A Multiyear Content Analysis of US Newspaper Coverage of Chronic Wasting Disease

Abstract

This project examines media coverage of chronic wasting disease in Wisconsin in the years 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008. A content analysis was performed on the sentence level of news articles published in Wisconsin in these years for key terms related to knowledge shared and information attribution, disease taxonomy and comparisons, and management actions to determine how coverage of these trends changed over time. It was found that opinions attributed to hunters became more and more prominent in coverage over time, publications relied less on comparing the disease to similar diseases and adopted specific language in describing the disease, and attention to management actions increased.