Abstract

Previous studies on media coverage of health issues hardly recognize the role of time in moderating media contents. Instead, scholars most often examine how news media report health issues. In this study, we recognized the role of time by taking into account how media report differs based on when a global outbreak is confirmed in a country and when it is not. We focused on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and examined six media—two TV stations, two newspapers and two radio stations. We content-analysed 537 stories and found that there were few stories about the virus before it was confirmed in Nigeria. But as soon as Nigeria recorded a confirmed case, the number of stories tripled. We also noticed that story format and recommendation on health behaviour were also closely linked to the COVID-19 status of Nigeria. However, we did not find an association between Nigeria’s COVID-19 status and policy recommendation among the media studied. Therefore, this study concludes that Nigerian media did not provide sufficient health warning messages on COVID-19 before its spread to the country.

中文翻译：

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媒体和健康教育：尼日利亚媒体是否提供了有关冠状病毒疾病的足够警告信息？

摘要

以前有关健康问题的媒体报道的研究几乎没有意识到时间在调节媒体内容方面的作用。相反，学者们最常检查新闻媒体如何报道健康问题。在这项研究中，我们根据媒体报道在一个国家/地区何时被确认以及何时未被确认的情况而有所不同，从而认识到时间的作用。我们专注于2019年冠状病毒疾病（COVID-19），研究了六种媒体-两个电视台，两个报纸和两个广播电台。我们对537个故事进行了内容分析，发现在尼日利亚被确认之前，关于该病毒的故事很少。但是，只要尼日利亚记录下确诊病例，故事的数量就增加了两倍。我们还注意到，故事的形式和对健康行为的建议也与尼日利亚的COVID-19状态密切相关。然而，在研究的媒体中，我们没有发现尼日利亚的COVID-19地位与政策建议之间存在关联。因此，这项研究得出的结论是，尼日利亚媒体在COVID-19传播到该国之前没有提供足够的健康警告信息。