Media Debate Research Articles

Taxing animal-based food products: A qualitative framing analysis of the media debate in Germany

Abstract Background In most high-income countries, consumption of animal-based food products exceeds levels recommended for health and environmental reasons. Although taxes can reduce the consumption of animal-based products, they are politically controversial. In recent years, various tax models and motivations for these have been discussed. Our study seeks to identify key arguments and policy actors in the German media debate on the taxation of animal-based products, shedding light on emerging narrative frames surrounding tax models and motivations. Methods We conducted a qualitative analysis of German media coverage on taxes and levies influencing the price of animal-based foods. We analyzed 488 articles from 10 national newspapers and eight trade press journals published between February 2019 and July 2023. Employing an inductive approach, we identified the actors involved in the debate and common frames and arguments around various tax proposals. Results We found broad consensus on a need for change due to inadequate animal welfare conditions, while environmental and health arguments are more contested. Significant debate surrounds the suitability of taxation as the preferred policy instrument. Furthermore, doubts are raised about a tax’s effectiveness and appropriate revenue allocation. Framing of the tax often emphasizes potential negative impacts on domestic production and product affordability. Additionally, concerns about various unintended consequences and the overall unpopularity of taxation emerge as prominent themes. Conclusions The taxation of animal-based products for health and environmental reasons is still highly contested in the media debate in Germany. Many, but not all arguments commonly raised against such taxes may be considered spurious from an evidence-based public health perspective. Proponents of such taxes may seek to address existing concerns through appropriate policy design and communication strategies. Key messages • Taxation of animal-based foods may help to align consumption with levels recommended for health and environmental reasons, but adoption and implementation is hindered by political controversy. • Objections common in the public debate on such taxes could be addressed with appropriate policy design alleviating justified concerns, and with communication strategies countering spurious arguments.

German-Danish or Danish-German? – A study of nationality adjectives in hyphenated compounds

This study is an explicitly comparative linguistic analysis of attributive collocations with nationality adjectives in hyphenated compounds with dansk ‘Danish’ and deutsch ‘German’ as first or second element. In cultural studies of identity, migration, and minorities, as well as in Danish and German media debates, hyphenated compounds continuously raise questions: Could meaning be attributed to the hyphen? Is the first element separated from, connected with, or subordinated to the second element by the hyphen – or vice versa? The present study seeks to explore whether the order of national adjectives in hyphenated compounds carry meaning. The base word nouns are examined to see whether there are semantic differences between nouns modified by nationality adjectives with interchangeable order or fixed order. The study’s premise is that linguistic fixity and conventionality reflect fixed “Denkmuster” (‘patterns of thought’, Stein & Stumpf 2019, 193), also in collocations. The two Sketch Engine corpora, daTenTen20 and deTenTen18, serve as the empirical basis for the comparison. The study shows that quantitatively there is a clear preference for deutsch- or dansk- as the first element, but no general semantic differences can be observed between base words following compounds with adjectives in interchangeable order and those following compounds with adjectives in fixed order.

Analisis Framing Portal Berita Kompas.Com dan Mediaindonesia.Com atas Pemberitaan Program Makan Siang Gratis oleh Paslon 02 (Prabowo-Gibran) Pada Periode 28 November 2023 - 10 Februari 2024

2024 is a crucial year for Indonesia as it marks the presidential and vice-presidential transition. The General Elections Commission (KPU) has nominated three candidate pairs, one of which is Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka (candidate pair 02), who proposed a free lunch program. This program has sparked considerable debate in various media, prompting this study to analyze the framing of news coverage about the free lunch program by candidate pair 02 (Prabowo-Gibran) on the online news portals Kompas.com and Mediaindonesia.com during the period of November 28, 2024, to February 10, 2024. The research employs a descriptive qualitative method to describe or explain the underlying meanings of reality. Data analysis is conducted using Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki's framing analysis model, which includes syntactic, script, thematic, and rhetorical structures. The findings indicate that Kompas.com’s coverage is supportive of the free lunch program. On the other hand, the coverage on Mediaindonesia.com is firmly against the free lunch program

