Objectives This study aimed to explore the health inequality discourse in the Korean press by analyzing newspaper articles using a relatively new content analysis technique.
Methods This study used the search term “health inequality” to collect articles containing that term that were published between 2000 and 2018. The collected articles went through pre-processing and topic modeling, and the contents and temporal trends of the extracted topics were analyzed.
Results A total of 1038 articles were identified, and 5 topics were extracted. As the number of studies on health inequality has increased over the past 2 decades, so too has the number of news articles regarding health inequality. The extracted topics were public health policies, social inequalities in health, inequality as a social problem, healthcare policies, and regional health gaps. The total number of occurrences of each topic increased every year, and the trend observed for each theme was influenced by events related to its contents, such as elections. Finally, the frequency of appearance of each topic differed depending on the type of news source.
Conclusions The results of this study can be used as preliminary data for future attempts to address health inequality in Korea. To make addressing health inequality part of the public agenda, the media’s perspective and discourse regarding health inequality should be monitored to facilitate further strategic action.
Summary
Korean summary
건강불평등 해소는 한국사회의 중요한 목표이다. 이 연구에서는 건강불평등을 다룬 신문기사를 추출, 토픽모델링 기법을 적용해 공공의료, 사회경제적 요인에 따른 건강불평등, 사회문제로 불평등, 보건의료정책, 지역건강격차의 다섯 가지 주제를 도출하였다. 언론이 건강불평등을 다루는 방식은 학술적 연구에서 건강불평등을 다루는 방식과는 유사하였으나, 건강취약지역의 저소득층의 인식과는 차이가 있었다.
Citations
Citations to this article as recorded by
Regional Health Disparities in Hypertension-Related Hospitalization of Hypertensive Patients: A Nationwide Population-Based Nested Case-Control Study Woo-Ri Lee, Jun Hyuk Koo, Ji Yun Jeong, Min Su Kim, Ki-Bong Yoo International Journal of Public Health.2023;[Epub] CrossRef