Obesity Representations: An Analysis of Italian Newspapers' Coverage before and after COVID-19 and the Influence of Political Orientation

Abstract

Introduction: A large body of literature has shown that media representations of obesity influence people's attitudes and contribute to weight stigma and discriminatory behaviors. The present study aimed to identify the representations of obesity in nine main Italian national newspapers and analyze how these representations varied before and after the COVID-19 lockdown (2016-2023), also in relation to the political orientation of the newspapers.

Methods: The Automated Co-occurrence Analysis for Semantic Mapping procedure (ACASM) was used to identify the themes. A t test and time series analysis were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Results: Findings showed that the selected Italian newspapers represented obesity according to five different themes labeled Wellness, Problem, Health, Nutrition, and Disease. It was found that the articles related to obesity increased after the lockdown. The Wellness and Health themes were found to be the more prevalent after the end of the emergency period. This result differed according to the newspapers' political orientation.

Conclusion: The findings suggest considering the representations that specific newspapers convey according to their political orientation in order to promote different narratives that could have a relevant impact on obesity.

Keywords: COVID-19; Newspapers; Obesity; Political orientations; Representations; Time series.

Fig. 1.

Steps of the sample selection process.

Fig. 2.

Time series analysis of the different representations of obesity in the Italian press. The solid horizontal line indicates the threshold value of the F test for a significance level p < 0.05. The dashed vertical line represents the breakpoint. Only time blocks with sufficient variability for analysis are shown. Block 5, first quarter 2017; block 10, second quarter 2018; block 15, third quarter 2019; block 20, fourth quarter 2020; block 25, first quarter 2022.

Fig. 3.

Time series analysis of different representations of obesity according to the political orientation of Italian newspapers. The solid horizontal line indicates the threshold value of the F test for a significance level p < 0.05. The dashed vertical line represents the breakpoint. Only time blocks with sufficient variability for analysis are shown. Block 5, first quarter 2017; block 10, second quarter 2018; block 15, third quarter 2019; block 20, fourth quarter 2020; block 25, first quarter 2022.