated research articles and news stories. Our sample consisted of 462 press releases and 668 news articles from the UK (2011) and 129 press releases and 185 news articles from The Netherlands (2015). We hand-coded all journal articles, press releases and news articles for correlational claims, using a well-tested codebook. The main outcome measures are types of sources that were quoted and exaggeration of correlational claims. We used counts, 2x2 tables and odds ratios to assess the relationship between presence of quotes and exaggeration of the causal claim. Overall, 99.1% of the UK press releases and 84.5% of the Dutch press releases contain at least one quote. For the associated news articles these percentages are: 88.6% in the UK and 69.7% in the Netherlands. Authors of the study are most often quoted and only 7.5% of UK and 7.0% of Dutch news articles contained a new quote by an expert source, i.e. one not provided by the press release. The relative odds that an article without an external expert quote contains an exaggeration of causality is 2.6. The number of articles containing a quote from an independent expert is low, but articles that cite an external expert do contain less exaggeration.
本研究旨在调查专家引述在健康新闻中的作用，具体而言，包含独立专家引述的新闻文章是否比没有此类引述的文章更少出现夸张表述。对期刊文章、新闻稿及相关新闻报道进行了回顾性定量内容分析。所调查的样本是经过同行评审的健康研究的新闻稿以及相关的研究文章和新闻报道。我们的样本包括来自英国（2011年）的462篇新闻稿和668篇新闻报道，以及来自荷兰（2015年）的129篇新闻稿和185篇新闻报道。我们使用经过充分测试的编码手册，对所有期刊文章、新闻稿和新闻报道中的相关性声明进行人工编码。主要的结果指标是被引述的消息来源类型以及相关性声明的夸张程度。我们使用计数、2×2表格和比值比来评估引述的存在与因果声明夸张之间的关系。总体而言，99.1%的英国新闻稿和84.5%的荷兰新闻稿至少包含一条引述。对于相关的新闻报道，这些百分比分别为：英国88.6%，荷兰69.7%。研究作者被引述的频率最高，只有7.5%的英国新闻报道和7.0%的荷兰新闻报道包含专家来源的新引述，即不是新闻稿中提供的引述。没有外部专家引述的文章包含因果关系夸张表述的相对比值为2.6。包含独立专家引述的文章数量较少，但引用外部专家的文章确实包含较少的夸张表述。
