Understanding media publics and the antimicrobial resistance crisis

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) imperils health for people across the world. This enormous challenge is being met with the rationalisation of prescription, dispensing and consumption of antimicrobials in clinical settings and in the everyday lives of members of the general population. Individuals need to be reached outside clinical settings to prepare them for the necessary changes to the pharmaceutical management of infections; efforts that depend on media and communications and, therefore, how the AMR message is mediated, received and applied. In 2016, the UK Review on Antimicrobial Resistance called on governments to support intense, worldwide media activity to promote public awareness and to further efforts to rationalise the use of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals. In this article, we consider this communications challenge in light of contemporary currents of thought on media publics, including: the tendency of health communications to cast experts and lay individuals in opposition; the blaming of individuals who appear to ‘resist’ expert advice; the challenges presented by negative stories of AMR and their circulation in public life, and; the problems of public trust tied to the construction and mediation of expert knowledge on the effective management of AMR

The Role of Journalism on YouTube: Audience Engagement with ‘Superbug’ Reporting

Journalism has gradually become ‘normalized into social media’, and most journalists use social media platforms to publish their work (Bruns, 2018). YouTube is an influential social media platform, reaching over a billion users worldwide. Its extensive reach attracts professional and amateur video producers who turn to YouTube to inform, entertain and engage global publics. Focusing on YouTube, this study explores the place for journalism within this media ecology. This study uses a mixed-method approach to examine forms of audience engagement to YouTube videos about antimicrobial resistance (AMR), or so called “superbugs”, caused by overuse and misuse of antibiotics. The analysis focuses on the most viewed YouTube videos about AMR between 2016 and 2018, and compares engagement themes expressed in comments to journalistic videos with popular science videos. The most viewed videos about AMR on YouTube are professionally produced educational popular science videos. The qualitative analysis of 3,049 comments identifies seven main forms of high-level engagement, including expressions of emotions, blame and calls for action. This study shows that journalism plays an important role on YouTube by generating audience discussions about social and political accountability. Our findings demonstrate that journalism videos were associated with propositions for political, economic and social/lifestyle actions, while popular science videos were associated with medicines, scientific or pseudo-scientific, and medical practice changes

A year in the public life of superbugs : news media on antimicrobial resistance and implications for health communications

News media can be an important source of information about emerging health threats. They are also significant sites for the production of narrative on threats to life that help to condition and reflect the responses of governments and publics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one such health threat with particular significance because it represents the failure to manage the risks to antibiotics and other antimicrobials, health technologies that have provided the basis for modern medicine. Knowledge of how news media address this situation is an important element for an effective public health response to AMR and helps to extend the social analysis of health and media. Based on an analysis of television, printed and digital news for 2017 in Australia, this paper examines the patterns and meanings of AMR news. It shows that AMR is a fragmented story mainly framed by scientific discovery. These stories reassure audiences that science is seeking out the means of arresting AMR and, therefore, also constructs lay publics as passive witnesses to the AMR story. This pattern of AMR story-telling furthers the social standing of science and scientists, but it also neglects deliberation on collective action, important lacunae in the social response to AMR

Hero or anti-hero?: Narratives of newswork and journalistic identity construction in complex digital megastories

Exploring constructions of journalistic identity in a digital age has been a lively area of scholarship as the field of digital journalism studies has grown (Franklin 2013, 2014; Steensen and Ahva 2015). Yet despite many approaches to understanding digital change, key avenues for understanding changing constructions of identity remain underexplored. This paper addresses a conceptual void in research literature by employing semiotic and semantic approaches to analyse performances of journalistic identity in narratives of newswork facilitated by and focused on digital megaleaks. It seeks to aid understanding of the way narratives describe changing practices of newsgathering, and how journalists position themselves within these hybrid traditional/digital stories. Findings show news narratives reinforce the primacy of journalists within traditional boundaries of a journalistic field, and articulate a preferred imagination of journalistic identity. Methodologically, this paper shows how semantic and semiotic approaches lend themselves to studying narratives of newswork within journalistic metadiscourses to understand journalistic identity at the nexus of traditional and digital dynamics. The resultant portrait of journalistic identity channels a sociohistoric, romantic notion of the journalist as “the shadowy figure always to be found on the edges of the century’s great events” (Inglis 2002, xi), updated to accommodate modern, digital dynamics

