Abstract
Obesity has become an ongoing focus of newspaper journalism. This study analyzes content published on this topic by Spanish dailies El País, La Vanguardia, and El Correo throughout 2015. During this 12-month period, these three newspapers published 183 news items that made some sort of reference to obesity, 59 percent of which were completely devoted to the problem. The research reported here has focused on identifying the dominant frames employed in this coverage.
Introduction
Obesity has become one of the principal health concerns of modern society. World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan acknowledged the dimensions of the problem in October 2016 when she observed, ‘In just a few decades, the world has moved from a nutrition profile in which the prevalence of underweight was more than double that of obesity to the current situation in which more people worldwide are obese than underweight’. A study by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (2016) network published in The Lancet (1389) noted there were about 641 million obese people in the world in 2014 compared to 105 million in 1975.
Gard and Wright (2005), who have explored the issue from a number of perspectives, question the role the scientific community has played in the framing of obesity as an epidemic and assert that the ‘complex pot-pourri of science, morality and ideological assumptions’ on which current scientific discourse on this topic has been based skews research. The same authors stress the implication of the media in the construction of the prevailing notion that an obesity epidemic as such exists. Boero (2007: 42), another researcher working along similar lines, considers the obesity to be a post-modern phenomenon. A study by Saguy and Almeling (2008) examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem.
News stories frequently link obesity to cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes and highlight factors contributing to weight gain such as the consumption sweetened food products, lack of physical exercise, and other unhealthy aspects of modern lifestyles.
Various studies have been conducted on the ways in which the mass media portray and handle the issue of obesity. An analysis of existing literature by Atesanova et al. (2012) indicates that the media tend to treat obesity as a matter of personal responsibility. These researchers assert that the ‘individualization’ of this issue hinders change in government and the food industry practices.
Couch et al. (2015), who have examined media representation of obese people from the dual perspective of panoptic (Foucault, 1979) and synoptic (Mathiesen, 1997) social control, concluded that media coverage of obesity places a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility and by and large suggests that obese people are to blame for their condition.
Heuer et al. (2011) have likewise presented evidence that media coverage of obesity places disproportionate emphasis on personal responsibility and individual causes and solutions while ignoring societal and environmental factors. Their analysis of photographs published on several major digital news sites in the United States led them to conclude that ‘The media’s attribution of obesity as a problem with obese individuals themselves (rather than a more complex societal and public health issue) is underscored by the inclusion of stigmatizing images’ (Heuer et al., 2011: 984). On the other hand, the findings of a study conducted by Gollust et al. (2012) on the pictorial representation of obese people by Time and Newsweek between 1984 and 2009 suggest that newspapers’ sensitivity on this issue has improved over time.
A study by Jeong et al. (2014) on the ways in which the media framed obesity during a campaign against the consumption of sweetened beverages in Philadelphia found that ‘the local news media in one major market more often framed obesity as an individual issue, rather than a public one. (…) Approximately one third of all stories provided concrete suggestions to combat obesity at the individual level’ (Jeong et al., 2014: 585).
Another study conducted in Australia on news representation of indigenous obesity concluded that although coverage analyzed had placed due emphasis on the structural causes and origins of obesity within that social group, ‘In comparison, individual solutions were overrepresented thus challenging the above view; instead pointing to a media view that ultimate responsibility lies with the individual’ (Islam and Fitzgerald, 2016: 8).
In a study exploring the degree to which media in Ireland hold parents in that country responsible for the obesity of their children, De Brún et al. (2013) concluded that Irish newspapers by and large portray overweight and obese children as ‘victims of poor parenting’ (p. 23). An earlier analysis conducted by the same authors (De Brún, McKenzie and McCarthy, 2012) of the spectacular 600 percent increase in coverage of obesity by The Irish Times between 2002 and 2004 also revealed that content published by that paper on the topic tended to attribute the blame for weight problems on individual behavior and personal choices.
Maher et al. (2010) introduced the issue of gender into the equation with the observations that the media tend to hold mothers responsible for the obesity of their children at a moment when the ongoing trend toward the privatization of health care in many places is forcing more and more families to confront the problem on their own.
In contrast, an experiment conducted by Sun et al. (2016) with communication students on the impact of framing on public perception of obesity revealed that newspaper readers were much more apt to attribute a greater degree of responsibility for the problem to primary food producers, the food industry, and the marketing sector after being exposed to news articles framed from a social perspective.
