Comparing public health-related material in print and web page versions of legacy media

The objectives of this study were to create a database of public health content from a sample of legacy media, and to compare the prevalence of public health themes in print and web-based versions over time.

A database was created from eleven nationally published magazines as a sample of legacy media content. Relevant material was extracted and coded by the title of the article, periodical, print or web edition, month of publication, item type, and 1-3 public health theme codes.

Theme codes emerged as the documents were reviewed based on the primary discussion in each piece. A total of 2558 unique documents were extracted from print issues and 6440 from web-based issues. Seventeen public health themes were identified. Individual coded documents were saved with file names identical to the code string, thus creating a searchable database.

Legacy media are those that existed before the internet and social media. Publishers target readership groups defined by age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and other commonalities. Although legacy media have been identified as trusted sources of health information, they have not been examined as sources of public health communication. Because both print and web-based versions exist as unstructured textual data, these are rarely examined with informatics methods.

The process described can serve as a model for application of informatics approaches to similar data and assist development of targeted public health communications. Having a better understanding of what types of health content is distributed through legacy media can help to target health messages to specific demographic and interest groups in ways that are understandable and appealing to them.