A Large-Scale Analysis of Health Journalism by Reliable and Unreliable Media.

Media outlets play crucial roles in disseminating health information. Previous studies have examined how health journalism is practiced by reliable and unreliable media outlets. However, most of the existing works are conducted over a relatively small set of samples. In this study, we investigate a large collection (about 30 thousand) of health-related news articles which were published by 29 reliable and 20 unreliable media outlets and identify several differences in health journalism practice. Our analysis shows that there are significant structural, topical, and semantic disparities in the way reliable and unreliable media outlets conduct health journalism. We argue, in this age of 'fake news', these findings will be useful to combat online health disinformation.