Some studies have examined media reporting on obesity from other angles. Roy et al. (2007) have explored the ‘interdependent and possibly problematic’ (p. 575) relationships between Canadian journalists and sources that influence how the media cover research on obesity.
In their study of British news coverage of obesity between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2010, Hilton et al. (2012) observed that more than half of the articles they analyzed mentioned health risks associated with obesity and almost a third warned of the financial burden of this ‘epidemic’.
The findings of a study on Austrian press coverage of obesity carried out by Penkler et al. (2015) indicated that the press in that country frames weight problems and obesity as ‘symptoms of a deep malfunctioning of the societal body’ (p. 330).
According to statistics released in 2016 by the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, 52.6 percent of the adult population of Spain was either overweight (35.7%) or obese (16.9%) in 2014 and men were more apt to suffer this condition (60.7%) than women (44.8%).
The gravity of the problem has prompted a number of researchers to examine media coverage of obesity in Spain. On the basis of their analysis of related content published by El País, El Mundo, and ABC between 2002 and 2005, Ortiz-Barreda et al. (2012) determined that ‘the newspapers analyzed published more articles denouncing the problem and describing its magnitude than stories about measures and political strategies [conceived to deal with it]’ (p. 29). This study concluded, ‘newspapers publish stories that frame obesity as an epidemic and risk factor for other diseases more frequently’ (Ortiz-Barreda et al., 2012: 30).
Research on press coverage of childhood obesity in Spain carried out by Debra Westall (2011) revealed an increase in ‘SO-FAT’ articles (the ‘so’ in ‘SO-FAT’ referring to the first two letters of the Spanish word for overweight, sobrepeso). The dominant frame of the material this author analyzed was ‘research related to childhood diet and nutrition (…) and studies on the rising incidence of SO-FAT’ (Westall, 2011: 236). Doctoral theses on the media’s coverage of food-related issues recently presented by María Carretero Sánchez (2016) and Javier Aranceta (2016) are also worth noting. Carretero Sánchez (2016: 207–208) focuses on the role of the media in nutrition education. Aranceta (2016: 108) looks more at Spanish press coverage of food issues, in general, but notes in detail the attention newspapers have paid to weight gain and obesity.
Last, but not least, is a wide-ranging review of the existing literature by García Cortés (2016), in which the author attempts to provide a comprehensive picture of research carried out on childhood obesity from a social perspective in Spain and other countries. One of the conclusions reached by this author is that ‘newspapers have no guidelines for handling the issue of obesity. As a result, there is nothing to ensure that reporting on the issue is geared towards raising public awareness or conveying positive models of behaviour’ (García Cortés, 2016: 91). Obviously, the objectives of the media do not always coincide with those of public health agencies.
Objectives and hypotheses
The purpose of this study has been to provide an analysis of content related to obesity published during 2015 by three major mainstream Spanish daily newspapers: El País (Madrid), La Vanguardia (Barcelona), and El Correo (Bilbao). The following hypotheses were formulated at the outset of this research:
H1. Obesity constitutes a year-round topic of newspaper reporting rather than a subject addressed only at particular points of the year such as Christmas and summer. Studies carried out by the Fundación Vasca para la Seguridad Agroalimentaria (Elika, 2014, 2015) cite December as the month during which the Spanish press publishes the highest number of articles related to food while noting that steady attention is nevertheless paid to the topic throughout the rest of the year as well.
H2. Obesity is no longer a secondary or marginal topic from a journalistic point of view and newspapers are placing a growing emphasis on news related to this problem.
H3. Newspapers are making a greater effort to provide content that informs readers about the prevention and solutions to the problem.
H4. In line with the findings of previous studies conducted in other countries, the majority of articles published by Spanish newspapers on obesity hold individuals rather than society or the food industry responsible for the problem and its resolution.
Methodology
Analysis methods used in this study took various aspects of McCombs and Shaw’s (1972) agenda-setting theory into account, particularly these authors’ assertion that ‘Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position’ (p. 176).
Gitlin (1980) defines frames as ‘persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers [such as journalists] routinely organize discourse, whether verbal or visual’ (p. 7). According to McCombs (2006: 171), the convergence of attribute agenda setting with the concept of framing offers new insights into the impact of news coverage on public opinion in that it highlights the salience of particular attributes and frames contained in individual messages. Applying an amalgam of the two theories in this study was therefore logical, especially in light of the opinion of authors such as McCombs and Evatt (1995: 25–26) that framing theory is effectively an extension of agenda-setting theory.
