TA_kogumik 2018-2019

SUMMARIES
SUMMARIES
Anne-May Nagel
The Use of Sugar Narratives in the Newsportals Postimees
Online and Delfi 2015-2017
Sugar is one of the most talked about food items of the last few years both in the foreing and
domestic media. There are many different types of sugars available and the resources needed
for producing them vary greatly. Consumers’ choices are influenced by many aspects, one
of them is the knowledge they have on the possible health effects of the chosen food. Mass
media is, according to reasearch, used as a main source for health-related news by patients
and medical professionals (Breziz & Halpern-Reichert, 2004, p. 234-235).
Raivo Palmaru (2009) has thoroughly described the role of the media as a creator of
conseptions. The choices made by media professionals are those which the receivers read,
see or hear and on the basis of which the receivers and social networks start to construct
their own meanings. Media is not a reflector of the things happening, but the creator of
conseptions and the social reality (Palmaru, 2009, lk. 33-34).
Journalists working in Estonia have also felt the rising competition between different portals
and media houses in general which as a result, brings on click-oriented media and articles
which news-worthiness is low and the change of the role of journalists – they now have to
monitor how many clicks their stories get and shape the articles in the way that they would
be interesting to many (Must, 2017, p. 48-66). To continue – it might be so that if the scientific
understanding is not interesting enough, it might stay in the shadow of unscientific approach
simply because it brings more clicks and therefore bigger profits from marketing sales.
It is of the upmost importance that people make choices that shape their health (and in
the long run, the health of the planet) based on scientific arguments. But to know what the
science says about, for example, sugar, you have to have read it or heard it somewhere.
And as pointed out eralier – mass media is the most popular place where people go to get
health-related information (Breziz & Halpern-Reichert, 2004, p. 234-235).
The articles published should be checked for false information – we expect that from
the journalists when writing about politics (in that area, the appearance of the fake news
phenomena has been widely discussed all over the world), but we should also have the
same standards when it comes to publishing articles that regard our health choices.
In my research, the topic of sugar was used as an example to find our which kind of narratives
were used while talking about the realtions of sugar and health. The aim of the paper was to
analyze which sugar narratives were used to describe sugar in the context of health in the
online newsportals Postimees and Delfi. Three research questions were implemented:
1. Which narratives were used in covering sugar in the context of health?
2. Who were the groups most active in talking about sugar?
3. If and how did the covering of sugar differ in the newsportals?
Total of 145 articles from 2015 to 2017 were analyzed. The results revealed ten main
narratives that occured in both of the portals.
Narrative 1 – Sugar is an addictive substance comparable with
Narrative 1.1 – Sugar addiction does not exist
Narrative 2 – Miraculous side-effects of giving up
Narrative 3 – Consumption of sugar is bad for you
Narrative 4 – Excessive consumption of sugar is bad for you
Narrative 5 – Excessive consumption of added sugars is bad for you
Narrative 6 – White sugar is not the only dangerous sweetener
Narrative 7 – Consumption of sugar has positive effects as
Narrative 8 – One should not be afraid of sugar
Narrative 9 – People consume too much sugar
Narrative 10 – Sugar and sweets are consumed mainly for emotional reasons
In addition, two narratives were found only in the online-portal Delfi.
The narratives found were mostly about the negative effects of sugar – sugar addiction (25%
of the articles mentioned it) and the different negative health outcomes of various types of
sugar consumption were the most prevalent. The most quoted group was scientists.
It must be considered that there is no such thing as a sugar addiction (Hebebrand et al.,
2014) in the classification of diseases or as a medical diagnosis. Psychologists talk about
food addiction in general or habits, it is not known that any type of a certain food could cause
addiction (ibid). Therefore, the most prevalent narrative is characteristic of fake news in the
health articles – there is no scientific basis to the claim. There was also a lot of confusion
regarding the topic of which kind of sugar in what amounts is safe to consume (narratives
3-5).
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