Diverging from News Media: An Exploratory Study on the Changing Dynamics between Media and Public Attention on Cancer in China from 2011–2020

Yangkun Huang, Xiaoping Xu and Sini Su
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Yangkun Huang: School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Xiaoping Xu: School of Journalism and Communication, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Sini Su: College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-13

Abstract: Over the past decade, China has witnessed fast-paced technological advancements in the media industry, as well as major shifts in the health agenda portrayed in the media. Therefore, a key starting point when discussing health communication lies in whether media attention and public attention towards health issues are structurally aligned, and to what extent the news media guides public attention. Based on data mined from 73,060 sets of the Baidu Search Index and Media Index on 20 terms covering different types of cancer from 2011 to 2020, the Granger test demonstrates that, in the last decade, public attention and media attention towards cancer in China has gone through two distinct phases. During the first phase, 2011–2015, Chinese news media still held the key in transferring the salience of issues on most cancer types to the public. In the second phase, from 2016–2020, public attention towards cancer has gradually diverged from media coverage, mirroring the imbalance and mismatch between the demand of active public and the supply of cancer information from news media. This study provides an overview of the dynamic transition on cancer issues in China over a ten-year span, along with descriptive results on public and media attention towards specific cancer types.

Keywords: cancer; public attention; news media; Granger causality test; data mining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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