"Contact experts and patients": evolution of the sources of health information after COVID19
Abstract
Sources influence the quality and orientation of health news and make it possible to explain and humanize the data. With the aim of finding out whether there were changes in health journalistic sources after the pandemic, we analyzed the contents and interviewed 16 specialized journalists from the general press, radio and television with large audiences in Spain. The quantitative results show that experts are the most frequent main source after COVID19 followed by patients and state institutions, which is a significant change (p < 0.001) with respect to pre-pandemic, when institutions were in first place. Qualitatively, health journalists express their criticism and distrust of official sources. We can conclude that there are changes and an evolution in health journalistic sources in Spain, which further studies will determine whether it only affects the general media.
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