Online media reporting of global mortality rates and causes: a content analysis

Introduction The online news media covers mortality-related topics such as illnesses, diseases, violent deaths, and fatalities caused by environmental or lifestyle factors. This frequent coverage, coupled with the media's significant influence on public opinion, can make the public overestimate certain health risks while underestimating others. Objective This study aggregates global death figures from online media reports, compares them to official annual death figures, and analyses online media's over- or under-reporting of specific death causes. Design This content analysis examined online media articles from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021, citing mortality figures for different causes of death. By utilising global news databases Dow Jones Factiva and Nexis and the news aggregator service Google News, it identified articles that referenced annual death statistics for various causes. These findings were used to determine the overall global death count based on aggregated figures from online media reports on causes of death. A comparison was then made with the official global death total. Additionally, each cause of death was compared to the most reliable secondary source, such as the best available official figures or academic research, to discern areas where the media may exaggerate or downplay specific causes. Results The media attributed more than twice the actual deaths in 2020, RR =2.43: 155 million media compared (20.1 per 1000) to the UN-reported 63.7 million deaths (8.3 per 1000). Official or academic sources also overestimate the number of deaths, with 144.3 million deaths reported annually (18.7 per 1000). Across 44 death-cause categories, the media's figure for annual deaths matched the best available source ten times (23%) but failed to identify the best source in the other 34 categories. Notable areas where the media over-reported causes included Influenza (65,000 reported vs 14,500 actual, RR:4.48), natural disasters (60,000 reported vs 15,071 actual, RR:3.97) and overwork (2.8m reported vs 745,000 actual, RR:3.76). Conclusions Online media reports indicate an overestimation of global mortality compared to the actual annual mortality rate and the rate supported by official and academic research sources. There is a tendency for over-reporting of death rates in areas that attract media attention, such as influenza and natural disasters, while there is under-reporting in less attention-grabbing areas, like digestive and liver diseases.