Even if gain and loss framing has been the focus of a number of prior analyses of media content related to obesity, particularly those primarily concerned with the persuasive impact of framing on respondent attitudes (Bannon and Schwartz, 2006), given the scope and variety of the content in our sample, this study has focused on how stories were framed in terms of topics. This made sense in light of De Vreese’s (2002) observation that generic frames ‘transcend thematic limitations and can be identified in relation to different topics, some even over time and in different cultural contexts’.
In terms of the choice between the two basic approaches usually taken in frame analysis – inductive and deductive (De Vreese, 2005) – we have opted for the latter, which entails defining a set list of frames to be identified prior to undertaking an analysis. Frames identified previously by authors such as Entman (1993), Iyengar (1989), and Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) were taken into account when compiling the list to be used in this study.
Entman’s definitions of the four most basic functions of frames (diagnosis, attribution of responsibility, moral evaluation, and prescription) were especially useful in the context of the material to be examined. Of the five dominant frames analyzed by Semetko and Valkenburg in an earlier deductive content analysis of newspaper content (attribution of responsibility, human interest, conflict, morality, and economic consequences), attribution of responsibility was determined to be the most germane to this study, given that as Valkenburg et al. (1999) have noted, ‘the responsibility frame presents an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for causing or solving a problem to the government or to an individual or to a group’ (p. 552).
Iyengar (1991) explored the same frame in Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues, a book examining how the episodic (as opposed to thematic) framing of television news prompts viewers to attribute the responsibility for a negative situation to individuals rather than societal factors.
Eilders and Lüters (2000), on the other hand, drew distinctions between identity, diagnosis, and prognosis frames. The main contribution of these authors is ‘the recognizable typology an extended chronological perspective reveals in the context of textual analysis’ (López Rabadán, 2010: 244).
Of the frames noted above, we selected those most closely related to the questions posed in this study, which were the following:
The diagnostic frame. How does one define obesity? What is the magnitude of the problem?
The causal frame. What causes obesity? What factors determine whether a person becomes obese?
The consequences frame. What are the effects of obesity? What are its consequences?
The solution frame. What solutions have been proposed? What measures are being taken to combat the problem? What recommendations have been made for mitigating its effects?
The responsibility frame. Who or what is responsible for obesity?
Given the possibility that several of these five frames covering the various basic perspectives from which obesity is addressed could overlap in any given article, the frame determined to be dominant was assumed to express the overall perspective from which a piece was written.
All issues of the print editions of El País, La Vanguardia, and El Correo published during 2015 (n = 1086) were screened for content relevant to the subject of this study. Madrid-based El País was Spain’s largest circulation newspaper in 2015 (pp. 221, 390). La Vanguardia, which is published in Barcelona and directed to a mainly Catalan readership, ranked second with a circulation of 129,073. The third daily examined was El Correo, a regional newspaper with a circulation of 72,956 published in Bilbao that, like the Madrid-based daily ABC, is owned by Vocento, Spain’s largest press conglomerate.
Sample material was identified by means of systematic key word searches of the La Vanguardia digital archive and Kiosco, a digital repository of past issues of El País and El Correo. Key words used were obesidad (obesity), sobrepeso (overweight), gordura (excess weight), and obeso and obesa (masculine and feminine Spanish equivalents of the neutral English adjective obese that are also used as nouns to refer to obese people). Of the 183 news items identified by means of this method, obesity was determined to be the main subject of 108 (59%). The analysis described below focused on these 108 items. Inter-coder reliability was verified by means of the Holsti’s method (Holsti 1969). The coefficient of agreement for this study was 0.85 and the reliability threshold 0.8.
Results
Focus of news content analyzed
As noted above, between January 1 and December 2015, the three newspapers examined published 183 news items related in some way to obesity. Of these, 59 percent focused directly on the issue. Table 1 provides a numerical and percentage breakdown of this content by degree of focus on the topic.
Breakdown of news content related to obesity by degree of focus.
Although La Vanguardia published practically the same number of news items mentioning obesity as El País during 2015 (50 compared to 51), a significantly higher percent of the items it ran focused directly on the topic. Stories in which obesity was the primary focus accounted for 62 percent of the coverage provided by La Vanguardia and a relatively lower 45 percent of the coverage provided by El País. A comparison of the figures in Table 1 reveals that El Correo published the highest number of articles (82) mentioning obesity during 2015, 66 percent of which focused directly on the topic.
