Cultural framing of diabetes from a public health perspective: a comparative content analysis

Abstract

This content analysis of 161 newspaper articles identified public health facts and socio-cultural schema within two Los Angeles County newspapers, La Opinión and the Daily News of Los Angeles. It extended Rodgers and Thorson's (2001) crime and violence-focused "public health model of reporting" by applying it to stories about diabetes in Latino and mainstream media. A two-tailed independent samples t-test showed a significant difference in the following public health facts at the .05 level: diabetes disparities, risk factors, prevention, and narrative consequences. The Spanish language paper surpassed the mainstream paper in its inclusion of all public health facts. A two-tailed independent samples t-test showed the Spanish paper more frequently included socio-cultural schemata relating to social self as well as stress as a disease instigator. La Opinión's inclusion of few socio-cultural schema is consistent with previous research suggesting that Latino newspapers seldom tailor health content to their specific audience (Vargas & dePyssler, 1999; Mercado-Martinez, Robles-Silva, Moreno- Leal & Franco-Almazan, 2001; Subervi-Veléz, 1999). La Opinión's inclusion of a larger number of public health facts as compared to the mainstream paper reinforces previous researchers' (Stryker, Emmons and Viswanath, 2007) findings of ethnic news media as educators as well as advocates (Porter, 2003) for their audience's health.