Words have meaning: assessing language choice by American print media in coverage of the opioid crisis
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Discussions of opioid use disorder are frequently filled with stigmatizing language that both illuminates and colors the perceptions of opioid use and those living with opioid use disorder. Print media is an important and longstanding source of health information for much of the population, however, it has the potential to implicitly and explicitly endorse biased language related to this national epidemic. These biases may impact the choices made by public health and policy decisionmakers regarding support systems and criminalization of opioid use, having a large impact on outcomes experienced by those with opioid use disorders. This study utilizes aspects of media content analysis to characterize the language choices made by the New York Times, the Chicago Daily Herald, the Saint Louis Post Dispatch, the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Dayton Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in a random sample of 237 articles published between 2010 and 2020. In this sample, neutral language became more common in coverage between 2016 and 2020, the word “crisis” became more prevalent with the word “epidemic” closer to and following the 2017 declaration of opioid use as a public health emergency. McGinty et al (2016) suggested that coverage between 2000 and 2010 shifted from placing opioid use as a criminal issue to a public health issue and this study supports that this balance was maintained in the following decade.
Description
Keywords
Opioid use disorder
Policy decisionmakers, Policy decision-makers, Language choices, Opioid crisis, Health information