How the media framed weight-loss drugs: a content analysis of newspaper coverage of prescription and over-the-counter weight-loss drugs

This study explores how newspapers framed the weight-loss drugs Xenical®(orlistat) and Alli® (over-the-counter orlistat) during the time period of three months prior to their approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration until one year after each became available on the market. As of June 2011, orlistat is the only weight-loss drug available for long-term use in the U.S. Newspapers are influential sources of information about health issues. Agenda-setting, framing, and priming in news articles can have a powerful effect on public perceptions and behaviors. To conduct the content analysis, researchers first developed a codebook containing variables that described the sources of attribution and the features of each drug. They tested the codebook in a series of pilot tests to ensure inter-rater reliability. The sample of texts for the content analysis, drawn from LexisNexis Academic, contained 183 newspaper articles composed of 85 Xenical articles and 98 Alli articles. The overlap was 25% for inter-rater reliability as well as intra-rater reliability. Frequencies were tabulated using Predictive Analytics SoftWare, version 18.0.3. Results demonstrated that Xenical and Alli were framed differently in some critical ways. For example, there were twice as many quotes from the manufacturer for Alli than for Xenical. Researchers concluded that the reporting on Alli was heavily influenced by the manufacturer's multi-media public relations campaign in the months prior to the market-release date.