The image of doctors in the Slovenian daily press: White mafia or hardworking altruists?
Abstract
Background: News media portrayals of doctors (co-)construct public opinion on the medical profession. There have been only a few studies on media representations of doctors, which researched the quality press only and did not use quantitative methods to measure evaluations of doctors. Methods: The study tries to fill this research gap by an analysis of doctors’ representation in five most-read Slovenian daily newspapers from 15 March to 15 September 2010. Quantitative content analysis and qualitative critical discourse analysis were used to verify the hypothesis that among media there are statistically significant differences in doctors’ evaluations. Results: The dailies mostly represented doctors neutrally (41.6 %); a negative evaluation was found in 38.4 % and positive in 20.0 % of news items. Statistically significant differences were established among the media. The tabloid Slovenske novice published the majority of news items that negatively evaluated doctors (33.2 %), and the least with a positive evaluation (1.7 %). Among actors, Fides and the Medical Chamber of Slovenia were evaluated particularly negatively. All dailies published black and white images of doctors: “hardworking” and “overburdened” young residents work overtime, senior physicians are “lazy”, “blackmailers”, and “the greedy ones”. Conclusions: There is an ambivalent and oversimplified coverage of doctors in the Slovenian press. They are represented both negatively and positively. A challenge for the future research would be a study on views about doctors in diverse media and public opinion.Downloads
The Author transfers to the Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) all economic copyrights following form Article 22 of the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP), including the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the rental right, the right of public performance, the right of public transmission, the right of public communication by means of phonograms and videograms, the right of public presentation, the right of broadcasting, the right of rebroadcasting, the right of secondary broadcasting, the right of communication to the public, the right of transformation, the right of audiovisual adaptation and all other rights of the author according to ZASP.
The aforementioned rights are transferred non-exclusively, for an unlimited number of editions, for the term of the statutory
The Author can make use of his work himself or transfer subjective rights to others only after 3 months from date of first publishing in the journal Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal.
The Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) has the right to transfer the rights, acquired parties without explicit consent of the Author.
The Author consents that the Article be published under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 (attribution-non-commercial) or comparable licence.