Biased Social Media Debates About Terrorism? A Content Analysis of Journalistic Coverage of and Audience Reactions to Terrorist Attacks on YouTube

Social media are an important source of news during crises such as terrorist attacks. However, how news media and their audiences make sense of terrorism on social media is subject to bias, for example, given their differential treatment of terrorism by right-wing versus Islamist extremist perpetrators. In this study, we analyze how incident- and perpetrator-related characteristics of terrorist attacks are associated with bias in public debates about terrorism on YouTube. We focus on selectiveness in which attacks are covered (gatekeeping bias), how attacks are covered (presentation bias), and how audiences react to coverage (audience bias). Methodologically, we employ a manual and an automated content analysis of terrorism coverage by five international broadcasters on YouTube ( N = 643, 2018–2020) and related user comments ( N = 193,721). Our findings illustrate how sociocultural contexts shape news bias in terrorism coverage, both in the form of gatekeeping bias and presentation bias—but we conclude with less evidence for audience bias in public reactions to terrorism, at least on social media. Consequently, journalists should critically question working routines in covering crises to avoid reinforcing power imbalances, especially those from Western contexts.

Public perceptions of international genetic information sharing for biomedical research in China: a case study of the social media debate on the article “A Pangenome Reference of 36 Chinese Populations” published in Nature

BackgroundThe international disclosure of Chinese human genetic data continues to be a contentious issue in China, generating public debates in both traditional and social media channels. Concerns have intensified after Chinese scientists’ research on pangenome data was published in the prestigious journal Nature.MethodsThis study scrutinized microblogs posted on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site, in the two months immediately following the publication (June 14, 2023–August 21, 2023). Content analysis was conducted to assess the nature of public responses, justifications for positive or negative attitudes, and the users’ overall knowledge of how Chinese human genetic information is regulated and managed in China.ResultsWeibo users displayed contrasting attitudes towards the article’s public disclose of pangenome research data, with 18% positive, 64% negative, and 18% neutral. Positive attitudes came primarily from verified government and media accounts, which praised the publication. In contrast, negative attitudes originated from individual users who were concerned about national security and health risks and often believed that the researchers have betrayed China. The benefits of data sharing highlighted in the commentaries included advancements in disease research and scientific progress. Approximately 16% of the microblogs indicated that Weibo users had misunderstood existing regulations and laws governing data sharing and stewardship.ConclusionsBased on the predominantly negative public attitudes toward scientific data sharing established by our study, we recommend enhanced outreach by scientists and scientific institutions to increase the public understanding of developments in genetic research, international data sharing, and associated regulations. Additionally, governmental agencies can alleviate public fears and concerns by being more transparent about their security reviews of international collaborative research involving Chinese human genetic data and its cross-border transfer.

Discourses of climate inaction undermine public support for 1.5 °C lifestyles

Urgent action to tackle the climate crisis will only be possible with significant public support for radical lifestyle change. Arguments that seek to delay climate action and justify inadequate mitigation efforts, often termed ‘discourses of delay’, are widespread within political and media debate on climate change. Here we report the results of novel public deliberation and visioning workshops, conducted across the UK in 2020/2021 to explore visions of a 1.5 °C future. We found that despite very strong public support for many low-carbon lifestyle strategies in principle, entrenched discourses of delay are limiting beliefs that a fair, low-carbon future is possible. Consisting of four overarching narratives of climate inaction (Resisting personal responsibility; Rejecting the need for urgency; Believing change is impossible; and Defending the social contract), this public discourse of delay is characterised by three distinct repertoires (each with its own emotional resonance), that act to weaken support for climate action by producing defensive responses to discussions of low-carbon lifestyle change and undermining public sense of agency. We argue that countering these narratives, and the defensive responses they invoke, is essential for achieving meaningful public action on climate change.

