In the Digital Era, Is Community Outrage a Feasible Proxy Indicator of Emotional Epidemiology? The Case of Meningococcal Disease in Sardinia, Italy
| Autor: | Antonio Azara, Paolo Castiglia, Benedetto Arru, Gavino Mariotti, Maria Veronica Camerada, Marco Dettori, Giovanni Rezza, Paola Stefanelli, Andrea Piana |
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| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
Risk
digital epidemiology medicine.medical_specialty Health Toxicology and Mutagenesis Information Dissemination lcsh:Medicine 010501 environmental sciences Meningococcal disease 01 natural sciences Proxy (climate) Article Newspaper 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Environmental health vaccine Epidemiology medicine Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Outrage emotional epidemiology 0105 earth and related environmental sciences meningococcal disease Public health Incidence lcsh:R Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health Records medicine.disease community outrage Risk perception Meningococcal Infections Geography Italy Epidemiologic Methods Attitude to Health |
| Zdroj: | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Volume 15 Issue 7 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol 15, Iss 7, p 1512 (2018) |
| ISSN: | 1660-4601 |
| Popis: | The aims of this study were (i) to evaluate the relationship between official data on invasive meningococcal disease cases in Sardinia and the reporting of the cases by a regional online newspaper and (ii) to identify indicators useful for understanding the community outrage related to health events. Cases of meningococcal disease, selected from articles published between 1999 and 2016 on a regional newspaper database, were compared to those reported to the Infectious Disease Information Service. In order to evaluate the equality of the two distribution records, the Kolgomorov Smirnov test for two samples was applied. A community outrage indicator was obtained by calculating the number of published articles for each case of meningococcal disease identified. The outrage indicator was evaluated in comparison with other phenomena: drinking water supply limitation and domestic accidents. Overall, 2724 articles on meningitis/sepsis referring to 89 cases related to meningococcal disease were considered. Significant differences between the distribution of cases officially reported and those found in the newspaper (combined K-S = 0.39 p = 0.08) were not observed. The meningococcal disease outrage indicator showed an average of seven items per case. Comparing the meningococcal disease outrage indicator with those regarding the limitation of drinking water supplies and domestic accidents, a different risk perception by the reference media was found, with the highest outrage for meningococcal disease. The present study supports the role played by emotional factors as behavioral determinants in emerging threats to public health. The analysis of the data allowed us to highlight that the proposed outrage indicator could be a feasible proxy of emotional epidemiology. Finally, data confirm that meningitis is perceived as a highly outrageous health threat. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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