Popular media coverage of infectious diseases greatly influences how people perceive those diseases, making them seem more dangerous, according to a new study. The research suggests diseases that show up frequently in the print media are considered more serious than similar diseases that do not receive the same kind of coverage, such as yellow fever. Researchers chose ten infectious diseases drawn from the Centre for Disease Control database. Five were medical disorders that have been highly prevalent in the recent print media – anthrax, SARS, West Nile virus, Lyme disease and avian flu – and five were medical disorders that have not often been present in current media: Tularemia, human babesiosis, yellow fever, Lassa fever and hantavirus. Two groups of students, undergraduate and medical students, were asked to rate how serious, how prevalent, and how “disease-like” various conditions were.
A single incident reported in the media can cause great public concern if it is interpreted to mean that the potential risk is difficult to control, as with the possibility of a pandemic like in the case of avian flu, and bioterrorism, as in the case of anthrax infection. Conversely, when participants were presented with the descriptions of the disease, without the name, they actually thought that the diseases which received infrequent media coverage – the control group – were actually worse. Another interesting aspect of the study is when factual information about the diseases is presented along with the names, the media effect wasn’t nearly as strong. This suggests that people can overcome the influence of the media when you give them the facts, and so objective reporting is really critical. Equally surprising is the fact that the medical students – who should have more factual knowledge about these diseases – were just as influenced by the media, despite their background.
Medicine in the Popular Press: The Influence of the Media on Perceptions of Disease. 2008 PLoS ONE 3(10): e3552
In an age of increasing globalization and discussion of the possibility of global pandemics, increasing rates of reporting of these events may influence public perception of risk. The present studies investigate the impact of high levels of media reporting on the perceptions of disease. Undergraduate psychology and medical students were asked to rate the severity, future prevalence and disease status of both frequently reported diseases (e.g. avian flu) and infrequently reported diseases (e.g. yellow fever). Participants considered diseases that occur frequently in the media to be more serious, and have higher disease status than those that infrequently occur in the media, even when the low media frequency conditions were considered objectively ‘worse’ by a separate group of participants. Estimates of severity also positively correlated with popular print media frequency in both student populations. However, we also see that the concurrent presentation of objective information about the diseases can mitigate this effect. It is clear from these data that the media can bias our perceptions of disease.
Joseph Morley of the 