Cryptorchidism and testicular cancer in the dog: unresolved questions and challenges in translating insights from human studies†.

Cryptorchidism, the failure of one or both testes to descend into the scrotum, and testicular cancer show a strong correlation in both dogs and humans. Yet, long-standing medical debates persist about whether the location of undescended testes directly causes testicular cancer in humans or if both conditions stem from a common origin. Although testicular cancer is a prevalent disease in dogs, even less is known about its cause and correlation with testicular descent in this species. This review investigates the relation between these two disorders in dogs, drawing insights from human studies, and examines key biomarkers identified thus far. In addition, it explores potential causal links, including the impact of temperature on maturing testicular cells and a potential shared genetic origin. Notably, this literature review reveals significant differences between men and dogs in reproductive development, histological and molecular features of testicular tumors, and the prevalence of specific tumor types, such as Sertoli cell tumors in cryptorchid dogs and germ cell tumors in humans. These disparities caution against using dogs as models for human testicular cancer research and underscore the limitations when drawing comparisons between species. The paper concludes by suggesting specific research initiatives to enhance our understanding of the complex interplay between cryptorchidism and testicular cancer in dogs.

Ethopolitical media: Organizing Assistive Technology, disability and care in the platform society

In this paper we prompt a re-reading of Assistive Technology (AT) as a media system that organizes disability in the framework of digital health-care and the platform society. Drawing on disability media studies and organization studies, we investigate how the arrival of big tech and digital platforms in the field of AT reconfigures ways to account for, classify and potentially discriminate against disability. We argue that this new configuration can be explained as a shift from a biopolitical model – oriented toward disability normalization – to an ethopolitical model, oriented toward optimization and health enhancement. In the conclusions, we put forward the concept of ethopolitical media and discuss the implications of this for wider debates in media and cultural studies which deal with the relationship between media, health, and self-care.

Continuous palliative sedation until death: a qualitative study of palliative care clinicians' experiences.

The practice of continuous palliative sedation until death is the subject of much medical and ethical debate, which is reflected in the inconsistency that persists in the literature regarding the definition and indications of palliative sedation. This study aims to gain a better understanding of palliative care clinicians' experiences with continuous palliative sedation. We conducted a qualitative study based on focus group discussions. We conducted six focus groups with a total of 28 palliative care clinicians (i.e., 15 nurses, 12 physicians, and 1 end-of-life doula) from diverse care settings across Canada, where assisted dying has recently been legalized. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to consolidate the data into six key themes: responding to suffering; grappling with uncertainty; adapting care to ensure ongoing quality; grounding clinical practice in ethics; combining medical expertise, relational tact, and reflexivity; and offering an alternative to assisted death. Interaction with the patient's family, uncertainty about the patient's prognosis, the concurrent practice of assisted dying, and the treatment of existential suffering influence the quality of sedation and indicate a lack of clear palliative care guidelines. Nevertheless, clinicians exhibit a reflective and adaptive capacity that can facilitate good practice.

Ritual sexual abuse : Orientation to patient well-being in a polarized debate

The background to this article is apolarized media debate about ritual violence against children in German speaking countries. Two opposing positions have formed, which are unable to engage in areasonable exchange with each other. The article therefore aims to contribute to bridging the differences and argues, above all in the interests of patient well-being, for positioning oneself beyond polarization and to reflect on an evidence-base in treatment as well as in scientific discourse. The article is based on acritical examination of exemplary scientific literature, public investigation reports and diverse media coverage. In certain psychotraumatology circles and in the media (especially on social media, such as telegram), there is aconspiracy narrative about alarge network of perpetrators who inflict the most serious sexual violence on children in aritual context. An uncritical belief in this has already led to mistreatment of patients and also to afundamental mistrust of their statements. This threatens these already vulnerable patients with further harm, which contradicts the basic principles of medical ethics.