Obesity is no longer a seasonal news topic. Newspapers no longer limit their coverage of obesity and possible responses to the problem to summer months and the Christmas holidays. As the data in Figure 1 show, aside from April and November, the distribution of content on the topic is fairly balanced throughout the rest of the year.
Distribution of news items on obesity by month (2015).
Two indicators were used to measure the emphasis that each newspaper examined placed on obesity. The first was the numerical and percentile distribution of article titles that included the words obesity, obese, and/or overweight. Although it was assumed they would focus on the topic, all articles bearing such titles were manually examined by both authors to verify whether the content they contained was relevant to the study.
The second indicator was the placement of each article within the layout of a particular day’s issue. News content was classified into three categories of salience: high salience (main story on a given page), medium salience (two-column items placed above the fold and three-column items placed below the fold), and low salience (one-column items placed above the fold and two-column items placed below the fold). In visualizing the placement described in this article, it should be remembered that like most Spanish newspapers, all three dailies examined are published in tabloid format.
As can be seen in Table 2, slightly more than a third of the titles of the news items in the sample (35%) contained the words obesity, obese, or overweight. Examples include ‘Too much sugar and carbohydrates are the only factors leading to obesity’ (El Correo, 23 April 2015), ‘One’s year of birth has an impact on his or her risk of suffering obesity’ (El País, 02 January 2015), and ‘Catalonia’s solution for obesity: more fruit on school menus’ (La Vanguardia, 30 December 2015).
Percentage of titles containing the search terms obesidad, obeso/obesa, or sobrepeso.
El Correo did the most to highlight news stories on obesity in terms of page placement: 72 percent of the news items it ran on the subject were positioned as the lead story of the pages on which they appeared. La Vanguardia also placed a high percentage of the stories it published (61%) where they would be readily noticed. El País, the only paper in the sample not to position at least half of the items it published on the topic (48%) prominently on the pages on which they appeared, ran the highest percentage (35%) of low-salience articles. More than half of the news items in the overall sample (64%) were featured as the lead stories of the pages on which they appeared and only 20 percent were positioned where they were less apt to be noticed by readers (Table 3).
Salience of news items on obesity.
Frames
News items in the sample were rigorously examined to determine how arguments, titles, key words, and metaphors had been used as framing devices. Five dominant frames were identified (see Table 4).
Dominant frames employed in reporting related to obesity.
The frame most frequently employed by all three newspapers covered by this study was ‘solutions and recommendations’, which was detected in over half (54%) of the news items examined. ‘Causes’ frames (identified in 17%) and ‘consequences’ frames (identified in 14%) were also widely employed. Only 10 percent featured a ‘diagnosis’ frame and even fewer (5%) had been framed from a responsibility perspective.
Solution frame
The overall dominant frame in the content examined was solutions/recommendations: 60 percent of the news items published by El País and 55 percent of those published by the other two papers were written from this perspective. Some of the articles focused on political action, while others underscored the work being carried out by pharmaceutical sector, medical intervention, and the importance of paying attention to one’s nutritional needs and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (which were often mentioned together with variable emphasis on one or the other). Many articles offered dietary advice, explained the nutritional value of specific foods, stressed the benefits of improving one’s lifestyle, and highlighted the role of sports and physical exercise in weight loss and maintenance (Table 5).
Types of obesity treatments and solutions mentioned in news sample content.
Good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle was the dominant topic of 41 percent of the news items in this category published by El Correo, followed by health tips, which appeared more sporadically or as one of various topics addressed in articles with a local focus (26%). Other articles framed from a solutions perspective included local interest stories such as ‘Vitoria hosts online conference on obesity surgery’ (El Correo, 19 May 2015) and human interest stories such as ‘My weight was like a backpack I couldn’t get rid of’ (El Correo, 30 May 2015), which highlighted the daily challenges an individual struggling with a weight problem faces.
Pharmacological solutions were the main focus of 11 percent and governmental and political responses the main topic of 22 percent. Articles on political and governmental responses to the problem published by this daily such as ‘Cruces hospital adds healthy food to its vending machines’ (El Correo, 13 June 2015) overwhelmingly concentrated on initiatives mounted at the local and regional level. Only one item focused on public sector efforts in other countries. This was ‘Ireland to require calorie counts on menus’ (El Correo, 08 December 2015).
