O Jornalismo em saúde e as fontes de informação: o caso da Covid-19 em Portugal

Abstract

In December 2019, a public health crisis began with the emergence of a pandemic resulting from the new coronavirus. The lack of knowledge on the part of the scientific community about this virus has generated a special interest in society and a change in the behavior of the media. Equating the power of the media and paying special attention to the sources of information, this work seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the media coverage of this virus through the analysis of news texts published in four Portuguese newspapers of online expression: Jornal de Notícias, Público, Observador and Notícias ao Minuto. This selection resulted in 280 articles that revealed a strong presence of sources external to the health field. It was also concluded that Journalism has an increased social responsibility in this pandemic context. These are preliminary results of an investigation that wants to be further developed in time and space. This work is funded by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the scope of the multi-annual project of the Communication and Society Research Centre 2020-2023 (which integrates base funding, with the reference UIDB/00736/2020, and programmatic funding, with reference UIDP/00736/2020).