Contrasting academic and lay press print coverage of the 2013-2016 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak

Abstract

Under a traditional paradigm, only those with the expected background knowledge consume academic literature. The lay press, as well as government and non-government agencies, play a complementary role of extracting findings of high interest or importance and translating them for general viewing. The need for accurate reporting and public advising is paramount when attempting to tackle epidemic outbreaks through behavior change. Yet, public trust in media outlets is at a historic low. The Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model for media reporting on public health emergencies was established in 2005 and has subsequently been used to analyze media reporting on outbreaks of influenza and measles as well as smoking habits and medication compliance. However, no media analysis had yet been performed on the 2013–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak. This study compared the EVD information relayed by lay press sources with general review articles in the academic literature through a mixed-methods analysis. These findings suggest that comprehensive review articles could not serve as a source to clarify and contextualize the uncertainties around the EVD outbreak, perhaps due to adherence to technical accuracy at the expense of clarity within the context of outbreak conditions. This finding does not imply inferiority of the academic literature, nor does it draw direct causation between confusion in review articles and public misunderstanding. Given the erosion of the barriers siloing academia, combined with the demands of today’s fast-paced media environment, contemporary researchers should realize that no study is outside the public forum and to therefore consider shifting the paradigm to take personal responsibility in the process of accurately translating their scientific words into public policy actions to best serve as a source of clarity.

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“…In line with CERC predictions, both perceived efficacy as well as perceived threat were associated both with information seeking and protective behavior. Other experimental studies presented CERC as a broad foundational framework, but investigated Among the other 16 research reports in which CERC played a major role, a large portion used CERC principles as presented in the CERC Manual to evaluate adequacy of news coverage, tweets, and other public health responses during a specific crisis (Kieh et al, 2017;Maguire et al, 2016;Nour et al, 2017;Ophir, 2018;Panagiotopoulos et al, 2016;Thomas et al, 2016). For example, Maguire and colleagues developed a coding scheme based on the CERC Manual and evaluated the extent to which certain components of effective communication were more present than others in Department of Veterans Affairs infection control lapse incidents between 2009 and 2012.…”

“…A systematic review cannot definitively determine why something has not been empirically tested. However, the fact that a large proportion of the investigations of CERC consist of content analyses of news coverage through stages of crises (Kieh et al, 2017;Maguire et al, 2016;Nour et al, 2017;Ophir, 2018;Panagiotopoulos et al, 2016;Thomas et al, 2016) suggests that researchers have found the stage elements of the model more useful in highly applied settings as a standard for retrospective critique than as a predictive tool about the outcomes of that messaging. Furthermore, all of these studies assessed news coverage over the life of a crisis by comparing them to CERC as presented in CDC publications like the CERC Manual (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] and CDC, 2018), rather than measuring against Veil et al 's (2008) formal propositions.…”

“…Within five years after the first CERC manual was published in 2002, the CDC had provided training to over 100,000 public health professionals through webbased and CD-ROM delivery as well as in face-to-face classrooms across the United States. The principles of CERC have been leveraged repeatedly to address such varied public health crises as Ebola (Kieh et al, 2017), bird flu (Vos & Buckner, 2016), depleted uranium exposure (Cicognani & Zani, 2015), winter storms (Rice & Spence, 2016), and chemical spills (Thomas et al, 2016).…”

Public health crises in popular media: how viral outbreak films affect the public’s health literacy

“…In other words, perception drives behaviour more readily than facts. Furthermore, most citizens are not sourcing their information from academic scholarship, but rather rely on the mass media to translate key findings into an accessible format 16. With regard to concerns about biosecurity and the threat of bioterrorism, Caduff notes that:…”

“…In his article ‘The plague of ideas’, Ralph Peters claims ‘ideas can now travel more swiftly than any human being–or disease’ 21. One of the problems with this is that the ideas being circulated about epidemics are rarely communicated by researchers directly, potentially leading to public misinterpretation of disease risk 16. According to risk-theorist Francois Ewald,22 the concept of ‘risk’ is socially constructed, meaning the label is dependent on collective human judgement.…”