Framing Obesity: The Evolution of News Discourse on a Public Health Issue

Abstract

The public debate on obesity will turn on the question of who or what is responsible for causing and curing this emerging epidemic. Previous research suggests that public health problems become amenable to broad policy solutions when those problems can be reframed in systemic terms—specifically, in terms of involuntary risk, universal risk, environmental risk, and knowingly created risk. This article assesses the framing of obesity in news coverage since 1985 to determine whether obesity is being reframed in these terms. The data suggest that a vigorous frame contest is currently under way between arguments emphasizing personal responsibility for health and arguments emphasizing the social environment, including corporate and public policy. The evidence suggests that one of these frame dimensions (environmental risk) has moved decisively toward the systemic pole, while two frame dimensions (involuntary and knowingly created risk) have not moved toward the systemic pole, and the movement of the fourth dimension (risk to everyone) is uncertain.