Department of Mass Communication, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.
Health Educ Res. 2020 Oct 1;35(5):460-470. doi: 10.1093/her/cyaa020.
Previous studies on media coverage of health issues hardly recognize the role of time in moderating media contents. Instead, scholars most often examine how news media report health issues. In this study, we recognized the role of time by taking into account how media report differs based on when a global outbreak is confirmed in a country and when it is not. We focused on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and examined six media-two TV stations, two newspapers and two radio stations. We content-analysed 537 stories and found that there were few stories about the virus before it was confirmed in Nigeria. But as soon as Nigeria recorded a confirmed case, the number of stories tripled. We also noticed that story format and recommendation on health behaviour were also closely linked to the COVID-19 status of Nigeria. However, we did not find an association between Nigeria's COVID-19 status and policy recommendation among the media studied. Therefore, this study concludes that Nigerian media did not provide sufficient health warning messages on COVID-19 before its spread to the country.
以往关于媒体对健康问题报道的研究几乎没有认识到时间在调节媒体内容方面的作用。相反，学者们通常研究新闻媒体如何报道健康问题。在这项研究中，我们通过考虑媒体报道的差异，认识到了时间的作用，这种差异是基于一个国家何时确认全球疫情爆发以及何时没有确认来体现的。我们关注的是 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19），并对六种媒体——两家电视台、两家报纸和两家广播电台进行了研究。我们对 537 个故事进行了内容分析，发现病毒在尼日利亚得到确认之前，关于它的故事很少。但尼日利亚一确诊病例，有关该病毒的故事数量就增加了两倍。我们还注意到，故事格式和对健康行为的建议也与尼日利亚的 COVID-19 状况密切相关。然而，我们没有发现研究中的媒体与尼日利亚 COVID-19 状况之间存在政策建议的关联。因此，本研究得出结论，在 COVID-19 传播到尼日利亚之前，尼日利亚媒体没有就该病毒提供足够的健康警告信息。
