Abstract
BackgroundHow antimicrobial resistance (AMR) risk is communicated in news media can shape public understanding and the engagement of different sectors with AMR. This study examined online news media attention for AMR risk and analyzed how AMR risk was communicated using a global sample of English and Chinese news articles.MethodsA total of 16,265 and 8335 English and Chinese news relevant to AMR risk, respectively, published in 2015–2018 were retrieved from a professional media-monitoring platform, to examine media attention for AMR and its drivers, of which, 788 articles from six main English-speaking countries and three main Chinese-speaking territories were drawn using constructed-week sampling for content analysis.ResultsMedia attention mainly fluctuated around official reports or scientific discovery of AMR risks or solutions but seldom around reports of inappropriate antimicrobial use (AMU), and not consistently increased in response to World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. The content analysis found that (1) heterogeneous medical terminologies and the ‘superbug’ frame were most commonly used to define AMR or AMR risk; (2) a temporal increase in communicating microbial evolution as a process of AMR was identified but communication about inappropriate AMU in general consumers as the cause of AMR remained inadequate; and (3) the multifaceted consequences of AMR and individual actions that can be taken to tackle AMR were inadequately communicated.ConclusionsThe media should be encouraged or reoriented to communicate more about actions that can be taken by general consumers to enable collective actions and the multifaceted conseuqences of AMR to encourage one-health approach for tackling AMR.
Highlights
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most important global health concerns, posing threat to human and animal health, food and environment security, and global economy [1]
English and Chinese online news published between January 2015 and December 2018 were retrieved using a list of key words in English and Chinese including general AMR terms (e.g., “antibiotic resistance”; “antimicrobial resistance”; and “superbugs”) and AMR terms specific to pathogens (e.g., “clostridium difficile”), drugs (e.g., “colistin”) and diseases [e.g., “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus” (MRSA)] (Appendix Table 5)
A total of 19,346 English news articles and 8335 Chinese news articles were included in the pool for analysing media attention for AMR risk (Fig. 1)
Summary
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most important global health concerns, posing threat to human and animal health, food and environment security, and global economy [1]. The analysis of news about AMR from television, print newspapers and digital sources from Australia in 2017 revealed that most of the news that year was about discovery of new scientific discoveries related to AMR or AMR solutions, which may put individuals at the position of ignorance, lacking agency for the AMR agenda [5] These studies [3,4,5] focused on AMR news of different periods and used different methods to guide their analyses, making it difficult to compare the findings across the three countries. How antimicrobial resistance (AMR) risk is communicated in news media can shape public understanding and the engagement of different sectors with AMR. This study examined online news media attention for AMR risk and analyzed how AMR risk was communicated using a global sample of English and Chinese news articles
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