Although El País employed a number of solution and recommendation frames, it focused primarily on pharmacological remedies, which constituted the central topic of 43 percent of the related news items it published. Many of the articles it ran in this category informed the public about medical studies and research that could lead to new treatments for obesity, a few examples being ‘Imaginary meal pill helps obese mice lose weight’ (El País, 10 January 2015) and ‘Anti-obesity pill works on mice and monkeys’ (El País, 27 March 2015).
The second most dominant solutions frame in El País coverage was public sector and political response to the problem, which was the central theme of 22 percent of the articles that paper published on the topic during the period examined. Most of these described initiatives launched elsewhere such as a tax in the United States on sweetened beverages – the subject of ‘The US no longer wants soft drinks’ (El País, 15 October 2015) – or policies that could be or were being implemented around the world to reduce obesity.
El País also focused heavily on the benefits of good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, a perspective from which another 21 percent of the articles it published were framed. Less common were stories about medical solutions, which were only periodically featured in this paper and tended to be about bariatric surgical procedures that average people and celebrities alike had undergone to control their obesity. One example was ‘Maradona undergoes new weight-loss surgery’ (El País, 16 October 2015).
More than half of the articles published by La Vanguardia on obesity (53%) focused on the importance of good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Pharmacological treatment, in contrast, was the main topic of only 12 percent, the same percentage as the mixed bag of news items classified as ‘other’ that covered topics such as the role of psychological support and prompts of a financial nature in behavior modification. Two examples of articles in this category were ‘Weight watcher’ (La Vanguardia, 03 May 2015) and ‘Jaime Oliver, British chef’ (La Vanguardia, 24 June 2015): the first of which emphasized the relationship between psychological support and successful weight loss efforts and provided a short bio of Weight Watchers co-founder Jean Nidetch and the second of which focused on British chef Jaime Oliver’s decision to add a 10-cent surcharge to the price of sweetened beverages sold in his restaurants.
The three newspapers examined framed practically the same percentage of their 2015 coverage of obesity (22%–23%) from the perspective of what could be done at the governmental and political level to combat the problem. Articles published by La Vanguardia about public and industry action on this issue included ‘Catalonia’s anti-obesity plan’ (La Vanguardia, 30 December 2015).
Consequences frame
Although the consequences of obesity was the third most dominant frame in the sample as a whole and accounted for 14 percent of the articles analyzed for this study, its use by each of the newspapers examined varied widely: 19 percent of the news items published by El Correo and 17 percent of those published by El País, focused on this issue compared to only 5 percent of those published by La Vanguardia.
Most of the consequences of obesity enumerated by the dailies examined concerned the health problems it supposed for those suffering from the condition. Of the articles published by El Correo employing this frame, 80 percent focused on the impact of obesity on personal health. These included ‘Diabetes, a problem most obese people suffer’ (El Correo, 17 June 2015) and ‘Excess weight beyond the age of 50 could speed up the onset of Alzheimer’s disease’ (El Correo, 02 September 2015). This was also the primary angle explored by El País and La Vanguardia, which ran articles such as ‘Sedentarism causes twice as many fatalities as obesity in Europe’ (El País, 15 January 2015) and ‘Tess Holliday, plus-size model’ (La Vanguardia, 25 June 2015).
El País, on the other hand, mentioned the economic impact of obesity in 50 percent of the articles it ran in which consequences served as the dominant frame, one example being ‘The enormous cost of obesity’ (El País, 04 January 2015).
Even though it was not the principal focus of its coverage of this issue, El País addressed the economic impact of obesity in various articles and opinion columns. At least 26 percent of the articles it published on obesity mentioned this topic. One opinion piece on the connection between junk food and obesity published in its El acento section on 2 February 2015 asserted, the problem is of such dimensions that not one country in the world has been able to reverse a trend that will turn out to be costly not only in the context of personal well-being and health but in economic terms as well.
The social consequences of obesity were only addressed in one story published by El Correo under the title ‘Sean gets another chance to shake his plus-sized stuff’ (El Correo, 28 May 2015), which recounted the types of daily situations in which overweight people feel denigrated and stigmatized.
Diagnosis frame
Although 13 percent of the content on obesity published by El Correo and La Vanguardia was framed from a diagnostic perspective, no dominant diagnosis frames were detected in equivalent material published by El País.
