NDLI: Public health framing of firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA: a quantitative content analysis

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	Beard, Jessica H. Trombley, Shannon Walker, Tia Roberts, Leah Partain, Laura MacMillan, Jim Midberry, Jennifer
Abstract	Background Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policy makers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people. Methods This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/month from January-June 2021 from the database (n = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include broader social context for violence. Results Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories. Conclusions Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.
Related Links	https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12889-024-18718-0.pdf
Ending Page	11
Page Count	11
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	14712458
DOI	10.1186/s12889-024-18718-0
Journal	BMC Public Health
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	24
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2024-05-03
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Public Health Medicine Epidemiology Biostatistics Vaccine Environmental Health Firearm violence Violence prevention News framing Health communication Medicine/Public Health
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Journal Impact Factor	3.5/2023
5-Year Journal Impact Factor	3.9/2023

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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