Health News Covered by Newspapers during Heavy Rain and Flood in Chennai Dr. Revathy V R, Ramya B Assistant Professor, Department of Media Sciences, College of Engineering Campus, Anna University, Chennai, India Online published on 14 October, 2016. Abstract Chennai has faced worst years affected flood in hundred during November-December 2015, which caused failure of the drainage system and the dumping of garbage also entered the houses. Due to the stagnation of water in many places of the city the residents were forced to stay in the relief camp and in hospital. The overcrowding, stagnant of water, sewage and garbage problem made the outbreak of disease. Due to the stagnation of water, power supply was interrupted which lead to the collapse of the communication systems. So print media become the major source of information to the public and the research is about analyzing the role of newspapers in covering health related news during heavy rain and flood in Chennai. The study analyses the level of prominence given for health issues in newspapers, to analyze how newspapers covers the government initiatives regarding health issues, the main speakers used regarding the health message and also how the newspaper sets agenda regarding the health issue. The newspapers chosen for the study are The Hindu, Times of India, Dinathanthi and Dinamalar. The health news is analyzed using content analysis method. Dinamalar has published more number of research articles. Though Times of India and The Hindu have published less number of stories, they have published the stories with more inputs from Witnesses, experts, victims, spokespersons, and officials. Government initiatives and sewage and garbage problem was given importance by all the newspapers. Thus, the result shows that newspaper has covered a good number of awareness and preventive measures taken by the government at regular intervals, during and after and the lesser number of reported deaths due to disease shows the effective preventive measures taken by the government. Top Keywords Health issue, Health Communication, Agenda setting, Flood, Content Analysis, Public Health. Top |