Articles employing this frame emphasized the scope and ramifications of obesity. El Correo, for example, ran two articles examining the business opportunities it supposed: ‘Going after the fat guy’(El Correo, 20 February 2015) and ‘Monetizing illness’ (El Correo, 11 June 2015), and El País published several pieces along similar lines.
La Vanguardia used a diagnosis frame in various articles on the rise of obesity in Catalonia and Spain such as ‘Fine in terms of health and longevity but too fat and sedentary’ (La Vanguardia, 08 April 2015).
Despite the fact that diagnosis was seldom the dominant frame of articles, key words associated with diagnosis framing such as obeso, obesidad, gordo, gorda, and sobrepeso appeared in 35 percent of the titles examined, many of which such as ‘Diabetes and obesity are both chronic diseases’ (La Vanguardia, 12 December 2015) characterized obesity as a pathology or even a chronic disease. Other, more dramatic, titles described obesity as an epidemic (El País, 30 March 2015 and 19 August 2015) and one title in El Correo – ‘Obesity has become a chronic disease of epidemic proportions in the Western world’ (El Correo, 16 December 2015) – referred to it as a pandemic.
El País cited a European Court of Justice ruling that established obesity ‘could constitute a disability’ (El País, 04 January 2015) and La Vanguardia columnist Magda Carlas qualified obesity as ‘a major health problem’ (La Vanguardia, 15 November 2015).
The globalization of obesity, a consequence of the economic crisis and bad eating habits, was also described in another El País article written from a diagnosis perspective as having evolved from an illness only affecting individuals to being a problem for society at large, the economic and public health consequences of which can only be dealt with by means of ‘a strong demonstration of political will’ (El País, 08 February 2015).
A significant proportion (20%) of the news items framed from the perspective of consequences focused heavily on the challenge of childhood obesity.
Causal frame
Although causal frames were detected in only 9 percent of the articles published by El Correo, the other two papers used them to much greater extent: 16 percent of the news items published by El País and 22 percent of the news items published by La Vanguardia focused on the causes of obesity.
The causal factors of obesity most frequently mentioned by all three papers were unhealthy lifestyles and poor eating habits. El Correo only raised these issues in articles framed primarily from a causal perspective such as ‘Too much sugar and carbohydrates are the only factors leading to obesity’ (El Correo, 23 April 2015). While La Vanguardia and El País ran articles citing poor nutrition and unhealthy lifestyles as key factors in the development of obesity, they also published several on genetic predisposition such as ‘Intestinal bacteria plays a role in weight gain and mental response to hunger-related hormones’ (La Vanguardia, 22 May 2015) and ‘One’s year of birth has an impact on his or her risk of suffering obesity’ (El País, 02 January 2015).
The newspapers also ran a number of socially conscious articles framing the growing problem of obesity in developed countries as the collateral effect of malnutrition caused by the recent economic crisis, which has driven many consumers to buy processed junk food rather than fresh, healthy products. ‘Children harmed by the crisis’ (El Correo, 12 June 2015), for example, cited studies that qualified childhood obesity and other childhood illnesses as the ‘consequences of eight years of economic crisis’.
La Vanguardia also examined the connection between obesity and poverty in an article that reported ‘epidemiological studies clearly indicate that rates of obesity for lower-income socio-economic groups are higher’ (La Vanguardia, 12 December 2015).
One news story in the sample (an article published by El País on 3 March 2015 under the title ‘Pepperoni gets political’) focused primarily on the connection between educational level and obesity but this factor was also addressed by the other two newspapers analyzed. In one news item appearing in El Correo, columnist José María Romera observed, ‘In developed societies, being fat is no longer considered a sign of an opulent lifestyle but rather associated with a combination of limited resources and a low level of educational attainment’ (El Correo, 20 February 2015). In addition to pointing out the relationship between educational level and obesity, El País ran an article examining the effect of social and cultural signals on individual behavior in ‘obesogenic environments’ (El País, 04 January 2015).
Responsibility frame
None of the newspapers used the responsibility frame extensively in their reporting on obesity and it never appeared as a dominant frame in the articles published by El País. However, the attribution of responsibility is nevertheless highly relevant in the context of the topic in question.