‘A System Only to Be Defended on the Principle of Positive and Ascertained Necessity’: Quarantine and Thomas Maitland’s Contribution to the Medical Debates of 1819 and 1824

Summary This article focusses on the ‘plague debates’ which took place in the British parliament in 1819 and 1824, where the opinions of non-medical experts were also taken into account; particularly those of officials who had acquired relevant practical experience. Such opinions were crucial in politicising the medical debate from one of the nature of plagues, towards an evaluation of the impact of quarantine more broadly. Paying closer attention at the correspondence between the colonial governor of Malta and the Ionian Islands, and the colonial secretary, it reveals a different aspect of the contagion inquiry in Britain—one considering medical knowledge about plagues that was highly speculative. While most historical works illuminate the establishment of what was considered to be medical evidence, there is less work about the political, economic or even personal motives which underlined interventions in these debates.

Nourishing food, clean air and exercise: medical debates over environment and polar hygiene on Robert Falcon Scott's British National Antarctic expedition, 1901-1904.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw dramatic new developments in climatic medicine, particularly the institutionalisation of thinking about tropical hygiene. There were also more limited efforts to understand how hygiene theories should be applied in a polar environment. Studying the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904), led by Robert Falcon Scott, helps us understand how these practices had both similarities and differences from applications of hygiene in other contexts. The expedition offers unique insights into debates about hygiene, environment, and health because of the important, and well documented, role that medics, naval officers and scientists played in organising logistical arrangements for the journey to Antarctica. In analysing the writings of expedition members and organisers, this paper examines the ways that the universal tools of hygiene theories were applied and developed in a polar environment. Many of the most acute threats seemed to come not from the outside environment but from the explorers' supplies and equipment. There was general agreement on many issues. Yet the expedition's organisers, medics and leadership had numerous arguments about the best way to preserve or restore health. These disagreements were the product of both competing medical theories about the cause of disease and the importance of embodied (and somewhat subjective) observations in establishing the safety of foods, atmospheres and environments in this period.

Roman Catholic Religious Education in the Internet Media Coverage in Poland

For many years, there has been a heated debate in the Polish media regarding the presence and concept of Roman Catholic religious education in schools. Therefore, questions arise: What image of Roman Catholic religious education emerges from the media discussion? Are the criteria used to evaluate Roman Catholic religious education fair, ensuring equal treatment of all subjects in Polish schools? This article attempts to answer these questions through a qualitative analysis of 100 publications posted on popular websites between 2018 and 2022. The results of the research confirm that the media debate on Roman Catholic religious education in Polish schools is not always objective and tolerant.

Contrasting Evidences Between High Cholesterol Levels and The Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: A Review

Introduction: The cholesterol hypothesis had been kept alive for decades by reviewers who used statistics that excluded the results from unsuccessful trials and ignored numerous contradictory observations. High dietary cholesterol intake had been associated with development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and mortality, for over several decades, without a direct link between the CVD and high serum cholesterol level. Hence, people avoided healthy cholesterol-rich diets due to the fear of developing CVD. The relationship between elevated plasma cholesterol and CVD and criteria for appropriate methods for screening patients with elevated cholesterol had remained a source of medical debates. Lack of decrease in overall mortality rates in patients without clinical coronary disease in whom aggressive lowering of cholesterol was achieved might have contributed to the lack of consensus on this most important issue.
 Methodology: With information derived from search engines, such as Elsevier, Springer, PubMed, Science Direct, Medline, Google Scholar and a library search for articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
 Results: Several research results showed that association between total serum cholesterol, its components and CVD is weak, absent or inverse implying that consuming healthy high cholesterol diets may not be harmful to health.
 Conclusion: This review provides evidence contrasting the links between elevated plasma cholesterol and CVD, and demonstrated that elevated cholesterol concentrations, rather, improve quality of life and life expectancy. In addition, most prevalent methods for cholesterol quantification in biological samples and foods, utilizing new technologies, such as Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry are summarized, along with other components of cholesterol.
 Keywords: Cholesterol, CVD, Quantification

