The Human Face of Health News: A Multi-Method Analysis of Sourcing Practices in Health-Related News in Belgian Magazines

Abstract

ABSTRACTHealth journalists are central gatekeepers who select, frame, and communicate health news to a broad audience, but the selection and content of health news are also influenced by the sources journalists, rely on (Hinnant, Len-Rios, & Oh, 2012). In this paper, we examine whether the traditional elitist sourcing practices (e.g., research institutions, government) are still important in a digitalized news environment where bottom-up non-elite actors (e.g., patients, civil society organizations) can act as producers (Bruns, 2003). Our main goal, therefore, is to detect whether sourcing practices in health journalism can be linked with strategies of empowerment. We use a multi-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. First, two content analyses are developed to examine health-related news in Belgian magazines (popular weeklies, health magazines, general interest magazines, and women’s magazines). The analyses highlight sourcing practices as visible in the texts and give an overview of the different stakeholders represented as sources. In the first wave, the content analysis includes 1047 health-related news items in 19 different Belgian magazines (March–June 2013). In the second wave, a smaller sample of 202 health-related items in 10 magazines was studied for follow-up reasons (February 2015). Second, to contextualize the findings of the quantitative analysis, we interviewed 16 health journalists and editors-in-chief. The results illustrate that journalists consider patients and blogs as relevant sources for health news; nonetheless, elitist sourcing practices still prevail at the cost of bottom-up communication. However, the in-depth interviews demonstrate that journalists increasingly consult patients and civil society actors to give health issues a more “human” face. Importantly, the study reveals that this strategy is differently applied by the various types of magazines. While popular weeklies and women’s magazines give a voice to ordinary citizens to translate complex issues and connect with their audiences, general interest magazines and health magazines prefer elite sources and use ordinary citizen stories as a way of “window dressing.”