La Vanguardia employed this frame (detected in 13% of the related news items it published) more than the other two newspapers. The articles it published from this slant held the food industry and, to a lesser extent, society, in general, responsible for the problem. Responsibility was the dominant frame of only two of the articles El Correo ran on the subject, which accounted for 4 percent of its total coverage and likewise stressed the responsibility of the food industry and society.
Although it seldom appeared as a dominant frame, the attribution of responsibility for the rise in obesity was nevertheless present in 35 percent of the articles published by El Correo and 39 percent of the content published by La Vanguardia and El País. The overall sample reveals that all three newspapers tended to portray obese people as being solely responsible for their condition (see Table 6).
Attribution of responsibility for obesity.
Given the close connection between responsibility and solutions, there is much to be gained by comparing the attributions of responsibility made and solutions proposed in sample content. It is interesting to note that the latter greatly outnumbered the former. Data concerning the percentage of each newspaper’s coverage containing direct attributions of responsibility (35% in the case of El Correo and 39% in the case of La Vanguardia and El País) do not provide a comprehensive idea of the extent to which the issue of personal responsibility was actually addressed. One must also take into account the personal responsibility implicit to solutions, which was mentioned in 83 percent of the stories that appeared in El País, 81 percent of those published by El Correo, and 77 percent of those published by La Vanguardia.
Comparing the data, the connection between the attribution of responsibility for and solutions to obesity becomes patently clear. Individual remedial effort accounted for 63 percent of the solutions proposed: 49 percent concerned advice about nutrition, diet, and eating habits in general and 14 percent surgical procedures. The majority of causal frames detected tended to focus heavily on unhealthy lifestyles and dietary habits heavily associated with the notion of individual responsibility.
Solutions related to research, which accounted for another 14 percent, focused mainly on recent advances in the study of obesity and how the pharmaceutical industry was using scientific findings to develop treatments and remedies. Such solutions can therefore be considered to be of both individual and social interest.
Political response was mentioned in 23 percent of the news items offering solutions to the problem of obesity – a significant, if not large, percentage second only to those related to nutrition and lifestyle.
Perhaps prompted by the additional expenses that the recent surge in obesity supposes for public health systems and/or the alarming rise in childhood obesity linked to nutritional deficiencies brought on by the economic crisis that educational programs so far have failed to reverse, government authorities at all levels have begun to react. The percentage of articles examined for this study that attributed responsibility for the rising incidence of obesity (or at least the responsibility for dealing with it) to society at large (20%) and government (6%) indicates that a broader perspective on the problem is beginning to gain traction. An even higher percentage of the articles (27%) suggested that the food industry needed to demonstrate more responsibility on this issue.
The campaign being waged in the United States to reduce the consumption of sugar, in general, and sweetened beverages, in particular, has situated the food industry at the center of the controversy. Pointing the finger at companies that produce unhealthy foods would appear to have the effect of shifting a certain degree of responsibility from the people who consume them. It is worth noting that 48 percent of the news items analyzed during this study cited sources based in other European countries or the United States. The Obama administration’s interest in obesity prevention (driven in large part by former first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative) has had an impact on Spanish media’s approach and level of commitment to this topic.
Nonetheless, 37 percent of the articles framed from the perspective of responsibility examined for this study focused on the role of the individual in preventing and dealing with the problem and another 10 percent placed the onus on the family. Family responsibility was most frequently mentioned in articles on childhood obesity. News stories written from a responsibility perspective either emphasized the role of low socioeconomic status and educational attainment levels in the development of obesity or, as was the case in 47 percent, directly blamed obese individuals for their failure to control what they ate and maintain healthy lifestyles or parents for not teaching their obese children better habits.
Conclusion
El País, El Correo, and La Vanguardia together published a total of 183 news items related to obesity during 2015. Obesity was the main topic of 59 and 20 percent focused specifically on childhood obesity.
Although weight might have once been a seasonal topic that Spanish newspapers only addressed in the form of diet tips published during the run-up to summer holidays and at Christmastime, it is now considered newsworthy at any given point of the year.
Of the three newspapers analyzed, El Correo was responsible for the greatest number of news stories on obesity (53), a substantial 33 percent of which were related to the Basque Country. This was not surprising given the daily’s regional focus and large readership bases in Bizkaia and Álava.
The fact that 64 percent of news items in the sample were positioned as the lead stories on the pages on which they appeared indicates that all of the papers examined considered obesity to be an important subject. Analysis revealed that 35 percent of the articles on obesity published by these dailies in 2015 bore titles containing key words such as obesidad, obeso/a, and sobrepeso that undoubtedly raised the public visibility of the problem.
