Break it to Me Harshly: The Effects of Intersecting News Frames in Lung Cancer and Obesity Coverage

By examining the publicily identified top two health problems in the United States, this research, using an experimental design, investigates whether different news frame combinations intensify or diminish framing effects. In this study, the cognitive dimension and affective dimension of framing defined as thematic/episodic and gain/loss, respectively, are manipulated to determine if changing the way newspaper stories report obesity and lung cancer will alter the readers' attribution of societal and individual responsibility. This study revealed a significant interaction between thematic framing and loss framing on societal attribution of responsibility for the health issueslung cancer and obesity.