[Articles on medicine in Austrian daily newspapers (author's transl)]

Nine Austrian daily newspapers were screened for articles dealing with medical items. 634 relevant articles were collected within three months comprising more than 10 square meters of printed pages. Most frequent were "informations about health aspects" (34%), "health politics and economy" (24%) and "medical science and technique" (13%). Compared to other subjects in daily newspapers the chance of being recognized and red is relatively small for articles on medicine related reports. Due to their reading habits female, older and lower social class people are less likely informed by the newspapers involved in the study. Thus the different knowledge levels of various subgroups of the population may be partly caused by differences in publishing and reading habits.