Beard Jessica H, Trombley Shannon, Walker Tia, Roberts Leah, Partain Laura, MacMillan Jim, Midberry Jennifer
Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma Surgery and Surgical Critical Care, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, 3401 N. Broad St, 4th Floor, Zone C, Philadelphia, PA, 19140, USA.
Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
BMC Public Health. 2024 May 3;24(1):1221. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18718-0.
Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policy makers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people.
This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/month from January-June 2021 from the database (n = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include broader social context for violence.
Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories.
Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.
在美国，枪支暴力是一个日益严重的公共卫生问题。新闻报道影响着公众和政策制定者理解及应对包括枪支暴力在内的健康威胁的方式。为了更好地了解枪支暴力是如何向公众传达的，我们旨在确定枪支暴力在电视新闻中被构建为公共卫生问题的程度，并衡量枪支暴力受害者所认定的有害新闻内容。
这是一项对费城当地电视台关于枪支暴力的新闻报道进行的定量内容分析，使用了一个包含7497个片段的数据库。我们从该数据库中编制了一个分层样本，样本来自2021年1月至6月每月随机选择的两天播出的片段（n = 192个片段）。我们创建了一个编码手册来衡量公共卫生框架要素，并为每个报道分配一个有害内容分数，然后对片段进行编码。将聚焦于单次枪击事件的情节性框架报道的特征与包含暴力更广泛社会背景的主题性框架片段进行比较。
大多数片段采用情节性框架（79.2%），将执法官员作为主要叙述者（50.5%），并包含警方画面（79.2%）。总共提到了433名枪支暴力受害者，每个报道平均包含2.8名枪击受害者。片段中大多数枪支暴力受害者（67.4%）除了年龄和/或性别外没有其他个人信息。大多数片段（84.4%）至少包含一个有害内容要素。每个片段的平均有害内容分数为2.6。大多数片段缺少公共卫生框架要素，包括流行病学背景、根本原因、公共卫生叙述者和视觉资料以及解决方案。与情节性报道相比，主题性报道包含更多的公共卫生框架要素和更少的有害内容。
当地电视台新闻对枪支暴力的公共卫生报道有限，有害内容很常见。这种报道可能会加重枪支暴力受害者的创伤，并可能阻碍对枪支暴力采取有效的公共卫生应对措施的支持。记者应努力减少有害新闻内容，并采用公共卫生方法报道枪支暴力。