Affective, defective, and infective narratives on social media about nuclear energy and atomic conflict during the 2022 Italian electoral campaign

In the digital age, poor public communication catalyzes the spread of disinformation within public opinion. Anyone can produce political content that can reach a global audience, and social media has become a vital tool for political leaders to convey messages to the electorate. The 2022 Italian election campaign has seen the term “nuclear” debated with two different declinations: on the one hand, regarding nuclear energy for civilian use, and on the other hand, regarding the fear of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and the use of atomic weapons. This research aims to analyze the social media debate by exploring multiplatform dynamics to qualitatively identify and analyze the connections between social media platforms that we have termed Bridges, a concept drawn from Transmedia Theory to describe the narrative relationship between platforms. The methodological approach will follow an explanatory sequential design that will rely on digital methods to identify connections between platforms (bridges) and then apply an exploratory qualitative approach to enrich the data and capture the nuances of the debate. As expected, we found polarized positions and fragmentation on both issues of civilian nuclear energy and the atomic conflict narrative. Primary evidence shows bridges spreading affective, defective, and infective content across platforms in a multifaceted social media ecosystem. Affective refers to rhetoric that appeals to people’s feelings. Defective means the discussion that brings attention to hyper-partisan news channels, fake news, and misinformation. Infective means bridges with below-the-radar platforms, niche channels, or pseudo-information channels. They use bridges with mainstream platforms to gain the potential to go viral. The paper highlights the importance of cross-platform and interdisciplinary approaches to addressing disinformation in a media ecosystem where social media plays an increasing role in a country’s democratic dynamics.

Cleaning mafia cash: An empirical analysis of the money laundering behaviour of 2800 Italian criminals

Despite the wide reach of anti-money laundering legislation worldwide and increasing media attention, fostered by journalistic leaks such as Panama Papers, empirical knowledge on how criminals launder their illicit proceeds is still scarce. The few available empirical studies show that money laundering (ML) schemes are often less sophisticated than they are depicted in the political and media debate. To contribute to the empirical knowledge of ML behaviour, and test this hypothesis, the present study analyses the ML activities related to 2818 Italian offenders included in the ML section of the LexisNexis’ WorldCompliance database. Through a quantitative content analysis of textual information related to each offender's profile, it highlights the characteristics of the ML offenders, the methods (or ‘typologies’ in FATF terms) employed, the assets seized, the business sectors involved and the countries in which ML was conducted. The results confirm that criminals tend to employ unsophisticated typologies, as well as prefer Italy or jurisdictions that are close (geographically and culturally) to Italy for laundering their illicit proceeds. Tangible assets (first real estate and registered vehicles) are more frequent than financial assets. Finally, differences exist between the laundering by mafia-related ML offenders and non-mafia ones. The study provides empirical ground to progress in the knowledge of how ML offenders behave, and supports the idea that criminals, when laundering their proceeds, do not act as legitimate entrepreneurs, but may be driven by other constraints and drivers.

The Philosophy of Medicine: On the Ethical Discussion about the Life and the Death

The purpose of the article is to highlight the key philosophical cases in the medical and ethical debate on life and death - ontological, axiological and anthropological. For the philosophy of medicine, the concepts of life and health are fundamental dimensions, as they combine elements of nature and human existence. The aim of the article is to differentiate the existential, value and human contexts of philosophy in the medical space. The methodology used in the study is focused mainly on the analytical cluster of general scientific knowledge. The analysis of the literature on the problem of life and death in medical and ethical discourse allowed us to separately group the medical, philosophical and scientific and worldview clusters of this problem. Through generalising and comparative analysis, an attempt is made to unify the problem of life and death in the context of a single philosophical and scientific paradigm. To achieve these objectives, it is advisable to use the principles of interdisciplinarity, which help to bring to a common understanding the various ideas and views on the ethical component of the dichotomy of life and death in medicine. The results of the study indicate that the human-dimensional philosophical component dominates the ontological and axiological components in the modern worldview of human existence. This is the result of the policy of anthropocentrism in its global manifestation and the consequence of the use of a pragmatic approach in the system of human sciences. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, a minor factor by civilisational standards, has managed (albeit for a short period) to reorient the philosophical issues of life and death to existential dimensions. A promising area of research is modelling the situation of a socio-cultural crisis of a global scale in the healthcare system and the readiness of society to re-position the problem of life and death. Thus, the philosophy of medicine clearly structures the problem of life and death in three fundamental cases: ontological, axiological and anthropological, which change their priority in the scientific and philosophical discourse depending on the socio-cultural trends in the development of society and civilisation.

