Drivers of global media attention and representations for antimicrobial resistance risk: an analysis of online English and Chinese news media data, 2015–2018

Abstract

Background: How antimicrobial resistance (AMR) risk is communicated in news media can shape public understanding and the engagement of different sectors with AMR. This study examined online news media attention for AMR risk and analyzed how AMR risk was communicated using a global sample of English and Chinese news articles.

Methods: A total of 16,265 and 8335 English and Chinese news relevant to AMR risk, respectively, published in 2015–2018 were retrieved from a professional media-monitoring platform, to examine media attention for AMR and its drivers, of which, 788 articles from six main English-speaking countries and three main Chinese-speaking territories were drawn using constructed-week sampling for content analysis.

Results: Media attention mainly fluctuated around official reports or scientific discovery of AMR risks or solutions but seldom around reports of inappropriate antimicrobial use (AMU), and not consistently increased in response to World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. The content analysis found that (1) heterogeneous medical terminologies and the ‘superbug’ frame were most commonly used to define AMR or AMR risk; (2) a temporal increase in communicating microbial evolution as a process of AMR was identified but communication about inappropriate AMU in general consumers as the cause of AMR remained inadequate; and (3) the multifaceted consequences of AMR and individual actions that can be taken to tackle AMR were inadequately communicated.

Conclusions: The media should be encouraged or reoriented to communicate more about actions that can be taken by general consumers to enable collective actions and the multifaceted conseuqences of AMR to encourage one-health approach for tackling AMR.