Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-12-2020
Abstract
Background: The media plays as an important role in delivering information about emergent issues, such as the Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) outbreak of 2019. As such, there has been an increase in news coverage of vector-borne disease coverage due to a rise in emerging or re-emerging arboviruses.
Methods: The purpose of this study was to describe the content of news clips related to the recent (2019) EEEV outbreak in the United States.
Results: Only 3 of the important topics identified were mentioned in a majority of the 110 videos analyzed. These topics were, mosquito mentioned as transmitter, prevention by repellent/pesticide, and geography. Thus, many aspects of EEEV were lacking in coverage.
Conclusion: A priority for public health professionals should be to engage in discourse with news media to assure that information disseminated via news channels is not vague or misleading.
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Critical Care Commons, Disorders of Environmental Origin Commons, Infectious Disease Commons, Virus Diseases Commons
Comments
This work was originally published in Health Promotion Perspectives, available at DOI: 10.34172/hpp.2020.43.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).