Appropriation of mindfulness in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

Mindfulness has gained increasing popularity across Western societies over the past couple of decades, although mainly in forms that have been stripped of all religious content. During this period, the practice has also attracted the interest of mainstream Christian churches, which has precipitated the development of distinctively ‘Christian’ forms of mindfulness. Based on a critical discussion of the concept of appropriation in the sphere of religion, this article explores the particular logic whereby mindfulness has been appropriated within the particular ecclesiastical context of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) in light of debates in church-connected media and the content of two Finnish BA theses on pastoral care that argue for the adoption of the practice. In light of this data, the article illustrates how ELCF discourse on mindfulness has been marked by four closely interlinked requirements for the appropriation of the practice: 1. that the practice has already been thoroughly stripped of any overt religious content; 2. that it has become sufficiently scientifically validated; 3. that there is wider social and cultural interest in the practice; 4. and that the practice does not stand in opposition to the teachings of the church.

Les pratiques de soin énergétique en France : phénoménologie et processus psychiques dans les thérapies alternatives

AimsIn this paper, we look at energy healing, a relatively under-studied therapeutic approach in France, despite its strong influence on a wide variety of complementary and alternative therapies. This article attempts to clarify the reasons for the success of these approaches by analyzing the psychic processes inherent in them. MethodTwenty-five therapists (energy therapists, magnetic healers, alternative therapists) were recruited to take part in several semi-directive interviews focusing on the phenomenology of energy healing. The corpus of data was analyzed using a psychoanalytical approach in order to highlight the specific features of these practices. ResultsEnergy healing is a set of therapeutic practices with heterogeneous methods based on the representation of a vital energy. These practices are frequently used in contexts of “ordinary misfortune” that combine persistent somatic symptoms, psychological suffering, and critical stages in life. The practice and effectiveness of energy healing seem to be based on unconscious psychic processes. These processes encourage the emergence of non-ordinary states of consciousness that potentiate processes of psychic transformation. In some aspects, this setting could be compared to a form of mediation in which the therapist uses body and object manipulations to induce psychic effects. DiscussionThe apparently “magical” nature of these therapies polarizes the scientific and media debate around the way in which they do or do not comply with the requirements of evidence-based medicine. The model proposed in this article allows us to move away from these issues and take into account the anthropological aspects of alternative therapeutic systems. ConclusionThe approach developed in this article extends and opens up clinical research on exceptional experiences, by showing that the study of alternative therapies, when it is not solely centered on the question of specific proof of efficacy, offers a fruitful perspective for making more explicit the processes of the caregiving relationship.

“But then the war started”: The value of diversity in editorial practices during times of war and crisis

In this article, we analyse the impact of disruptive media events on the perceived value of diversity in editorial practices, with a specific focus on the Polish media debate following the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war in February 2022. We do this based on a unique dataset derived from in-depth interviews with eight editors representing four different newsrooms conducted before, immediately after, and approximately one year after the start of the war. Our research answers the question of whether newsrooms can defend the value of diversity during the coverage of war and crisis. We also assess the impact of the changed geopolitical context, characterised by nation-building mobilisation and public sentiments of solidarity with Ukrainians, on editorial decisions to mute, delay, or opt out of publishing certain stories. We contribute to research on the epistemologies of journalistic news production during times of crisis, news diversity, and the role of the media in democratic societies.