Chapter 4. Explaining gender equality in news content : Modernisation and a gendered media field

In the chapter "Explaining gender equality in news content: Modernisation and a gendered media field" by Monika Djerf-Pierre, the author examines the possible explanations to the variations in gender equality in news media content across the globe, by drawing from two different approaches: the modernisation approach and the gendered media fields approach. The modernisation approach links the level of gender equality in the media to broader processes of socio-economic development and to the standing of women in society at large. The gendered field approach instead puts focus on how conditions in the media field influence the status of women in the news media in different societies. The results show that the media-world of news is considerably less “gender equal” than the “real-world”, but also that both approaches are important to consider; the extent to which gender inequalities in the news have been alleviated depends on a combination of societal and media field factors. Countries where women have a higher standing in society, more women in the journalism field, and more autonomy for journalists, also have more gender equality in the news

Foreword

The project Comparing Gender and Media Equality across the Globe has been fundedby the Swedish Research Council (2016–2020) and is based at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.The GEM dataset and its codebook are free to use and can be downloaded in variousformats. For access, contact JMG. Please ensure that proper attribution is given when citing the dataset.</p

Chapter 2: The GEM-Index : Constructing a unitary measure of gender equality in the news

In chapter 2, "The GEM Index: Constructing a unitary measure of gender equality in the news" by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström, the authors develop a unitary measure of gender equality in news media content. Although gender and journalism has been a prolific area of research since the 1970s, we still lack a robust and easy-to-use measure to quantify, assess, and track the magnitude and persistence of gender inequalities in the news. By drawing from data collected by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the authors devise the Gender Equality in the news Media Index (GEM-I) – a composite index that estimate the gender gap between women and men regarding their status in the news. The GEM-I confirms a male bias in the news. Most countries in the world display news cultures that to various degrees marginalises women. Women get a regular but unequal presence in the news and more seldom appear in roles and topics that are gender-typed as masculine, such as politics and economy.The project Comparing Gender and Media Equality across the Globe has been fundedby the Swedish Research Council (2016–2020) and is based at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.The GEM dataset and its codebook are free to use and can be downloaded in variousformats. For access, contact JMG. Please ensure that proper attribution is given when citing the dataset.</p

Chapter 1: Introduction. Comparing gender and media equalityacross the globe : Understanding the qualities, causes, and consequences

This introductory chapter by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström provides the rationale behind the project Comparing gender and media equality across the globe and clarifies the normative theories supporting the strive for gender equality in and through the news media. The project examines equality in news media content as well as in news media organisations and conducts empirical analyses of both the causes and consequences of media and gender equality in countries across the globe. Furthermore, a unique dataset is developed within the project; The GEM dataset pools together existing comparative data on gender equality in the media, making them available for use by the global research community.  The chapter also highlights previous research, discusses the key methodological considerations, explains the value of the various datasets used in the project, and provides an overview on the global commitments to improve gender equality in the media, as a context for this study. Finally, we give an overview of the whole book and a summary of the main insights from the project: Gender equality in the news media is lacking in most countries in the world.  Gender equality in the news media reflects that journalism is a semi-autonomous field.  The news media misrepresents reality when it comes the actual progress of gender equality in the world.   The news media logic operates as a global homogeniser.  Progress is both fast and slow.  The gender gap in the news content is most likely greater than the gender gap in news media access and use. Monitoring instruments and reliable data are needed to know if progress occurs. Gender data on the media are still lacking.The project Comparing Gender and Media Equality across the Globe has been fundedby the Swedish Research Council (2016–2020) and is based at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.The GEM dataset and its codebook are free to use and can be downloaded in variousformats. For access, contact JMG. Please ensure that proper attribution is given when citing the dataset.</p