Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 4, 2020
Date Accepted: May 13, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Geographic and Socioeconomic Differences in Volume of News Reporting and Opioid-related deaths in the United States: Digital Surveillance of Online Media
ABSTRACT
Background:
Drug overdose death from opioids continue to increase in the United States with two out of three drug overdose deaths involving an opioid. News media coverage is a powerful on public attitudes and government action. The digitization of news media has changed the landscape of coverage and may have implications towards the response to the opioid crisis.
Objective:
This study examines how the volume of online opioid news reporting and opioid-related deaths in the United States differ across geographic and socioeconomic county-level factors.
Methods:
News reports on opioid-related events from online news media sources was captured for the United States from February 2018 to April 2019 and aggregated at the county level and compared against opioid-related death counts. Ordinary least squares regression was used to model county opioid-related death rate and county opioid news coverage with the inclusion of socioeconomic and geographic explanatory variables.
Results:
A total of 35,758 relevant news reports were collected representing 1789 counties. Regression analysis revealed that opioid-related deaths were negatively associated with educational attainment and positively associated with rurality. In contrast, volume of news reporting was positively associated with educational attainment and negatively associated with rurality. Even after controlling for variation in death rate, counties in the Northeast were overrepresented by news coverage.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest differences between the volume of opioid-related news reporting and opioid-related death rates, as evidenced by different relationships with rurality and educational attainment. Differences in amount of media attention may influence perceptions of the severity of opioid epidemic. Future studies should investigate the influence of media reporting on public support and action on opioid issues.
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Copyright
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