Solutions was the dominant frame of coverage provided by all three newspapers. It was the primary frame employed by 61 percent of the news articles published by El País and 55 percent of the articles published by El Correo and La Vanguardia. Solutions mentioned most frequently in El Correo and La Vanguardia content alluded directly to the role of the individual in weight maintenance. El País, in contrast, placed an emphasis on solutions related to scientific research and pharmaceutical advances in 43 percent of the articles it published in this category. All three newspapers nevertheless placed a similar degree of emphasis on political solutions to the problem, which accounted for either 22 or 23 percent of the articles with a solutions focus they published.
Consequences, which was the second most dominant frame in content published by El Correo, surfaced to a lesser degree in the coverage provided by the other two dailies, which also mentioned health complications related to obesity. El País stressed the possible economic consequences of obesity in at least 50 percent of the articles it published in which consequences was the dominant frame.
Albeit none of the articles published by El País were framed primarily from a diagnostic perspective, it was the dominant frame in 13 percent of the articles that appeared in La Vanguardia and El Correo. All three newspapers described obesity as a problem, chronic disease, epidemic, pandemic, and even business opportunity.
While lifestyle and dietary habits constituted the dominant frames of a number of articles with a causal focus, these factors did not figure prominently in articles framed from other perspectives. El País explored the ways in which low economic status and low educational achievement increase one’s chances of becoming obese more extensively than the other papers examined, which nevertheless did mention these factors to a lesser degree.
Although responsibility was not the most widely detected dominant frame and not a single article published by El País was framed primarily from that angle, the attribution of responsibility, like the identification of causal factors, is nonetheless highly relevant due to the implications it has for analyzing and understanding the solutions routinely recommended for obesity. This study has therefore attempted to evaluate the degree to which solutions were mentioned and responsibility attributed in the articles analyzed even when these perspectives did not constitute dominant frames. Kim and Willis (2007) note, ‘when the responsibility is assigned to individuals, solutions are to be found at a personal level too’ (p. 362). In the case of obesity, these range from changing personal habits and engaging in more physical activity to more drastic measures such as surgical intervention.
Analysis revealed that 47 percent of the articles in the study sample framed from the perspective of responsibility held obese individuals or their families responsible for their condition (a much higher percentage than any other category of attribution) and individual remedial effort accounted for 63 percent of the solutions proposed. Although in our research we have not found significant gender differences, studies by authors such as (De Brún et al., 2012) indicate that given the greater social pressure to which they are subject and the traditional gender roles of mother and caregiver they are expected to play, women tend to be held more responsible for obesity than men.
Nevertheless, whether spurred by a rise in malnutrition, in general, and childhood undernutrition, in particular, provoked by the economic crisis or the additional expenditure that higher levels of obesity supposes for public health systems, the media is increasingly attributing the problem to social factors and public sector inertia. Almost one quarter of the news stories examined in this study that were framed from a responsibility perspective asserted that the problem needed to be addressed at the societal and governmental level. Another 27 percent held the food sector to be directly responsible for the growing problem of obesity. Not surpringly, 23 percent of the articles employing a solutions frame emphasized what government could and should be doing in response to the problem.
Our findings coincide with those of similar studies by scholars such as Boero (2007), Sobal (1999), and Spector and Kitsuse (1977), who have concluded that news outlets are increasingly framing obesity as a social issue despite their lingering tendency to uphold traditional discourses that attribute responsibility for the problem to individual behavior. This study reveals the ways in which the Spanish press is starting to frame obesity from fresh perspectives. More and more coverage in that country stress scientific and political solutions aligned with economic and structural causal factors and economic and social consequences that posit obesity within the context of social responsibility. While such stories remain relatively few and far between, they do serve to mark out a new path for mass media reporting on obesity going forward and an eventual shift in public opinion. The findings of a study on related newspaper and television reporting in the United States conducted by Kim and Wills (2007) indicate that American media outlets are now framing the issue as much in terms of social as individual responsibility and are placing less emphasis on individual solutions. The social repercussion of this shift is an area of interest scholars should consider exploring in depth going forward.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article is part of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (CSO2017-82853-R) and the University of the Basque Country (US17/15). The authors are members of the MediaIker, a research group financially supported by the University of the Basque Country (GIU16/08).
