“Those People Count”: Naloxone Media Coverage in Mississippi

Abstract

There is a movement to promote naloxone adoption by law enforcement and other stakeholders in the state of Mississippi. The purpose of this study is to understand how local media are framing the conversation about naloxone products, and to better understand how it might affect naloxone adoption among law enforcement. We searched for news articles published in Mississippi from January 2012 to July 2018 mentioning the words Narcan® and/or naloxone. Four main themes emerged from 25 articles: (a) positive and informative discussion of naloxone, (b) full articles persuading readers to use and/or advocate the use of naloxone, (c) government or organizational effort to increase the availability and use of naloxone products, and (d) negative or misleading information about naloxone. Better efforts to disseminate correct and persuasive information about the drug will have a profound and positive effect on the opioid epidemic in Mississippi and in the United States.

Parallel Development: Medicalization and Decriminalization in the Changing Media Framing of the Opioid Overdose Crisis

“…I used the following keywords to search headlines and leading paragraphs of news articles in the LexisNexis (now called Nexis Uni) newspaper database: “heroin/painkiller/prescription drug/opioid/opiate” and “addict 2 /misuse/abuse/overdose/death/crisis/epidemic.” These search terms were consistent with prior studies on media framing of opioid use (Bagley and Bright 2020; McGinty et al 2016; Netherland and Hansen 2016; Russell, Spence, and Thames 2019). This yielded 1,339 articles.…”

“…As mentioned earlier, the New York Times readership might have affected the results, especially those regarding demographic variables. News frames generated by the New York Times , a national and city-focused newspaper, might have also differed from those of local and rural-based newspapers (Bagley and Bright 2020; Russell et al 2019). A more systematic examination of newspapers, or other media sources, can better reflect how media portrayals interact with institutional logics, especially at the local level.…”

“…Recent studies have confirmed that the changing media framing of opioid use is not simply a one-way transition from punishment to treatment. Instead, negative frames on treatment options (Bagley and Bright 2020), stigmatization of people who use drugs (Orsini 2017), and discussions of criminality (Webster et al 2020) are still prevalent.…”

“…Moreover, the media plays a pivotal role in shaping narrative interpretations and thus reshaping practices on the basis of emerging narratives (Andrews and Caren 2010; Carter 2013). Recent studies have also shown that emerging media framing of the opioid crisis is beyond the one-way transition from punishment to treatment, questioning the traditional understanding of institutional influence (Bagley and Bright 2020; Orsini 2017; Webster, Rice, and Sud 2020). How, then, can we explain the changing media framing of opioid use beyond narrative changes originated from within static institutional boundaries?…”