ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: There has been growing concern about the media's negative portrayal of radiation oncology in recent years. Our study shows changes in media sentiment toward radiotherapy over the years, identifies prevalent themes, and analyzes their shifts over time. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed articles about radiation oncology published in The New York Times since the journal's inception in 1851. Initially, we collected 30 427 articles containing the keywords "radiation" or "radiotherapy" up to July 2023. In the next step, we selected 342 articles on radiation oncology using keyword searches, prompting the Chat GPT language model and manual assessment. Ultimately, we created a codebook summarizing the media topics related to radiotherapy and categorized the articles into these categories. RESULTS: Our analysis identified ten distinct categories representing media themes related to radiation oncology: five negative, three positive, and two neutral. Our findings indicate a rising negative sentiment toward radiotherapy. In the 21st century, over 50% of articles negatively described radiation oncology. The media coverage has shifted its focus away from describing scientific breakthroughs and the implementation of new techniques and toward treatment errors, toxicity, and ineffectiveness. CONCLUSION: The increasing negative media sentiment surrounding radiation oncology may influence public perceptions and impact patients' decisions. Radiation oncologists should remain vigilant about this situation, ensuring the dissemination of accurate information and addressing negative portrayals.
Subject(s)
Mass Media , Radiation OncologyABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media content analysis allowed for tracking attitudes toward newly introduced vaccines. However, current evidence is limited to single social media platforms. Our objective was to compare arguments used by anti-vaxxers in the context of COVID-19 vaccines across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. We obtained the data set of 53,671 comments regarding COVID-19 vaccination published between August 2021 and February 2022. After that, we established categories of anti-vaccine content, manually classified comments, and compared the frequency of occurrence of the categories between social media platforms. We found that anti-vaxxers on social media use 14 categories of arguments against COVID-19 vaccines. The frequency of these categories varies across different social media platforms. The anti-vaxxers' activity on Facebook and Twitter is similar, focusing mainly on distrust of government and allegations regarding vaccination safety and effectiveness. Anti-vaxxers on TikTok mainly focus on personal freedom, while Instagram users encouraging vaccination often face criticism suggesting that vaccination is a private matter that should not be shared. Due to the differences in vaccine sentiment among users of different social media platforms, future research and educational campaigns should consider these distinctions, focusing more on the platforms popular among adolescents (i.e., Instagram and TikTok).
