April 4-6, 2024 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Innovations in Health Communication
Innovations in Health Communication
Abstract: Cross-National Newspaper Coverage of Water Pollution: Community Structure Theory and Resource Privilege
A community structure analysis (Pollock, 2007, 2013, 2015) compared national characteristics and cross-national newspaper coverage of water pollution in 19 different countries, examining all relevant articles of 150+ words selected from 01/01/2010 to 01/01/2023. The resulting 280 articles were coded for “prominence” (placement, headline size, article length, and presence of graphics) and “direction” (“government responsibility”, “societal responsibility”, or “balanced/neutral” coverage of water pollution), then combined into composite “Media Vector” scores for each newspaper, from +0.7438 to -0.1011: with a range of 0.8449. Sixteen out of 19 Media Vectors (84%) emphasized government responsibility for water pollution.
It was expected that measures of national “buffered” privilege would be associated with media coverage emphasizing government responsibility for water pollution (Pollock, 2007, pp. 61-100). However, measures of resource privilege, specifically electricity production and electricity consumption, were overall robustly connected to media coverage emphasizing “less” government responsibility for water pollution (respectively: r = -0.558, p = 0.007, r = -0.573, p = 0.005) , disconfirming the “buffer” hypothesis. Additionally, measures of health and communication privilege -- hospital beds per 100,000 (r = -0.438, p = 0.039) and daily newspapers per 1,000 (r = -0.525, p = 0.015) -- were also significantly associated with reporting emphasizing “less” government responsibility for water pollution. Consistently, another measure of health privilege, midwives per 100,000 (r = -0.363, p = 0.063) was “directionally” close to significant association with “less” media emphasis on government responsibility for water pollution.
These associations resemble previous community structure scholarship. A cross national study of media coverage of water handling conducted September 1, 2000–September 1, 2010 found that 13 of 21 newspapers (60%) emphasized government responsibility for water handling (Wissel, et al., 2014, p. 56). Consistent with the current study, several indicators of privilege – female empowerment, overall privilege, and press freedom – were robustly connected with media coverage emphasizing “societal” (less government) responsibility for water handling (Wissel, et al., 2014, p. 56).
Regression analysis revealed that multiple measures of privilege, including daily newspapers per 1,000 people accounted for 15.6% of the variance, midwives per 100,000 (22.9%), and electricity consumption (10.9%), collectively accounted for 49.4% of the variance associated with media emphasis on “less” government responsibility for water pollution. Methodologically, combining measures of both “prominence” and “direction” generated sensitive Media Vectors highlighting the capacity of media to reflect community measures of “privilege”. From a theoretical perspective, this water pollution study confirmed empirical evidence from a founder of “agenda-setting” theory, asserting that agenda-setting’s “top down” perspective is robustly complemented by the “bottom-up” viewpoint of community structure theory’s community-level demographics (Funk & McCombs, 2017).
It was expected that measures of national “buffered” privilege would be associated with media coverage emphasizing government responsibility for water pollution (Pollock, 2007, pp. 61-100). However, measures of resource privilege, specifically electricity production and electricity consumption, were overall robustly connected to media coverage emphasizing “less” government responsibility for water pollution (respectively: r = -0.558, p = 0.007, r = -0.573, p = 0.005) , disconfirming the “buffer” hypothesis. Additionally, measures of health and communication privilege -- hospital beds per 100,000 (r = -0.438, p = 0.039) and daily newspapers per 1,000 (r = -0.525, p = 0.015) -- were also significantly associated with reporting emphasizing “less” government responsibility for water pollution. Consistently, another measure of health privilege, midwives per 100,000 (r = -0.363, p = 0.063) was “directionally” close to significant association with “less” media emphasis on government responsibility for water pollution.
These associations resemble previous community structure scholarship. A cross national study of media coverage of water handling conducted September 1, 2000–September 1, 2010 found that 13 of 21 newspapers (60%) emphasized government responsibility for water handling (Wissel, et al., 2014, p. 56). Consistent with the current study, several indicators of privilege – female empowerment, overall privilege, and press freedom – were robustly connected with media coverage emphasizing “societal” (less government) responsibility for water handling (Wissel, et al., 2014, p. 56).
Regression analysis revealed that multiple measures of privilege, including daily newspapers per 1,000 people accounted for 15.6% of the variance, midwives per 100,000 (22.9%), and electricity consumption (10.9%), collectively accounted for 49.4% of the variance associated with media emphasis on “less” government responsibility for water pollution. Methodologically, combining measures of both “prominence” and “direction” generated sensitive Media Vectors highlighting the capacity of media to reflect community measures of “privilege”. From a theoretical perspective, this water pollution study confirmed empirical evidence from a founder of “agenda-setting” theory, asserting that agenda-setting’s “top down” perspective is robustly complemented by the “bottom-up” viewpoint of community structure theory’s community-level demographics (Funk & McCombs, 2017).