Patient empowerment or triumph of the elite? A multi-method analysis of health-related issues in Belgian women's magazines

Present-day research illustrates that media attention on health-related topics in the printed press is on the rise (Dunwoody, 2008; Peters, 2008; Trench, 2008; Kaiser Family Foundation & Pew Research Center, 2009; Picard & Yeo, 2011; Secko, Amend & Friday, 2013). Health journalists browse through a large amount of incoming health news on a daily basis to act as gatekeepers (Levi, 2001). Previous research indicates that the selection and framing of health-related news is heavily influenced by elitist sources as, for instance, stakeholders from the pharmaceutical sector and academic and commercial research institutions (Caulfield, 2004; Abelson & Collins, 2009; Kruvand, 2009; Len-Rios, Hinnant, Sun, Cameron, Frisby & Young, 2009; Hinnant, Len-Rios & Oh, 2012). In this paper we confront the traditional elitist sourcing practices with a new digitized context, where bottom-up sources use social media to spread their messages. Our main goal, therefore, is to detect whether in health journalism sourcing practices can be linked with strategies of empowerment of non-institutional stakeholders. We use a multi-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methodology. To examine the content of health journalism in Belgian popular weeklies and women’s magazines, we use a quantitative content analysis enriched with more in-depth analysis on framing. The analysis is not limited to content variables as such, but also highlights sourcing practices as visible in the texts, as well as gives an overview of the different stakeholders represented in the content flow. Our content analysis includes 1047 features from 22 different Belgian magazines (March-June 2013). To contextualize the findings of the quantitative analysis we interviewed different journalists in a face-to-face interview setting, allowing probing questions to get a more in-depth perspective on their sourcing practices. Our first research results illustrate that journalists opt for a medicalization frame when covering a variety of health topics, although their preferences go out to referring to the patient’s self-responsibility. We also notice that, when sourcing health issues, journalists consider patients and blogs as relevant contributions to the news, nonetheless elitist sources still prevail at the cost of bottom-up communication. However, our in-depth interviews reflect that the input of patients and civil society actors is on the rise in order to give health a more ‘human’ face