School of Journalism and Communication, National Media Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
Department of Communication, University of Albany, State University of New York, New York, NY, United States.
JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2021 Oct 21;7(10):e29375. doi: 10.2196/29375.
Hospice care, a type of end-of-life care provided for dying patients and their families, has been rooted in China since the 1980s. It can improve receivers' quality of life as well as ease their economic burden. The Chinese mass media have continued to actively dispel misconceptions surrounding hospice care and deliver the latest information to citizens.
This study aims to retrieve and analyze news reports on hospice care in order to gain insight into whether any differences existed in heath information delivered over time and to evaluate the role of mass media in health communication in recent years.
We searched the Huike (WiseSearch) news database for relevant news reports from Chinese mass media released between 2014 and 2019. We defined two time periods for this study: (1) January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016, and (2) January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019. The data cleaning process was completed using Python. We determined appropriate topic numbers for these two periods based on the coherence score and applied latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling. Keywords for each topic and corresponding topics' names were then generated. The topics were plotted into different circles, and their distances on the 2D plane was represented by multidimensional scaling.
After removing duplicated and irrelevant news articles, we obtained a total of 2227 articles. We chose 8 as the suitable topic number for both study periods and generated topic names and associated keywords. The top 3 most reported topics in the first period were patient treatment, hospice care stories, and development of health care services and health insurance, accounting for 18.68% (178/953), 16.58% (158/953), and 14.17% (135/953) of the collected reports, respectively. The top 3 most reported topics in the second period were hospice care stories, patient treatment, and development of health care services, accounting for 15.62% (199/953), 15.38% (15.38/953), and 14.27% (182/953), respectively.
Topic modeling of news reports gives us a better understanding of the patterns of health communication about hospice care by mass media. Chinese mass media frequently reported on hospice care in April of every year on account of a traditional Chinese festival. Moreover, an increase in coverage was observed in the second period. The two periods shared 6 similar topics, of which patient treatment outstrips hospice care stories was the most reported topic in the second period, implying the humanistic spirit behind the reports. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest stakeholders cooperate with the mass media when planning to update policies.
临终关怀是为临终患者及其家属提供的一种临终关怀服务，自 20 世纪 80 年代以来在中国扎根。它可以提高接受者的生活质量，减轻他们的经济负担。中国大众媒体一直在积极消除对临终关怀的误解，并向公民传递最新信息。
本研究旨在检索和分析临终关怀的新闻报道，以了解随着时间的推移，健康信息传递是否存在差异，并评估近年来大众媒体在健康传播中的作用。
我们在慧科（WiseSearch）新闻数据库中检索了 2014 年至 2019 年中国大众媒体发布的相关新闻报道。我们将本研究分为两个时间段：（1）2014 年 1 月 1 日至 2016 年 12 月 31 日，（2）2017 年 1 月 1 日至 2019 年 12 月 31 日。使用 Python 完成数据清理过程。我们根据连贯性得分确定了这两个时期的适当主题数量，并应用了潜在狄利克雷分配主题建模。然后为每个主题生成关键词和相应的主题名称。将主题绘制到不同的圆圈中，并通过多维缩放表示它们在 2D 平面上的距离。
在删除重复和不相关的新闻文章后，我们共获得 2227 篇文章。我们选择 8 作为两个研究时期的合适主题数量，并生成主题名称和相关关键词。第一个时期报告最多的三个主题是患者治疗、临终关怀故事和医疗保健服务与健康保险的发展，分别占收集报告的 18.68%（178/953）、16.58%（158/953）和 14.17%（135/953）。第二个时期报告最多的三个主题是临终关怀故事、患者治疗和医疗保健服务的发展，分别占 15.62%（199/953）、15.38%（15.38/953）和 14.27%（182/953）。
对新闻报道的主题建模使我们更好地了解大众媒体对临终关怀的健康传播模式。中国大众媒体经常在每年四月报道临终关怀，因为这是中国的一个传统节日。此外，在第二个时期观察到报道量有所增加。两个时期有 6 个相似的主题，其中患者治疗超过临终关怀故事是第二个时期报告最多的主题，这意味着报告背后的人文精神。基于本研究的结果，我们建议利益相关者在制定政策时与大众媒体合作。
