Getting the Skinny on Obesity: A content analysis of newspaper coverage of obesity from 2000 to 2006

Background: Obesity has taken center stage as one of the most pressing public health concerns facing Americans. Much of this attention stems from studies documenting the rapid rise in prevalence of overweight and obesity among Americans and extensive media coverage of these studies. According to agenda-setting theory, the news media not only can focus attention on an issue, but can inform people about what is important about the issue. This study reports on an analysis of news articles over seven years conducted to understand the extent and content of media coverage over time.

Methodology: A content analysis was performed on obesity-related articles published from January 2000 though December 2006 in ten major U.S. newspapers. A total of 8152 obesity-related articles were identified in the LexisNexis database. A random sample of 1,688 articles was selected for general coding. Of these, 850 articles were determined to have a primary focus on obesity and were analyzed in detail, examining differences in populations discussed, how obesity was characterized, health consequences mentioned, and types of causes and solutions addressed over the seven years.

Results: This poster presents results on the placement and length of obesity-related articles and changes in content over time. The number of articles with a primary focus on obesity increased significantly between 2000 and 2006. Further analyses of these articles provided details on how the content of coverage has changed, particularly in terms of attention to individual-level causes of and solutions to obesity, as compared to environmental or policy causes and solutions.