Chinese media coverage of eating disorders: Disorder representations and patient profiles.

OBJECTIVE: Eating disorders (EDs) are becoming more prevalent in China; however, no studies have been conducted to explore how Chinese media represented EDs, and how media representation of ED impacted public understanding of EDs. The aim of this study was to analyze articles about EDs in Chinese newspapers, and to identify any potential inaccuracies about EDs as represented in the media. METHOD: Content analysis was employed to analyze a total number of 292 news articles over the span of two decades (1998-2019). Intercoder reliability was satisfactory for all the coded categories. The analysis was conducted on two different dimensions: for individual news article and for individual patient profile. RESULTS: The bulk of news reporting on EDs was about anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. A majority of individual patient profiles focused on young women. Anorexia nervosa was mentioned and discussed more frequently than bulimia nervosa. Chinese newspapers generally presented correct information concerning anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, but conveyed shallow information about the etiology and treatment. There were also misconceptions of EDs as reported in Chinese media. DISCUSSION: EDs have not received sufficient attention in Chinese media, as shown by the media coverage on EDs over the last two decades. Considering the increasing prevalence of EDs in China with its large population base, effective communication strategies are needed to call public attention to this health issue, and to galvanize the medical community and the society to devote more resources to improve the prevention and treatment of EDs in China.

Ecological networks reveal resilience of agro-ecosystems to changes in farming management.

Sustainable management of ecosystems and growth in agricultural productivity is at the heart of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. New management regimes could revolutionize agricultural production, but require an evaluation of the risks and opportunities. Replacing existing conventional weed management with genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant (GMHT) crops, for example, might reduce herbicide applications and increase crop yields, but remains controversial owing to concerns about potential impacts on biodiversity. Until now, such new regimes have been assessed at the species or assemblage level, whereas higher-level ecological network effects remain largely unconsidered. Here, we conduct a large-scale network analysis of invertebrate communities across 502 UK farm sites to GMHT management in different crop types. We find that network-level properties were overwhelmingly shaped by crop type, whereas network structure and robustness were apparently unaltered by GMHT management. This suggests that taxon-specific effects reported previously did not escalate into higher-level systemic structural change in the wider agricultural ecosystem. Our study highlights current limitations of autecological assessments of effect in agriculture in which species interactions and potential compensatory effects are overlooked. We advocate adopting the more holistic system-level evaluations that we explore here, which complement existing assessments for meeting our future agricultural needs.

FORUM: Ecological networks: the missing links in biomonitoring science.

Monitoring anthropogenic impacts is essential for managing and conserving ecosystems, yet current biomonitoring approaches lack the tools required to deal with the effects of stressors on species and their interactions in complex natural systems.Ecological networks (trophic or mutualistic) can offer new insights into ecosystem degradation, adding value to current taxonomically constrained schemes. We highlight some examples to show how new network approaches can be used to interpret ecological responses.Synthesis and applications. Augmenting routine biomonitoring data with interaction data derived from the literature, complemented with ground-truthed data from direct observations where feasible, allows us to begin to characterise large numbers of ecological networks across environmental gradients. This process can be accelerated by adopting emerging technologies and novel analytical approaches, enabling biomonitoring to move beyond simple pass/fail schemes and to address the many ecological responses that can only be understood from a network-based perspective.