Publications · February 9, 2019

Media mentions of cancer research: disproportionate coverage (Our new study in BMJ Open)

Our team’s study on coverage of cancer research in online media was just published at BMJ Open! We started the collaboration when I was working at NCI in 2017, and we set out to examine which cancer research was getting picked up in the news – and why.

Of particular interest: we found that level of coverage per cancer type doesn’t mirror incidence. For example, breast cancer receives disproportionately higher amount of media attention compared to incidence, while lung, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers receive disproportionately lower. It’s helpful to keep this in mind since what’s covered in the news can shape our perceptions of what health issues we should worry about.

As we note in the piece, “Results highlight a need for continued research on the role of media, especially online media, in research dissemination.”

It’s possible that media outreach on behalf of research teams – especially at top scientific journals or research institutions rich in such resources – plays a role in what gets covered.

This was my first experience with open publishing – our dataset and code are publicly available. Pretty neat!

The article can be found here (open access): https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/2/e025783