Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Parenting Blog Coverage Of The Autism-Vaccine Controversy, Aidan Bryant

Media Studies - Theses

This study examines source type, citation accuracy, and anecdotal reliance in parenting blog articles about the autism/vaccine controversy. Existing literature on common errors and shortcomings of traditional health journalism, in conjunction with existing guidelines and suggestions for optimal health journalism practices, were used to synthesize a content analysis code structure. The code structure was used to examine 122 parenting blog posts from 18 different blogs, spanning a time period from June 22, 2005 to January 9, 2012, for details including the following:

• author demographics (gender, profession, parenthood, vaccination patterns)

• type of blog the article appeared in

• author stance of the …