The Content of health News and Programs in Television in Turkey

It has been observed that publications on health in Turkey increased in recent times, also the number in criticism of this content has been increased. With the increase in publications, analysis and evaluation of the contents of these publications have become important. From this perspective, this study aims to determine which themes are presented in health news and programs on television and how they are broadcasted. Content analysis method has been used in order to reach the purpose determined above. The scope the study was constituted of the contents which were broadcasted in 2010. 51.291 video shoots were gained from TV’s with approximately 50 keywords of health field in 2010. Sample was taken every forth day of the year from 365 days media content as a universe by systematic random sampling method. Thus sample framework, which will represent the whole year in different terms at regular intervals, was contituted and 10408 shoots was taken into consideration. Content analysis coding guide was developed in order to gather the data for realizing the purpose of the study. In this guide 41 primary theme and 452 seperate sub category were coded. The distribution of 10408 shootings about health according to 4 different categories. It was determined that the content about health was broadcasted in the first three months of the year (28.3%); namely January, February and March. The 34,7% of the shootings were broadcasted in the morning whereas the percent of shotings in the afternoon was 21,5%. The percent of the evening broadcasts was 20,7%. Approximately half of the shootings (49,8%) were determined as news. This percent was followed by the health content broadcasts (27,9%). Almost all of the broadcasts were determined as informative type (99,3%). Over half of the broadcasts were found as recommendation (n=5.326; 51,2%). When the themes in the broadcasts were elaborated, the most elaborative subjects were nutrition (15,5%) and internal medicine / general surgery (14%). The follow-up subjects were beauty, care, losing weight and healthy life (9,8%), oncology and cancer (8,6%) and Ministry of Health (7,2%). When the sub categories of these primary themes were observed, it was determined that the general information was given (over 50%) in these informative expressions.