Media gatopardism: health portrayals in press, radio and television pre and post-pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The changes brought about by the pandemic in journalism have been and continue to be widely investigated. However, in the aftermath of the biggest global health crisis for a century, there are hardly any studies in the literature on the evolution of the health representativeness in the media before COVID19. Methodology: A quantitative content analysis was used to review the concept of health in the general press, radio and television with the largest audience in Spain in the periods before and after the pandemic. Results: These media construct health from a mostly biomedical conception to the point of tripling their coverage with respect to information representing social health aspects or lifestyles. The very small variation in the data before and after the pandemic is noteworthy. Discussion: The changes in gatekeeping that accompanied the hardest stage of the pandemic have not been correlated with an evolution in the way of conceiving health. This suggests a deep-rooted biomedical approach to health that has prevented emerging representations such as the health drivers, One Health or global health, which emerged with prominence in COVID19, from gaining a foothold in the literature. Conclusions: After noting a Lampedusian 'gatopardo effect' in post-pandemic health journalism, further research is needed to investigate the causes of the entrenched media hegemony concerning biomedicine and its possible relation with the mistaken social identification between sanitation and health.