Felisbela Lopes

A media pandemic: Influenza A in Portuguese newspapers

Abstract On April 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic alert as a consequence of the appearance of a new influenza virus, named ‘Influenza A, H1N1’. In Portugal, media coverage on this disease was intense. However, as the number of deaths within Influenza A patients turned out to be much lower than the foreseen statistics of national authorities, the hypothesis of a ‘media pandemic’ was suggested by national opinion makers. Looking for a better understanding of the phenomenon, we conducted a study on media coverage and news sources on Influenza A in Portugal. The study of news sources on health issues is a way of understanding health information and it has been a neglected area on Health Communication. This investigation stood on the examination of 655 articles of three national newspapers, with distinct editorial criteria. The analysis considered six variables: number of sources, geographic location, genre, identification, status, and medical expertise. This task followed a quantitative methodology. The findings confirmed previous noticed trends on health information research: the power of official sources, the complexity of access to medical sources, and the lasting misunderstandings between journalists and the medical community.

Power to health reporters: health literacy as a tool to avoid pressures from news sources

The second biggest Legionnaires’ disease outbreak worldwide occurred in Portugal in 2014. It was classified by the WHO as a “great public health emergency,” and it was subject to a unique media coverage in Portugal. The media coverage of this outbreak lasted for 2 weeks, which is not very common in similar cases, and it was characterized by the control of information by official sources. These were put together in a joint task force that disseminated all information. Nonetheless, they did not generate a hegemonic discourse which is usually characteristic of power elites. That happened mostly due to the promotion of health and risk literacy. Through infographics, descriptive maps, and questions and answers, the media were able to generate an alternative discourse to that of official sources. That was the basis of a unique media coverage.

Escherichia coli: A disease in the news through speeches of uncertainty and contradiction

Abstract In May 2011 there was a rare outbreak of E. coli in Germany, and its origin was not clear. Through several weeks, official sources came forward with probable explanations that were contradicted by the following events. Through that time, media kept contradicting themselves, promoting uncertainty and making vegetables’ consumption decrease drastically. This article studies the Portuguese media coverage of this outbreak, looking into understanding the news coverage processes and also sources journalists talked to. Our study is based on news from Público, Jornal de Notícias and Expresso, three Portuguese newspapers with different editorial criteria and periodicity. Our corpus has 52 articles and there are 163 news sources quoted.

Why has a large Legionnaires’ disease outbreak been absent from public debate?

The Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that hit Portugal in November 2014 was the third largest worldwide and was declared a “great public health emergency”. Nonetheless, the Portuguese outbreak, despite killing 12 people and infecting 375 others did not promote extensive media coverage, nor did it make it into the political debate. We conducted a quantitative analysis of 83 news pieces on Legionella published in four national newspapers, and interviewed the journalists who covered this outbreak. The communication process was controlled by a small group of official sources and the outbreak was pushed away from news lineups due to two political scandals. The production of another news wave made the outbreak’s news wave to break prematurely.

World Cup television

Abstract In the second year of the second decade of the 21st century, on the verge of breaking into the era of digital television, it is important to know what kind of television model is currently available in Portugal. An analysis of the news coverage of the FIFA 2010 World Cup certainly helps to provide some answers. In this article, the authors present a study that centres its focus on news formats related to this great media event, broadcast on both generalist as well as cable news networks between 11 June and 11 July 2010 (the opening and closing dates of the tournament). The analysis, based on 604 broadcasts, seeks to discover the means for viewer integration in television broadcasts, and also who was summoned by the television studios to participate in the discussions they promoted. The data collected clearly show that World Cup TV is still very much closed to public participation and is circumscribed to a small group of guests, most of whom come from the journalistic field. It seems impossible to envisage a third stage in the audiovisual world, in the face of this reality. Post-television can wait.