Representation of Hearing loss and Hearing Aid(s) in the United States Newspaper Media: Cross-sectional Analysis of Secondary Data

Purpose: News media plays an important role in formulating people's knowledge and opinions about various aspects of life, including health. The current study explored how hearing loss and hearing aids are represented in the U.S. newspaper media. Method: A cross-sectional study design was selected to analyze publicly available newspaper media data. The data sets were generated from the database, the U.S. Major Dailies by ProQuest, by searching key words for newspapers published during 1990–2017. Cluster analysis (i.e., text pattern analysis) and chi-square tests were performed using Iramuteq software. Results: The hearing loss data set had 1,527 texts (i.e., articles). The cluster analysis resulted in 7 clusters, which were named as (1) causes and consequences (26.1%), (2) early identification and diagnosis (9%), (3) health promotion and prevention (22.1%), (4) recreational noise exposure (10.4%), (5) prevalence (14.3%), (6) research and development (12.4%), and (7) cognitive hearing science (5.6%). The hearing aids data set had 2,667 texts. The cluster analysis resulted in 8 clusters, which were named as (1) signal processing (20.2%), (2) insurance (8.9%), (3) prevalence (12.4%), (4) research and development (5.4%), (5) activities and relation (16.2%), (6) features to address background noise (13.8%), (7) innovation (12%), and (8) wireless and connectivity (11.1%). Time series analysis of clusters in both “hearing loss” and “hearing aids” data sets indicated changes in the pattern of information presented in the newspaper media during 1990–2016 (e.g., Cluster 7 focuses on cognitive hearing science in a hearing loss data set emerging only since the year 2012 and growing rapidly). Conclusions: The text pattern analysis showed that the U.S. newspaper media focuses on a range of issues when considering hearing loss and hearing aids and that patterns or trends change over time. The study results can be helpful for hearing health care professionals to understand what presuppositions society in general may have as the media has the ability to influence societal perception and opinions

When The News Was Sung: Ballads as News Media in Early Modern Europe

News songs differ in crucial ways to the other news media of the early modern period like newsletters, newspapers, or diplomatic correspondence – they differ even from the prose broadsheets and pamphlets that they so closely resemble. As historians of news we need to ask different kinds of questions of these multi-media artifacts. For example, how does the presentation in a performative genre affect the dissemination and reception of information about events? What part do orality and aurality play in how the news was sold and received? Here the activities and social status of street singers play an important role. We must consider the production, format and distribution of these songs in order to understand their impact. We also need to pay attention to the conjunction between text and melody, and the ways in which this affected the presentation of a news event. On a broader scale, what kind of information can ballads provide about specific news events that other documents cannot or will not provide? Can they offer us a new medium by which to interpret historical events? And lastly, how should historians deal with these profoundly emotive texts? The combination of sensationalist language and affecting music meant that songs had the potential to provoke a more powerful response than any other contemporary news source, and this emotional potency can at times be challenging for a modern historian to decipher and explain. This article will attempt to answer some of these questions and suggest some of the skills we as historians need to develop in order to appreciate the full meaning of songs as the most popular of news media in early modern Europe

Anglo-Dutch translations of medical and scientific texts

In the seventeenth century the use of vernacular languages became more and more accepted in scientific publications and communications, and began to supplement the traditional language in this field, namely: Latin. The increase in the number of languages used in science and medicine was accompanied by a heightened need for translators. The close relationship between England and the Low Countries in the seventeenth century has led to a focus in the existing research on political and religious issues, and this has been reflected in the study of translations between English and Dutch. Yet one also finds in the fields of medicine and science an exchange of ideas through translation. The language skills of both Dutch and English men and women were often not sufficient to understand each other's language, which means that translations were vital. By considering the examples of how Thomas Browne's Religio medici was translated into Dutch, and how letters by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and a publication by Jan Baptista van Helmont were translated into English, this essay examines the exchange of scientific and medical ideas across the Channel.Part of this article was written during a visiting fellowship in the Summer of 2016 at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and I would like to thank the MPIWG and the Global Knowledge Society Project for hosting me, as well as the Making Visible Project (Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/M001928/1) for providing me with support and the time to write

The reformation and the book: A reconsideration

Perceptions of the role of the book in the Reformation are shaped by our knowledge of the German print world during the first decades of Protestant expansion. All indications point to evangelical domination of the press in the years when Luther first became a public figure, when the printed book enjoyed a undoubtedly played a crucial role in the dissemination of the evangelical message, and printing enjoyed a period of exuberant growth. But it is by no means certain that assumptions derived from this German model hold good for other parts of Europe. This article re-examines the German paradigm of book and Reformation in the light of two recent bibliographical projects. The first, a trial survey of publishing outputs throughout Europe, demonstrates that the different regional print cultures that made tip the European book world were organized in radically contrasting ways. These structural differences were highly significant from the point of view of assisting or impeding the output of controversial literature. The lessons from this survey are then applied to an individual case study, France, which, it emerges, deviated from the German model in almost every particular. Together these two sets of data force us to call into question the natural affinity between print and Protestantism suggested by the German paradigm.</p